"The fool saith, Who would have thought it?"
Winter had brought trouble with it to Warpington Vicarage. A new baby had arrived, and the old baby was learning, not in silence, what kings and ministers undergo when they are deposed. Hester had never greatly cared for the old baby. She was secretly afraid of it. But in its hour of adversity she took to it, and she and Regie spent many hours consoling it for the arrival of the little chrysalis up-stairs.
Mrs. Gresley recovered slowly, and before she was down-stairs again Regie sickened with one of those swift, sudden illnesses of childhood, which make childless women thank God for denying them their prayers.
Mrs. Gresley was not well enough to be told, and for many days Mr. Gresley and Hester and Doctor Brown held Regie forcibly back from the valley of the shadow, where, since the first cradle was rocked, the soft feet of children have cleft so sharp an entrance over the mother-hearts that vainly barred the way.
Mr. Gresley's face grew as thin as Hester's as the days went by. On his rounds—for he let nothing interfere with his work—heavy farmers in dog-carts, who opposed him at vestry meetings, stopped to ask after Regie. The most sullen of his parishioners touched their hats to him as he passed, and mothers of families, who never could be induced to leave their cooking to attend morning service, and were deeply offended at being called "after-dinner Christians" in consequence, forgot the opprobrious term, and brought little offerings of new-laid eggs and rosy apples to tempt "the little master."
Mr. Gresley was touched, grateful.
"I don't think I have always done them justice," he actually said to Hester one day. "They do seem to understand me a little better at last. Walsh has never spoken to me since my sermon on Dissent, though I always make a point of being friendly to him, but to-day he stopped, and said he knew what trouble was, and how he had lost"—Mr. Gresley's voice faltered, "it is a long time ago—but how, when he was about my age, he lost his eldest boy, and how he always remembered Regie in his prayers, and I must keep up a good heart. We shook hands," said Mr. Gresley. "I sometimes think Walsh means well, and that he may be a good-hearted man, after all."
Beneath the arrogance which a belief in Apostolic succession seems to induce in natures like Mr. Gresley's, as mountain air induces asthma in certain lungs, the shaft of agonized anxiety had pierced to a thin layer of humility. Hester knew that that layer was only momentarily disturbed, and that the old self would infallibly reassert itself; but the momentary glimpse drew her heart towards her brother. He was conscious of it, and love almost grew between them as they watched by Regie's bed.
At last, after an endless night, the little faltering feet came to the dividing of the ways, and hesitated. The dawn fell gray on the watchful faces of the doctor and Hester, and on the dumb suspense of the poor father. And with a sigh, as one who half knows he is making a life-long mistake, Regie settled himself against Hester's shoulder and fell asleep.
The hours passed. The light grew strong, and still Regie slept. Doctor Brown put cushions behind Hester, and gave her food. He looked anxiously at her. "Can you manage?" he whispered later, when the sun was streaming in at the nursery window. And she smiled back in scorn. Could she manage? What did he take her for?
At last Regie stretched himself and opened his eyes. The doctor took him gently from Hester, gave him food, and laid him down.
"He is all right," he said. "He will sleep all day."
Mr. Gresley, who had hardly stirred, hid his face in his hands.
"Don't try to move, Miss Hester," said Doctor Brown, gently.
Hester did not try. She could not. Her hands and face were rigid. She looked at him in terror. "I shall have to scream in another moment," she whispered.
The old doctor picked her up, and carried her swiftly to her room, where Fräulein ministered to her.
At last he came down and found Mr. Gresley waiting for him at the foot of the stair.
"You are sure he is all right?" he asked.
"Sure. Fräulein is with, him. He got the turn at dawn."
"Thank God!"
"Well, I should say thank your sister, too. She saved him. I tell you, Gresley, neither you nor I could have sat all those hours without stirring, as she did. She had cramp after the first hour. She has a will of iron in that weak body of hers."
"I had no idea she was uncomfortable," said Mr. Gresley, half incredulous.
"That is one of the reasons why I always say you ought not to be a clergyman," snapped the little doctor, and was gone.
Mr. Gresley was not offended. He was too overwhelmed with thankfulness to be piqued.
"Good old Brown," he said, indulgently. "He has been up all night, and he is so tired he does not know he is talking nonsense. As if a man who did not understand cramp was not qualified to be a priest. Ha! ha! He always likes to have a little hit at me, and he is welcome to it. I must just creep up and kiss dear Hester. I never should have thought she had it in her to care for any one as she has shown she cares for Regie. I shall tell her so, and how surprised I am, and how I love her for it. She has always seemed so insensible, so callous. But, please God! this is the beginning of a new life for her. If it is, she shall never hear one word of reproach about the past from me."
A day or two later the Bishop of Southminster had a touch of rheumatism, and Doctor Brown attended him. This momentary malady may possibly account to the reader for an incident which remained to the end of life inexplicable to Mr. Gresley.
Two days after Regie had taken the turn towards health, and on the afternoon of the very same day when Doctor Brown had interviewed the Bishop's rheumatism, the episcopal carriage might have been seen squeezing its august proportions into the narrow drive of Warpington Vicarage; at least, it was always called the drive, though the horses' noses were reflected in the glass of the front-door while the hind-wheels still jarred the gate-posts.
Out of the carriage stepped, not the Bishop, but the tall figure of Dick Vernon, who rang the bell, and then examined a crack in the portico.
He had plenty of time to do so.
"Lord, what fools!" he said, half aloud. "The crazy thing is shouting out that it is going to drop on their heads, and they put a clamp across the crack. Might as well put a respirator on a South Sea Islander. Is Mr. Gresley in? Well, then, just ask him to step this way, will you? Look here, James, if you want to be had up for manslaughter, you leave this porch as it is. No, I did not drive over from Southminster on purpose to tell you; but I mention it now I am here."
"I added the portico myself when I came here," said Mr. Gresley, stiffly, who had not forgotten or forgiven the enormity of Dick's behavior at the temperance meeting.
"So I should have thought," said Dick, warming to the subject, and mounting on a small garden-chair. "And some escaped lunatic has put a clamp on the stucco."
"I placed the clamp myself," replied Mr. Gresley. "There really is no necessity for you to waste your time and mine here. I understand the portico perfectly. The crack is merely superficial."
"Is it?" said Dick. "Then why does it run round those two consumptive little pillars? I tell you it's tired of standing up. It's going to sit down. Look here"—Dick tore at the stucco with his knife, and caught the clamp as it fell—"that clamp was only put in the stucco. It never reached the stone or the wood, whichever the little kennel is made of. You ought to be thankful it did not drop on one of the children, or on your own head. It would have knocked all the texts out of it for some time to come."
Mr. Gresley did not look very grateful as he led the way to his study.
"I was lunching with the Bishop to-day," said Dick, "and Dr. Brown was there. He told us about the trouble here. He said the little chap Regie was going on like a house on fire. The Bishop told me to ask after him particularly."
"He is wonderfully better every day," said Mr. Gresley, softening. "How kind of the Bishop to send you to inquire. Not having children himself, I should never have thought—"
"No," said Dick, "you wouldn't. Do you remember when we were at Cheam, and Ogilvy's marked sovereign was found in the pocket of my flannel trousers. You were the only one of the boys, you and that sneak Field, who was not sure I might not have taken it. You said it looked awfully bad, and so it did."
"No one was gladder than I was when it was cleared up," said Mr. Gresley.
"No," said Dick; "but we don't care much what any one thinks when it's cleared up. It's before that matters. Is Hester in? I've two notes for her. One from Brown, and one from the Bishop, and my orders are to take her back with me. That is why the Bishop sent the carriage."
"I am afraid Hester will hardly care to leave us at present," said Mr. Gresley. "My wife is on her sofa, and Regie is still very weak. He has taken one of those unaccountable fancies of children for her, and can hardly bear her out of his sight."
"The Bishop has taken another of those unaccountable fancies for her," said Dick, looking full at Mr. Gresley in an unpleasant manner. "I'm not one that holds that parsons should have their own way in everything. I've seen too much of missionaries. I just shove out curates and vicars and all that small fry if they get in my way. But when they break out in buttons and gaiters, by Jove! I knock under to them—at least, I do to men like the Bishop. He knows a thing or two. He has told me not to come back without Hester, and I'm not going to. Ah! there she is in the garden." Dick's large back had been turned towards the window, but he had seen the reflection of a passing figure in the glass of a framed testimonial which occupied a prominent place on the study wall, and he at once marched out into the garden and presented the letters to Hester.
Hester was bewildered at the thought of leaving Warpington, into which she seemed to have grown like a Buddhist into his tree. She was reluctant, would think it over, etc. But Dick, after one glance at her strained face, was obdurate. He would hear no reason. He would not go away. She and Fräulein nervously cast a few clothes into a box, Fräulein so excited by the apparition of a young man, and a possible love affair, that she could hardly fold Hester's tea-gowns.
When Hester came down with her hat on she found Dick untiring Mr. Gresley's bicycle in the most friendly manner, while the outraged owner stood by remonstrating.
"I assure you, Dick, I don't wish it to be touched. I know my own machine. If it were a common puncture I could mend it myself, but I don't want the whole thing ruined by an ignorant person. I shall take it in to Southminster on the first opportunity."
"No need to do that," said Dick, cheerfully. "Might as well go to a doctor to have your nails cut. Do it at home. You don't believe in the water test? Oh! that's rot. You'll believe in it when you see it. You're learning it now. There! Now I've got it in the pail; see all these blooming little bubbles jostling up in a row. There's a leak at the valve. No, there isn't. It's only unscrewed. Good Lord, James! it's only unscrewed; and you thought the whole machine was out of order. There, now, I've screwed it up. Devil a bubble! What's that you're saying about swearing in your presence? Oh! don't apologize! You can't help being a clergyman. Look for yourself. You will never learn if you look the other way just when a good-natured chap is showing you. I would have put the tire on again, but as you say you can do it better yourself, I won't. Sorry to keep you waiting, Hester. And look here, James, you ought to bicycle more. Strengthen your legs for playing the harmonium on Sundays. Well, I could not tell you had an organ in that little one-horse church. Good-bye, Fräulein; good-bye, James. Home, Coleman. And look here," said Dick, putting his mischievous face out of the window as the carriage turned, "if you are getting up steam for another temperance meeting, I'm your man."
"Good-bye, dear James," interrupted Hester, hastily, and the carriage drove away.
"He looks pasty," said Dick, after an interval. "A chap like James has no power in his arms and legs. He can kneel down in church, and put his arm round Mrs. Gresley's waist, but that's about all he's up to. He doesn't take enough exercise."
"He is not well. I don't think I ought to have left them."
"You had no choice. Brown said, unless you could be got away at once you would be laid up. I was at luncheon at the Palace when he said it. The Bishop's sister was too busy with her good works to come herself, so I came instead. I said I should not come back alive without you. They seemed to think I should all the same, but, of course, that was absurd. I wanted the Bishop to bet upon it, but he wouldn't."
"Do you always get what you want?" said Hester.
"Generally, if it depends on myself. But sometimes things depend on others besides me. Then I may be beaten."
They were passing Westhope Abbey, wrapped in a glory of sunset and mist.
"Did you know Miss West was there?" Dick said, suddenly.
"No," said Hester, surprised. "I thought she was in London."
"She came down last night to be with Lady Newhaven who is not well. Miss West is a great friend of yours, isn't she?"
"Yes."
"Well, she has one fault, and it is one I can't put up with. She won't look at me."
"Don't put up with it," said Hester, softly. "We women all have our faults, dear Dick. But if men point them out to us in a nice way we can sometimes cure them."
CHAPTER XXXV
SHAKESPEARE.
Two nights had passed since Lord Newhaven had left the Abbey. And now the second day, the first day of December, was waning to its close. How Rachel had lived through them she knew not. The twenty-ninth had been the appointed day. Both women had endured till then, feeling that that day would make an end. Neither had contemplated the possibility of hearing nothing for two days more. Long afterwards, in quiet years, Rachel tried to recall those two days and nights. But memory only gave lurid glimpses, as of lightning across darkness. In one of those glimpses she recalled that Lady Newhaven had become ill, that the doctor had been sent for, that she had been stupefied with narcotics. In another she was walking in the desolate frost-nipped gardens, and the two boys were running towards her across the grass.
As the sun sank on the afternoon of the second day it peered in at her sitting alone by her window. Lady Newhaven, after making the whole day frightful, was mercifully asleep. Rachel sat looking out into the distance beyond the narrow confines of her agony. Has not every man and woman who has suffered sat thus by the window, looking out, seeing nothing, but still gazing blindly out hour after hour?
Perhaps the quiet mother earth watches us, and whispers to our deaf ears:
Ruhest du auch.
Little pulse of life writhing in your shirt of fire, the shirt is but of clay of your mother's weaving, and she will take it from you presently when you lay back your head on her breast.
There had been wind all day, a high, dreadful wind, which had accompanied all the nightmare of the day as a wail accompanies pain. But now it had dropped with the sun, who was setting with little pageant across the level land. The whole sky, from north to south, from east to west, was covered with a wind-threshed floor of thin wan clouds, and shreds of clouds, through which, as through a veil, the steadfast face of the heaven beyond looked down.
And suddenly, from east to west, from north to south, as far as the trees and wolds in the dim, forgotten east, the exhausted livid clouds blushed wave on wave, league on league, red as the heart of a rose. The wind-whipped earth was still. The trees held their breath. Very black against the glow the carved cross on the adjoining gable stood out. And in another moment the mighty tide of color went as it had come, swiftly ebbing across its infinite shores of sky. And the waiting night came down suddenly.
"Oh, my God!" said Rachel, stretching out her hands to ward off the darkness. "Not another night. I cannot bear another night."
A slow step came along the gravel; it passed below the window and stopped at the door. Some one knocked. Rachel tore open the throat of her gown. She was suffocating. Her long-drawn breathing seemed to deaden all other sounds. Nevertheless she heard it—the faint footfall of some one in the hall, a distant opening and shutting of doors. A vague, indescribable tremor seemed to run through the house.
She stole out of her room and down the passage. At Lady Newhaven's door her French maid was hesitating, her hand on the handle.
Below, on the stairs, stood a clergyman and the butler.
"I am the bearer of sad tidings," said the clergyman. Rachel recognized him as the Archdeacon at whom Lord Newhaven had so often laughed. "Perhaps you would prepare Lady Newhaven before I break them to her."
The door was suddenly opened, and Lady Newhaven stood in the doorway. One small clinched hand held together the long white dressing-gown, which she had hastily flung round her, while the other was outstretched against the door-post. She swayed as she stood. Morphia and terror burned in her glassy eyes fixed in agony upon the clergyman. The light in the hall below struck upward at her colorless face. In later days this was the picture which Lady Newhaven recalled to mind as the most striking of the whole series.
"Tell her," said Rachel, sharply.
The Archdeacon advanced.
"Prepare yourself, dear Lady Newhaven," he said, sonorously. "Our dear friend, Lord Newhaven, has met with a serious accident. Er—the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord."
"Is he dead?" whispered Lady Newhaven.
The Archdeacon bowed his head.
Every one except the children heard the scream which rang through the house.
Rachel put her arms round the tottering, distraught figure, drew it gently back into the room, and closed the door behind her.
CHAPTER XXXVI
—1 MACABEES, xv. 28.
Rachel laid down the papers which were full of Lord Newhaven's death.
"He has managed it well," she said to herself. "No one could suspect that it was not an accident. He has played his losing game to the bitter end, weighing each move. None of the papers even hint that his death was not an accident. He has provided against that."
The butler received a note from Lord Newhaven the morning after his death, mentioning the train by which he should return to Westhope that day, and ordering a carriage to meet him. A great doctor made public the fact that Lord Newhaven had consulted him the day before about the attacks of vertigo from which it appeared he had suffered of late. A similar attack seemed to have seized upon him while waiting at Clapham Junction when the down express thundered past. The few who saw him said that, as he was pacing the empty platform, he staggered suddenly as the train was sweeping up behind him, put his hand to his head, and stumbled over the edge on to the line. Death was instantaneous. Only his wife and one other woman knew that it was premeditated.
"The only thing I cannot understand about it," said Rachel to herself, "is why a man, who from first to last could act with such caution, and with such deliberate determination, should have been two days late. The twenty-ninth of November was the last day of the five months, and he died on the afternoon of December the first. Why did he wait two days after he left Westhope? I should have thought he would have been the last man in the world to overstep the allotted time by so much as an hour. Yet, nevertheless, he waited two whole days. I don't understand it."
After an interminable interval Lord Newhaven's luggage returned, the familiar portmanteau and dressing-bag, and even the novel which he was reading when he left Westhope, with the mark still in it. All came back. And a coffin came back, too, and was laid before the little altar in the disused chapel.
"I will go and pray for him in the chapel as soon as the lid is fastened down," said Lady Newhaven to Rachel, "but I dare not before. I can't believe he is really dead. And they say somebody ought to look, just to verify. I know it is always done. Dear Rachel, would you mind?"
So Rachel, familiar with death, as all are who have known poverty or who have loved their fellows, went alone into the chapel, and stood a long time looking down upon the muffled figure, the garment of flesh which the soul had so deliberately rent and flung aside.
The face was fixed in a grave attention, as of one who sees that which he awaits. The sarcasm, the weariness, the indifference, the impatient patience, these were gone, these were indeed dead. The sharp, thin face knew them no more. It looked intently, unflinchingly through its half-closed eyes into the beyond which some call death, which some call life.
"Forgive him," said Rachel, kneeling beside the coffin. "My friend, forgive him. He has injured you, I know. And your just revenge—for you thought it just—has failed to reach him. But the time for vengeance has passed. The time for forgiveness has come. Forgive my poor Hugh, who will never forgive himself. Do you not see now, you who see so much, that it was harder for him than for you; that it would have been the easier part for him if he had been the one to draw death, to have atoned to you for his sin against you by his death, instead of feeling, as he always must, that your stroke failed, and that he has taken your life from you as well as your honor. Forgive him," said Rachel, over and over again.
But the unheeding face looked earnestly into the future. It had done with the past.
"Ah!" said Rachel, "if I who love him can forgive him, cannot you, who only hated him, forgive him, too? For love is greater than hate."
She covered the face and went out.
CHAPTER XXXVII
Le nombre des êtres qui veulent voir vrai est extraordinairement petit. Ce qui domineles hommes, c'est la peur de la vérité, à moins que la vérité ne leur soit utile.—AMIEL.
Lady Newhaven insisted on attending the funeral, a little boy in either hand. Rachel had implored that she would spare the children, knowing how annoyed their father would have been, but Lady Newhaven was obdurate.
"No," she said. "He may not have cared much about them, but that is no reason why they should forget he is their father."
So Teddy and Pauly stared with round eyes at the crowd, and at the coffin, and the wealth of flowers, and the deep grave in which their old friend and play-fellow was laid. Perhaps they did not understand. They did not cry.
"They are like their father. They have not much heart," Lady Newhaven said to Rachel.
Dick, who was at the funeral, looked at them, winking his hawk eyes a little, and afterwards he came back boldly to the silent house, and obtained leave to take them away for the afternoon. He brought them back towards bed-time, with a dancing doll he had made for them, and a man's face cut out of cork. They met Rachel and the governess in the garden on their return, and flew to them with their trophies.
Dick waited a moment after the others had gone in.
"It seems hard on him to have left it all," he said. "His wife and the little chaps, and his nice home and everything."
Rachel could say nothing.
"He was very fond of the boys," he went on. "He would have done anything for them."
"He did what he could," said Rachel, almost inaudibly, and then added: "He was very fond of you."
"He was a good friend," said Dick, his crooked mouth twitching a little, "and a good enemy. That was why I liked him. He was hard to make a friend of or an enemy, but when he once did either he never let go."
Rachel shivered. The frost was settling white upon the grass.
"I must go in," she said, holding out her hand.
"Are you staying much longer?" said Dick, keeping it in his.
"I leave to-morrow morning very early."
"You will be in London, perhaps."
"I think so for the present."
"May I come and see you?"
The expression of Dick's eyes was unmistakable. In the dusk he seemed all eyes and hands.
"Dear Mr. Dick, it's no use."
"I like plain speaking," said Dick. "I can't think why it's considered such a luxury. You are quite right to say that, and I should be quite wrong if I did not say that I mean to keep on till you are actually married."
He released her hand with difficulty. It was too dark to see his face. She hesitated a moment, and then fled into the house.
It is a well-known fact that after the funeral the strictest etiquette permits, nay, encourages, certain slight relaxations on the part of the bereaved.
Lady Newhaven lay on the sofa in her morning-room in her long black draperies, her small hands folded. They were exquisite, little blue-veined hands. There were no rings on them except a wedding-ring. Her maid, who had been living in an atmosphere of pleasurable excitement since Lord Newhaven's death, glanced with enthusiastic admiration at her mistress. Lady Newhaven was a fickle, inconsiderate mistress, but at this moment her behavior was perfect. She, Angélique, knew what her own part should be, and played it with effusion. She suffered no one to come into the room. She, who would never do a hand's turn for the English servants, put on coal with her own hands. She took the lamps from the footman at the door. Presently she brought in a little tray with food and wine, and softly besought "Miladi" to eat. Perhaps the mistress and maid understood each other. Lady Newhaven impatiently shook her head, and Angélique wrung her hands. In the end Angélique prevailed.
"Have they all gone?" Lady Newhaven asked, after the little meal was finished, and, with much coaxing, she had drunk a glass of champagne.
Angélique assured her they were all gone, the relations who had come to the funeral—"Milor Windham and l'Honorable Carson" were the last. They were dining with Miss West, and were leaving immediately after dinner by the evening express.
"Ask Miss West to come to me as soon as they have gone," she said.
Angélique hung about the room, and was finally dismissed.
Lady Newhaven lay quite still, watching the fire. A great peace had descended upon that much-tossed soul. The dreadful restlessness of the last weeks was gone. The long suspense, prolonged beyond its time, was over. The shock of its ending, which shattered her at first, was over too. She was beginning to breathe again, to take comfort once more: not the comfort that Rachel had tried so hard to give her, but the comfort of feeling that happiness and ease were in store for her once more; that these five hideous months were to be wiped out, and not her own past, to which she still secretly clung, out of which she was already building her future.
"It is December now. Hugh and I shall be married next December, D.V., not before. We will be married quietly in London and go abroad. I shall have a few tailor-made gowns from Vernon, but I shall wait for my other things till I am in Paris on my way back. The boys will be at school by then. Pauly is rather young, but they had better go together, and they need not come home for the holidays just at first. I don't think Hugh would care to have the boys always about. I won't keep my title. I hate everything to do with him"—(Lord Newhaven was still him)—"and I know the Queen does not like it. I will be presented as Mrs. Scarlett, and we will live at his place in Shropshire, and at last we shall be happy. Hugh will never turn against me as he did."
Lady Newhaven's thoughts travelled back, in spite of herself, to her marriage with Lord Newhaven, and the humble, boundless admiration which she had accepted as a matter of course, which had been extinguished so entirely, so inexplicably, soon after marriage, which had been succeeded by still more inexplicable paroxysms of bitterness and contempt. Other men, Lady Newhaven reflected, respected and loved their wives even after they lost their complexions, and—she had kept hers. Why had he been different from others? It was impossible to account for men and their ways. And how he had sneered at her when she talked gravely to him, especially on religious subjects. Decidedly, Edward had been very difficult, until he settled down into the sarcastic indifference that had marked all his intercourse with her after the first year.
"Hugh will never be like that," she said to herself, "and he will never laugh at me for being religious. He understands me as Edward never did. And I will be married in a pale shade of violet velvet trimmed with ermine, as it will be a winter wedding. And my bouquet shall be of Neapolitan violets, to match my name."
"May I come in?" said Rachel's voice.
"Do," said Lady Newhaven, but without enthusiasm.
She no longer needed Rachel. The crisis during which she had clung to her was past. What shipwrecked seaman casts a second thought after his rescue to the log which supported him upon a mountainous sea? Rachel interrupted pleasant thoughts. Lady Newhaven observed that her friend's face had grown unbecomingly thin, and that what little color there was in it was faded. "She is the same age as I am, but she looks much older," said Lady Newhaven to herself, adding, aloud:
"Dear Rachel!"
"Every one has gone," said Rachel, "and I have had a telegram from Lady Trentham. She has reached Paris, and will be here to-morrow afternoon."
"Dearest mamma!" said Lady Newhaven.
"So now," said Rachel, sitting down near the sofa with a set countenance, "I shall feel quite happy about leaving you."
"Must you go?"
"I must. I have arranged to leave by the seven-thirty to-morrow morning. I think it will be better if we say good-bye over night."
"I shall miss you dreadfully." Lady Newhaven perceived suddenly, and with resentment, that Rachel was anxious to go.
"I do not think you will miss me."
"I don't know why you say that. You have been so dear and sympathetic. You understand me much better than mamma. And then mamma was always so fond of Edward. She cried for joy when I was engaged to him. She said her only fear was that I should not appreciate him. She never could see that he was in fault. I must say he was kind to her. I do wish I was not obliged to have her now. I know she will do nothing but talk of him. Now I come to think of it, do stay, Rachel."
"There is a reason why I can't stay, and why you won't wish me to stay when I tell it you."
"Oh, Mr. Vernon! I saw you and him holding hands in the dusk. But I don't mind if you marry him, Rachel. I believe he is a good sort of a young man—not the kind I could ever have looked at; but what does that matter? I am afraid it has rankled in your mind that I once warned you against him. But, after all, it is your affair, not mine."
"I was not going to speak of Mr. Vernon."
Lady Newhaven sighed impatiently. She did not want to talk of Rachel's affairs. She wanted, now the funeral was over, to talk of her own. She often said there were few people with less curiosity about others than herself.
Rachel pulled herself together.
"Violet," she said, "we have known each other five months, haven't we?"
"Yes, exactly. The first time you came to my house was that dreadful night of the drawing of lots. I always thought Edward drew the short lighter. It was so like him to turn it off with a laugh."
"I want you to remember, if ever you think hardly of me, that during those five months I did try to be a friend. I may have failed, but—I did my best."
"But you did not fail. You have been a real friend, and you will always be so, dear Rachel. And when Hugh and I are married you will often come and stay with us."
A great compassion flooded Rachel's heart for this poor creature, with its house of cards. Then her face became fixed as a surgeon's who gets out his knife.
"I think I ought to tell you—you ought to know—that I care for Mr. Scarlett."
"He is mine," said Lady Newhaven instantly, her blue eyes dilating.
"He is unmarried, and I am unmarried," said Rachel, hoarsely. "I don't know how it came about, but I have gradually become attached to him."
"He is not unmarried. It is false. He is my husband in the sight of Heaven. I have always, through everything, looked upon him as such."
This seemed more probable than that Heaven had so regarded him. Rachel did not answer. She had confided her love to no one, not even to Hester; and to speak of it to Lady Newhaven had been like tearing the words out of herself with hot pincers.
"I knew he was poor, but I did, not know he was as poor as that," said Lady Newhaven, after a pause.
Rachel got up suddenly, and moved away to the fireplace. She felt it would be horribly easy to strangle that voice.
"And you came down here pretending to be my friend, while all the time you were stealing his heart from me."
Still Rachel did not answer. Her forehead was pressed against the mantel-shelf. She prayed urgently that she might stay upon the hearth-rug, that whatever happened she might not go near the sofa.
"And you think he is in love with you?"
"I do."
"Are you not rather credulous? But I suppose he has told you over and over again that he cares for you yourself alone. Is the wedding-day fixed?"
"No, he has not asked me to marry him yet. I wanted to tell you before it happened."
Lady Newhaven threw herself back on the sofa. She laughed softly. A little mirror hung tilted at an angle which allowed her to see herself as she lay. She saw a very beautiful woman, and then she turned and looked at Rachel, who had no beauty, as she understood it, and laughed again.
"My poor dear," she said, in a voice that made Rachel wince, "Hugh is no better than the worst. He has made love to you pour passer le temps, and you have taken him seriously, like the dear, simple woman you are. But he will never marry you. You own he has not proposed? Of course not. Men are like that. It is hateful of them, but they will do it. They are the vainest creatures in the world. Don't you see that the reason he has not asked you is because he knew that Edward had to—and that I should soon be free to marry him. And, Rachel, you need not feel the least little bit humiliated, for I shan't tell a soul, and, after all, he loved me first."
Lady Newhaven was quite reassured. It had been a horrible moment, but it was past.
"Why do I always make trouble?" she said, with plaintive self-complacency. "Rachel, you must not be jealous of me. I can't help it."
Rachel tried to say "I am not," but the words would not come. She was jealous, jealous of the past, cut to the heart every time she noticed that Lady Newhaven's hair waved over her ears, and that she had taper fingers.
"I think it is no use talking of this any more," Rachel said. "Perhaps I was wrong to speak of it at all. I did as I would be done by. As I am starting early I think I will say good-night and good-bye."
"Good-night, dear Rachel, and perhaps, as you say, it had better be good-bye. You may remain quite easy in your mind that I shall never breathe a word of what you have said to any living soul—except Hugh," she added to herself, as Rachel left the room.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
"To every coward safety, and afterwards his evil hour."
Sleep, that fickle courtier of our hours of ease, had deserted Hugh. When the last hour of the last day was over, and the dawn which he had bound himself in honor not to see found him sitting alone in his room, where he had sat all night, horror fell upon him at what he had done. Now that its mire was upon him he saw by how foul, by how dastardly a path he had escaped.
"To every coward safety, and afterwards his evil hour." Hugh's evil hour had come. But was he a coward? Men not braver than he have earned the Victoria Cross, have given up their lives freely for others. Hugh had it in him to do as well as any man in hot blood, but not in cold. That was where Lord Newhaven had the advantage of him. He had been overmatched from the first. The strain without had been greater than the power of resistance within. As the light grew Hugh tasted of that cup which God holds to no man's lips—remorse. Would the cup of death which he had pushed aside have been more bitter?
He took up his life like a thief. Was it not stolen? He could not bear his rooms. He could not bear the crowded streets. He could not bear the parks. He wandered aimlessly from one to the other, driven out of each in turn, consumed by the smouldering flame of his self-contempt. Scorn seemed written on the faces of the passers-by. As the day waned, he found himself once again for the twentieth time in the park, pacing in "the dim, persistent rain," which had been falling all day.
But he could not get away from the distant roar of the traffic. He heard it everywhere, like the Niagara which he had indeed escaped, but the sound of which would be in his ears till he died. He drew nearer and nearer to the traffic, and stood still in the rain listening to it intently. Might one of those thousand wheels be even now bringing his enemy towards him, to force him to keep his unspoken word. Hugh had not realized that his worst enemy was he who stood with him in the rain.
The forlorn London trees, black and bare, seemed to listen too, and to cling closer to their parks and grass, as if they dimly foresaw the inevitable time coming when they too should toil, and hate, and suffer, as they saw on all sides those stunted uprooted figures toil and suffer, which had once been trees like themselves. "We shall come to it," they seemed to say, shivering in all their branches, as they peered through the iron rails at the stream of human life, much as man peers at a passing funeral.
The early night drove Hugh back to the house. He found a note, from a man who had rooms above him, enclosing a theatre ticket, which at the last moment he had been prevented using. He instantly clutched at the idea of escaping from himself for a few hours at least. He hastily changed his wet clothes, ate the food that had been prepared for him, and hurried out once more.
The play was "Julius Cæsar," at Her Majesty's. He had seen it several times, but to-night it appealed to him as it had never done before. He hardly noticed the other actors. His whole interest centred in the awful figure of Cassius, splendid in its unswerving deathless passion of a great hate and a great love. His eyes never left the ruthless figure as it stood in silence with its unflinching eyes upon its victim. Had not Lord Newhaven thus watched him, Hugh, ready to strike when the hour came.
The moment of the murder was approaching. Hugh held his breath. Cassius knelt with the rest before Cæsar. Hugh saw his hand seek the handle of his sword, saw the end of the sheath tilt upwards under his robe as the blade slipped out of it. Then came the sudden outburst of animal ferocity long held in leash, of stab on stab, the self-recovery, the cold stare at the dead figure with Cassius's foot upon its breast.
For a moment the scene vanished. Hugh saw again the quiet study with its electric reading-lamp, the pistols over the mantel-piece, the tiger glint in Lord Newhaven's eyes. He was like Cassius. He, too, had been ready to risk life, everything in the prosecution of his hate.
"He shall never stand looking down on my body," said Hugh to himself, "with his cursed foot upon me." And he realized that if he had been a worthier antagonist, that also might have been. The play dealt with men. Cassius and Lord Newhaven were men. But what was he?
The fear of death leading the love of life by the hand took with shame a lower seat. Hugh saw them at last in their proper places. If he could have died then he would have died cheerfully, gladly, as he saw Cassius die by his own hand, counting death the little thing it is. Afterwards, as he stood in the crowd near the door, where the rain was delaying the egress, he saw suddenly Lord Newhaven's face watching him. His heart leaped. "He has come to make me keep my word," he said to himself, the exaltation of the play still upon him. "I will not avoid him. Let him do it," and he pressed forward towards him.
Lord Newhaven looked fixedly at him for a moment, and then disappeared.
"He will follow me and stab me in the back," said Hugh. "I will walk home by the street where the pavement is up, and let him do it."
He walked slowly, steadily on, looking neither to right nor left. Presently he came to a barrier across a long deserted street, with a red lamp keeping guard over it. He walked deliberately up it. He had no fear. In the middle he stopped, and fumbled in his pocket for a cigarette.
A soft step was coming up behind him.
"It will be quickly over," he said to himself. "Wait. Don't look round."
He stood motionless. His silver cigarette-case dropped from his hand. He looked at it for a second, forgetting to pick it up. A dirty hand suddenly pounced upon it, and a miserable ragged figure flew past him up the street. Hugh stared after it, bewildered, and then looked round. The street was quite empty. He drew a long breath, and something between relief and despair took hold of him.
"Then he does not want to, after all. He has not even followed me. Why was he there? He was waiting for me. What horrible revenge is he planning against me. Is he laying a second trap for me?"
The following night Hugh read in the evening papers that Lord Newhaven had been accidently killed on the line. The revulsion of feeling was too sudden, too overwhelming. He could not bear it. He could not live through it. He flung himself on his face upon the floor, and sobbed as if his heart would break.
The cyclone of passion which had swept Hugh into its vortex spent itself and him, and flung him down at last. How long a time elapsed he never knew between the moment when he, read the news of the accident and the moment when shattered, exhausted, disfigured by emotion, he raised himself to his feet. He opened the window, and the night air laid its cool mother-touch upon his face and hands. The streets were silent. The house was silent. He leaned with closed eyes against the window-post. Time passed by on the other side.
And after a while angels came and ministered to him. Thankfulness came softly, gently, to take his shaking hand in hers. The awful past was over. A false step, a momentary giddiness on the part of his enemy, and the hideous strangling meshes of the past had fallen from him at a touch, as if they had never wrapped him round. Lord Newhaven was gone to return no more. The past went with him. Dead men tell no tales. No one knew of the godless compact between them, and of how he, Hugh, had failed to keep to it, save they two alone. He and one other. And that other was dead—was dead.
Hope came next, shyly, silently, still pale from the embrace of her sister Despair, trimming anew her little lamp, which the laboring breath of Despair had wellnigh blown out. She held the light before Hugh, shading it with her veil, for his eyes were dazed with long gazing into darkness. She turned it faintly upon the future, and he looked where the light fell. And the light grew.
He had a future once more. He had been given that second chance for which he had so yearned. His life was his own once more: not the shamed life in death—worse than death of the last two days—but his own to take up again, to keep, to enjoy, best of all, to use worthily. No horrible constraint was upon him to lay it down, or to live in torment because he still held it. He was free, free to marry Rachel whom he loved, and who loved him. He saw his life with her. Hope smiled, and turned up her light. It was too bright. Hugh hid his face in his hands.
And, last of all, dwarfing Hope, came a divine constraining presence who ever stretches out strong hands to them that fall, who alone sets the stumbling feet upon the upward path. Repentance came to Hugh at last. In all this long time she had not come while he was suffering, while smouldering Remorse had darkened his soul with smoke. But in this quiet hour she came and stood beside him.
Hugh had in the past leaned heavily on extenuating circumstances. He had made many excuses for himself. But now he made none. Perhaps, for the first time in his life, under the pressure of that merciful, that benign hand, he was sincere with himself. He saw his conduct—that easily condoned conduct—as it was. Love and Repentance, are not these the great teachers? Some of us so frame our lives that we never come face to face with either, or with ourselves. Hugh came to himself at last. He saw how, whether detected or not, his sin had sapped his manhood, spread like a leaven of evil through his whole life, laid its hideous touch of desecration and disillusion even on his love for Rachel. It had tarnished his mind; his belief in others; his belief in good. These ideals, these beliefs had been his possession once, his birthright. He had sold his birthright for red pottage. Until now he had scorned the red pottage. Now he saw that his sin lay deeper, even in his original scorn of his birthright, his disbelief in the Divine Spirit who dwells with man.
Nevertheless his just punishment had been remitted. Hitherto he had looked solely at that punishment, feeling that it was too great. He had prayed many times that he might escape it. Now for the first time he prayed that he might be forgiven.
Repentance took his hands and locked them together.
"God helping me," he said, "I will lead a new life."