“I know it is not the first time, because it happened the very night before. But I know also that you were not asleep, because when you saw that the person in the room was not the person you expected to find there, you went away. Besides, I saw you when you had got out into the garden,” added she quickly, “and you were quite wide-awake. At first I thought you must be a burglar, and I was dreadfully frightened; but when I saw you were not, I was more frightened still. And do you think it is right to come into people’s houses like that at night and frighten them into fainting fits?”
And Mabin, who had sprung off her chair in her excitement, confronted him with quite an Amazonian air of defiance and reproach.
She felt remorseful, however, almost before she came to the end of her harangue. For he took her onslaught so meekly, so humbly, that she was disarmed. When she had finished, he began to pace quickly up and down the room.
“I know it’s wrong, I know it, I know it,” he repeated, as if to himself. “I know I ought not to be here at all. I know I am exposing myself and—and others” (his tone dropped into an indescribable softness on the word) “to dangers, to misery, by my presence. And yet I have not the strength of mind to go.”
He did not once turn his head to look at his visitor as he uttered these words; indeed she thought, by the monotonous, almost inaudible tones in which he spoke, walking hurriedly up and down, with his eyes on the ground, that he did not even remember that he was not alone. And when he had finished speaking, he still continued his walk up and down, without so much as a glance in her direction, until suddenly, when he had reached the end of the room where she was sitting, he drew himself up and fixing his eyes upon her, asked abruptly:
“Did she know? Did she guess? Did you tell her?”
Mabin had an impulse of amazing astuteness. She had come here to find out why Mr. Banks made burglarious entry into “The Towers!” Here was an opportunity of finding out the relations between him and her friend.
“Tell whom?” said she, pretending not to understand.
“Lady Ma——”
He checked himself at once, and was silent.
“Do you mean Mrs. Dale?” said Mabin.
“Yes, I mean Mrs. Dale,” replied he impatiently.
“I didn’t tell her anything,” said Mabin. “I didn’t dare. And she thought she dreamt she saw you the night before; but I know it must have been you she saw.”
“She saw me!” cried Mr. Banks, with a sudden eagerness in his voice, a yearning in his eyes, which kept Mabin dumb. Noticing at once the effect his change of manner had on his listener, he checked himself again, and turned his head away.
Still Mabin remained silent. In truth she was beginning to feel alarmed by those glimpses into a story of passion and of sorrow which were being flashed before her innocent young eyes. A blush rose in her cheeks; she got up from her chair, and made a step toward the door, feeling for the first time what a daring thing she had done in making this visit.
“I—I think so. I must suppose so,” said she quickly. “And that was why she changed her room.”
A look of deepest pain crossed the face of Mr. Banks. His brows contracted, his lips quivered. Mabin, with the righteous indignation of the very young against sins they cannot understand, felt that every blow she struck, cruel though it might be, helped to remove a peril from the path of her friend. With glowing cheeks and downcast eyes she added:
“Why do you try to see her? If you cannot see her openly, why do you try to see her at all? And when only to think she saw you in a dream made her tremble and faint and lock the door.”
If she had looked up as she spoke, the words would have died upon her lips. For the agony in his face had become pitiful to see. For a few moments there was dead silence in the room. Although she wanted to go, she felt that she could not leave him like this, and she wanted to know whether her injunctions had had any effect. She was startled by a hollow laugh, and looking up, she met the eyes of Mr. Banks fixed upon her with an expression which seemed to make her suddenly conscious how young and ignorant she was, and how mad to suppose that she could have any influence upon the conduct of older men and women.
“I ought not to have come,” she said with a hot blush in her cheeks, “I am too ignorant and too stupid to do anything but harm when I want to do some good to my friends. But please do not laugh at me; I only spoke to you to try to save Mrs. Dale, whom I love, from any more trouble.”
“Whom you love! Do you love her too?” said Mr. Banks, with the same change to tenderness which she had noticed in his tone once before. “Well, little one, then you have done your friend some good after all; for I promise you I will not try to see her again.”
Mabin was filled with compunction. Mr. Banks did not talk like a wicked man. She longed to put down his unconventional behavior to eccentricity merely; but this was hard, very hard to do. At any rate she had obtained from him a definite promise, and she tried to get another.
“And—please don’t think me impertinent—but wouldn’t it be better if you went away from here? You know there is always the risk of her seeing you, while you live so near, or of finding out something about you. Please don’t think me impertinent; but really, I think, after what I have seen, that if she were to meet you suddenly, and know that she was not dreaming, it would kill her.”
Again his face contracted with pain. Mabin, looking down, went on:
“Remember all she has to suffer. When that old woman—an old lady with a hard face—came to see her, and scolded her——”
Mabin stopped. An exclamation on the part of Mr. Banks had made her glance at him; and she was astonished to see, in the hard look of anger which his features had assumed, a likeness, an unmistakable likeness, to the “cat.”
“Oh!” cried the girl involuntarily.
“Go on with what you were saying,” said Mr. Banks sharply. “An old lady came here, scolded her——”
“And poor Mrs. Dale was miserable. She did not want me to stay with her; she said she was too wicked; she was more miserable than I have ever seen any one before. I am so sorry for her; so sorry.”
She stopped. A strange expression, in which there was a gleam of wistful hope, had come into Mr. Banks’ face. Mabin put out her hand quickly:
“Good-by,” she said. “I think I am glad I came. I’m sure you are not hard-hearted enough to make her any more unhappy than she is.”
But Mr. Banks, taking her hand, would not let it go, but walked with her to the door.
“You will let me come with you—as far as the gate of the garden,” he said quite humbly. “You are right to trust me. I love your ‘Mrs. Dale,’ and would not do her any harm. But—it is difficult, very difficult, to know what would be best, happiest, for her.”
They were in the hall by this time; and Mr. Banks, still holding the girl’s hand very gently in his, had pushed open the door which led into the garden. Instead of going out at once, he turned to look earnestly in Mabin’s young fair face.
“I wish you were a little older,” he said at last; “then I could tell you the whole story, and you could help me to find out the right thing to do.”
“I am nineteen,” expostulated Mabin; “and, though he doesn’t know it, papa often takes my advice.”
Mr. Banks smiled kindly.
“I have no doubt of it,” said he. “Nineteen is a great age. But not quite great enough to bear the burden of such a pitiful story. Come.”
Reluctantly letting her hand drop, he followed her down the steps into the garden, and Mabin, with all the interest of the visit in her mind, could not repress her delight at finding herself once more in the garden she loved so well. Mr. Banks watched her bright face, as her eyes wandered from the smooth lawn to the borders full of geraniums and pansies, rose-bushes and tall white lilies.
And when she found herself once more in the grass walk, she could not repress an exclamation of pleasure.
“You are fond of your garden,” said he. “You must have found it hard to give it up to a stranger!”
Mabin acknowledged the fact with a blush, and, encouraged by his questions, told him some details about her own gardening, and her own pet flowers. Chatting upon such matters as these, they soon reached the side gate in the wall, and passing into the lane, came to the plantation behind “The Towers.”
And suddenly to the consternation of Mabin, she heard two voices, within the wood, which she recognized as those of Rudolph and Mrs. Dale.
She turned quickly to Mr. Banks.
He stopped and held out his hand.
“I have not forgotten my promise,” said he; “I will leave you now and—and I promise that I will not try to see her again.”
The next moment he had disappeared—only just in time. For as the garden gate shut behind him, Mrs. Dale, with a white face and wild eyes, broke through the trees and confronted Mabin.
“Who was that? Whose voice was that?” she asked in almost a shriek.
Mabin sprang forward and put a caressing arm round her.
“He will never come near you again,” she whispered, feeling that concealment of the identity of their neighbor with the supposed phantom was no longer possible.
But, to her distress and amazement, Mrs. Dale’s face instantly grew rigid with grief and despair, and she sank, trembling and moaning, to the ground.
“I knew it! I was sure of it! Oh, my punishment is too great for me to bear!” she whispered hoarsely.
PoorMabin gazed down blankly at the crouching figure of Mrs. Dale.
Were the complications of this mysterious history never to end. The little lady had shown terror at the mere sight of this man’s portrait; she had abandoned a room in which she had, as she thought, only dreamt of him. And yet now, when Mabin tried to reassure her by repeating his assurance that he would not force himself upon her again, the inconsistent woman gave every sign of the most profound sorrow.
Mabin looked, with her perplexity puckering her pretty face, at Rudolph, who had emerged from the wood in his turn. He however, was too deeply intent upon watching Mrs. Dale to notice hisfiancée’sexpression, and Mabin felt a pang of jealousy, which she tried in vain to stifle.
“Don’t talk to her,” said Rudolph presently, as Mrs. Dale struggling with herself, and still white and trembling, got upon her feet. “Run into the house, Mabin, and get someeau de Cologne, and—and don’t go too fast, or you will get a headache.”
But Mabin, who felt hurt at this evident attempt to get rid of her, lingered, and offered the help of her arm to her friend. But to her astonishment and bitter annoyance, Mrs. Dale not only shrank from her, but cast upon the young girl a look full of resentment.
“Pray, don’t take so much trouble. I am quite, quite well,” she said coldly. “And I can walk alone, thank you.”
She had already withdrawn the arm Mabin had taken, and was plunging into the plantation with reckless steps, as if anxious to bury herself from observation. And she hastily put her handkerchief to her eyes and dashed away the tears which rose as she spoke.
Mabin drew herself up, and choked down a rising sob. What had she done that she should be treated like this? But the climax of her trouble came, when Rudolph, springing across the grass, and keeping his eyes still fixed anxiously on Mrs. Dale, as the little lady in black staggered blindly through the trees, touched her arm gently and whispered:
“You had better leave her for a little while, dear; she will be herself again presently.”
Mabin turned her back upon him, and marched off, without a word, in the direction of the house. He called to her to stop, to listen; but she would do neither. Wounded to the core, first by her friend, in whose cause she had been working, and then by her lover, she felt that she could not trust herself in the vicinity of either of them without an outbreak of grief or of anger to which her pride forbade her to give way.
She was in a whirl of feeling; she hardly saw the flowers or the trees as she walked; she scarcely knew whether she trod on grass or on gravel as she made her way straight into the house, shut herself up in her room, and sat down, in a passion of sullen resentment, by one of the high windows.
It seemed to her that she had sat there for hours, sore, perplexed, too miserable to think or to do anything but suffer, when her attention was attracted by a sound which made her start up and look out of the window. There, sauntering along between the broad beds of the kitchen-garden, stooping, from time to time, to hunt under the leaves for a late strawberry, or to gather a flower from the clumps of sweet-william and of clove-pinks which made a fragrant border to the more substantial products of the garden, was Mrs. Dale.
No longer melancholy, no longer silent, but bubbling over with high spirits, and laughing lightly at every other word of her companion, the lady in black looked more radiant than Mabin had ever before seen her, and appeared to be as light-hearted and incapable of serious thought as a child in the sunshine.
And her companion was Rudolph, who followed her, listened to her, laughed with her, and seemed thoroughly satisfied with her society.
This was the cruellest blow of all. That the deceitful woman who could pretend to be so miserable at one moment, and could throw off her grief so lightly the next, should have taken Rudolph and caused him to forget the girl he pretended to care for so much! Mabin watched them with a face wrinkled with despair, until her tears hid them from sight. But even then, Mrs. Dale’s voice, always gay, always bright, rang in her ears to the accompaniment of Rudolph’s deeper tones.
The girl, however, was not weak-minded enough to cry for long. The sound of the voices had scarcely died away when she sprang to her feet, bathed her face, and did her best to hide the traces of her grief. Pride had come to her assistance. She would show them both that she did not care; that Mrs. Dale might amuse herself with Rudolph, might carry him off altogether if she pleased, and she would not break her heart about it.
She was ready to go downstairs, and was crossing the room for that purpose, when there came a little tap at the door, and Mrs. Dale’s voice cried:
“May I come in?”
For answer Mabin turned the handle, and her friend, looking at her inquiringly, tripped into the room with a little affected air of penitence.
“I’m so sorry I was cross, dear, just now. Will you forgive me? I was worried, and unhappy—and—— But I’m better now, and so I’ve come to ask you to forgive me, and to come down to tea.”
She slid her arm round the girl’s waist. But Mabin could not disguise the change in her own feelings, which she could not help. She drew herself away with a laugh.
“I’m glad you are happier, and—and better,” she said stiffly. “I thought you were, when I saw you just now in the kitchen-garden.”
Mrs. Dale looked up at her mischievously.
“Why, you silly child, you have been making yourself miserable. It is of no use for you to try to deny it,” said she. “I believe you are jealous, Mabin. You would not be, dear, if you knew all about it.”
She spoke very kindly; and by one of those rapid changes of mood and manner which were her greatest charm, her face became suddenly clouded with an expression of gentle sadness.
But Mabin’s unhappiness had been too great to be effaced by a few gentle words. And her pride would not allow her to bend, to come to the explanation her friend might be willing to give.
“You are quite wrong,” she said coldly; “I am glad to see him so happy. I am not jealous.”
And she passed out of the room, as Mrs. Dale invited her to do, and went downstairs with her head very high in the air, and a sense of deep resentment at her heart.
At the dining-room door Rudolph met her, with a rose for her in his hand, and a pretty speech on his lips about her unkindness in hiding herself away for so long. But then, unluckily, Mabin’s sharp eyes detected that he threw a glance of intelligence at Mrs. Dale, and choosing instantly to fancy that there was a little conspiracy between the two to “get round” her, she was so reserved and silent and stiff as to make conciliatory advances impossible.
They had tea on the lawn, but it was a very brief affair, for Rudolph jumped up from his seat in about a minute and a half, and said to Mrs. Dale:
“If you will write it out now, I will take it at once.”
And then, Mrs. Dale, with a nod of intelligence, rose in her turn, and went quickly into the house.
Mabin sat very still, looking at the grass.
“Let me put your cup down, dear,” said Rudolph, who seemed to be subdued by the consciousness of what was in store for him.
As he took the cup, he managed to get hold of her hand.
“And now, Mabin, what’s the matter?”
“Nothing,” said she with a grand air; “and you are treading on my frock.”
“I beg your pardon. I don’t think I was treading on your frock, by the bye. It is the table that is on it.”
So he went down on one knee, released her dress, and remained in his humble attitude, which brought him too low for her to avoid meeting his eyes, as she would have liked to do.
“And now, Mabin, tell me why you are unkind again so soon.”
“You had better get up. Mrs. Dale might see you,” was the icy answer.
“Well, and why shouldn’t she see me? Mabin, don’t behave like this; it isn’t worthy of you. I couldn’t have thought it possible you would sulk without any cause, as you are doing.”
“Without any cause? When Mrs. Dale and you both were unkind, making excuses to send me away, and——”
She stopped, afraid for her self-control. Rudolph taking a seat beside her, went on very quietly:
“She was very unhappy; you had said something, without knowing it, which gave her a great shock. She was hardly mistress of herself; you must have seen that.”
“But why was I to be sent away, like a child, without any explanation? When I had just been doing a very difficult thing, too, to try to help her!”
“What was the difficult thing?”
“I had called at ‘Stone House,’ and seen this man who calls himself Mr. Banks, and got him to promise that he wouldn’t get into ‘The Towers’ at night, as he has done twice, and frighten her.”
At this, much to her indignation, Rudolph’s mouth curved into an irrepressible smile. Mabin sprang up. But before she had fled very far, he caught her up, and insisted on keeping pace with her, as she ran toward the house.
“Stop, Mabin, and consider. If you run into the house, you will go straight into Mrs. Dale’s arms; and if you don’t, I will send her to your room after you. You had much better ‘have it out’ with me.”
So she turned and confronted him fiercely.
“Why did you laugh at me?”
“I can hardly tell you. No, don’t go off again; I mean that the reason is part of a secret that is not mine.”
“A secret, of course; I knew that. A secret which has been confided to you, but which I am not to know.”
Rudolph was silent.
“Can you expect me to be satisfied, to be laughed at and neglected, while you and Mrs. Dale exchange confidences, and forg-g-get me?”
“Now, Mabin, you are silly, my darling, silly, childish! You have known just as well as I that there was a secret somewhere. Can’t you be content to wait till the proper time comes for you to be told, instead of behaving like an inquisitive school-girl?”
Now this was the very worst sort of speech he could have made. If Rudolph had not been himself a good deal excited that afternoon by the story which Mrs. Dale had confided to his ears, he would have exercised greater restraint, greater choice in his words, and would have given more consideration to hisfiancée’spoint of view.
Mabin grew white.
“I can wait, certainly,” she said with a sudden change to an extremely quiet manner and tone, “for the great secret which absorbed you so deeply. But there is another, a little mystery, which I want to know now; and that is—how a woman who is in the depths of despair at four o’clock, as Mrs. Dale appeared to be, can be in the very highest spirits at five? Or is that a secret I have to wait to know?”
“It’s all part of the same story,” replied Rudolph humbly, feeling perhaps that greater demands were being made upon her patience than was quite fair. “And I can only repeat that you will know everything presently.”
“And why not now?”
“The whole thing was confided to me, and I don’t feel at liberty to say any more even to you! Surely you can trust me, can trust us both. Why, Mabin, I thought you were so proud of your loyalty to your friends!”
The tears sprang to the girl’s eyes. She was giving way, and yet feeling all the time that she had not been well treated, when unluckily she noticed a little movement on the part of her companion, and looked up quickly enough to see that Mrs. Dale, with a mischievous smile on her face, was standing at the door of the house, and waving a strip of paper to him as a signal.
“Go. Make haste. Mrs. Dale wants you!” cried Mabin bitterly.
And without leaving him time to protest or explain, she ran away.
That evening passed uncomfortably for both Mabin and Mrs. Dale. When they met at dinner, they both showed traces of recent tears on their pretty faces, and both unwisely tried to behave as if nothing had happened to disturb the usual course of things.
Mrs. Dale did indeed make advances toward a modified half-confidence; but it was so abundantly evident that she did so against her will, and that she was afraid of saying too much, that she repelled rather than encouraged the shy, proud girl.
Rudolph did not return. This was another sore point with poor Mabin, who ended by persuading herself that Mrs. Dale had succeeded in alienating from her the affections of her lover.
So that the hours dragged wearily by until bed-time, and both ladies showed an unusual anxiety to get early to bed.
But next morning there was a change in Mrs. Dale’s manner; she had lost her feverish high spirits, and was in such a state of nervous irritability that even the sound of Mabin’s voice, coldly asking a question at the breakfast-table, made her start and flush painfully. Her eyes were heavy; her cheeks were white; there were dark lines under her eyes which told of a sleepless night.
Mabin felt sorry for her, and was quite ready to “kiss and be friends.” After all, she said to herself with resignation not unmingled with bitterness, if Rudolph found the lovely widow with the interesting history more attractive than a girl with no fascinating mystery attached to her, it was not his fault, and it was not surprising. She felt ashamed now of her jealousy and ill-temper of the previous evening, excusable as they had been. And she deliberately made up her mind that, whatever happened, she would take matters quietly; and even if Rudolph deserted her altogether for Mrs. Dale, that she would give him up without a murmur, whatever the effort cost her.
After all, what was the use, she said to herself with a heavy sigh, of trying to keep a man’s love against his will? It had been a very fleeting happiness, that of his love; but the superstitious feeling the girl had had about its suddenness made her inclined to accept the loss of it as inevitable; and no one would have guessed, from her calm manner and measured voice, that Mabin was suffering the keenest sorrow she had ever known.
It was Mrs. Dale who was reticent to-day. She told Mabin that she expected a visitor that evening, but she did not say who it was. And from the fever which burned in her eyes, and the restlessness which increased upon her as the day went on, the young girl guessed that some matter of great importance was to be discussed or arranged.
Was the visitor to be Mr. Banks? she asked herself. But she did not dare to put the question to her hostess.
One unprecedented occurrence signalized the occasion. The musty drawing-room was turned out, aired, and prepared for the reception of the visitor.
“Do take your work in there, and leave it about, and try to make the place look a little less like a charnel-house,” cried Mrs. Dale to Mabin that afternoon, when they had gone together to inspect the state apartment.
“It does look rather dreary certainly,” admitted Mabin. “But it won’t look so bad to any one who hasn’t been used, like us, to knowing it is always shut up.”
“That’s true. I hadn’t thought of that. However, I still beg you to drop a few bits of filoselle about, and to read a few books and strew them about. And I’ll run out and get some bits of copper beech and bracken to fill those yawning bowls. Flowers would be quite lost in them.”
“Not the peonies. They would look splendid!” Mabin called out after her, as the widow went out through the French window on to the gravel path outside.
It was already late in the afternoon, and, darkened as it was by the trees and shrubs which grew near the large windows, the room was so dimly lighted that Mabin took her work—it was still the cooking apron—to the window. It had required some self-control to take up a piece of work to which such recent memories were attached; and as she sewed, Mabin had great difficulty in keeping back the tears. Here were the very stitches Rudolph had put in, the very bag on which their fingers had closed together. She felt the thrill of that contact now.
And even as she let the apron fall into her lap, while the longing to hear his voice speak tender words in her ear stirred in her heart and made it beat fast, she heard his footstep on the gravel outside; she saw him pass the window.
Scarcely repressing the cry: “Rudolph! Rudolph!” which rose to her lips, she saw that he was hurrying across the grass without having seen her. And looking out of the window, she saw that Mrs. Dale was standing under the lime trees, holding out her hand to him with a smile of greeting.
And the look of confidence and pleasure which irradiated the widow’s face filled Mabin with despair.
She stood still at the window, but she no longer saw anything; she was blinded by her tears. She hardly heard the door of the drawing-room open, or, if she heard, she did not notice it. She did not turn her head when the door closed.
It was not until a hard voice, close to her, said dryly:
“Are you the young lady whom I met here before—who refused to take the warning I gave?” that Mabin, dashing away the tears from her blinded eyes, recognized in the erect figure standing beside her Mrs. Dale’s former mysterious visitor.
“I—I beg your pardon,” said Mabin hastily; “I—I did not see you come in. You want to see Mrs. Dale. I will go and tell her.”
“You need not take that trouble,” replied the majestic lady in the same hard tones as before. “She expects me. She sent for me by telegraph yesterday.” And following the glance Mabin threw across the lawn, she asked quickly, and in a harsher tone than ever: “Who is the young man with her?”
“Mr. Bonnington, the Vicar’s son,” answered Mabin in a low voice.
“And what is he doing here?”
“He’s a friend of Mrs. Dale’s, and a friend of mine too,” added the girl with the generous wish to save her friend from the anger she saw in the elder woman’s eyes. “I am engaged to him.”
“Engaged to him! Engaged to marry him!” repeated the other sharply. “And you trust him with that woman!”
Mabin’s loyalty was fired by the tone.
“Yes. She is my friend,” said she proudly.
The elder lady uttered a short, hard sound, which she meant for a derisive laugh.
“Well, you are an independent young person, upon whom warnings are thrown away. However, it may be of passing interest for you to know that the lady you call your friend—” Mabin put her hands to her ears, instinctively guessing that she was to hear some horrible thing. In the darkness of the room the face above her seemed to her to be distorted with the passion of a fiend as, in a voice so piercing that the girl heard it distinctly, in spite of herself; she went on: “that the lady you call your friend has ruined the life of a man who loved her.” And Mabin caught her breath, thinking of the white face of Mr. Banks. Still the hard voice went inexorably on: “and that she murdered her own husband!”
Mabin uttered a shriek, as her hands fell down from her ears.
Theterrible words rang in Mabin’s ears as she remained staring at the hard, vindictive face of the elder woman, hardly yet realizing all that the accusation meant.
Mrs. Dale had murdered her own husband! Surely, surely it was not true. She might be vain, frivolous, a coquette; but a murderess! The girl instinctively shook her head.
The gaunt visitor, with an acid and unpleasant smile, sat down on one of the fragile-lookingpapier-machéchairs, with mother-of-pearl inlaid ornamentation, which dated the furnishing of the room.
“I—I can’t believe it. No, I won’t believe it!” whispered Mabin hoarsely.
“There is no necessity for your doing so,” retorted the other with indifference. “As it is a very unpleasant thing to believe, indeed, I think you are wise to discredit it. And since she has alienated all her old friends, it is fortunate that she can manage to find new ones.”
As the lady spoke, Mabin felt the horror she had experienced melt gradually into pity for the poor little lady whom this hard woman had in her power. And with compassion came resistance.
“Why shouldn’t she have friends?” she asked hotly. “Mrs. Dale is not a hypocrite. She is deeply sorry for what wrong she has done; she never denies that she has done something which has spoiled her life. And I like her better for being able to be happy in spite of it, sometimes, than if she pretended she could never smile again.”
“Well, of course, for such a trifle as the murder of her husband, you could not expect a woman of her light temperament to trouble herself very long!” said the visitor with grim irony.
“I don’t mean that. I know how much she suffers. But look how young she is. How could you expect that she could never be happy for a single moment any more? Doesn’t God forgive us our sins, when we repent truly? And isn’t it by His laws that we can’t be numb to any feeling but one all our lives?”
“You are a very powerful advocate, I am sure! Perhaps if you had had a son whose life had been ruined by this woman’s conduct, you would be less enthusiastic.”
These words startled Mabin, and made her look at the harsh visitor in a new light. And she saw, or fancied she saw, in the handsome but stern features of the old lady, a trace of the worn face of her father’s tenant. She came a step closer, with her eyes intently fixed on the lady’s countenance.
“Are you,” she asked in a whisper, “a relation of Mr. Banks?”
The visitor started, and seemed intensely astonished, and even alarmed, by this question. She made no answer for a few moments, which she passed in deep thought. Then, raising her head, and looking straight into the girl’s eyes, she said calmly:
“And who is Mr. Banks?”
“One of theoldfriends of Mrs. Dale, who cares for her as much as any new one!” replied Mabin promptly.
The other lady frowned.
“I didn’t want an epigram. I wanted to know who this Mr. Banks was, and where you had met him,” she said tartly.
Mabin, seeing what a strong impression her rash words had made wished she had not uttered them. While she was still wondering how she should get out of her difficulty, with as little harm as possible to Mrs. Dale, a sharply uttered question made her start.
“Has he—has this Mr. Banks met M-M-Mrs. Dale?”
She stammered over the lady’s name, just as Mr. Banks himself had done.
“No,” answered Mabin promptly.
And at this answer the old lady, suddenly breaking down in the intensity of her relief, fell back in her chair and gasped out:
“Thank Heaven!”
Mabin’s thoughts moved quickly. Stirred by the excitement of this interview, she tried to find a way of serving Mrs. Dale; and it occurred to her if this fierce old lady could meet Mr. Banks, he would perhaps be able to tone down her ferocity. After a short pause she asked:
“Would you like to see him?”
“What? Is he here? You told me——”
The old lady was now so much excited and alarmed that she could scarcely gasp out the words.
“He is staying not far from here,” replied Mabin cautiously.
The visitor got up.
“No, I do not wish to see him. I wish to see no one but Mrs. Dale. I cannot understand why she keeps me waiting like this. I have come all the way from Yorkshire to oblige her, at great inconvenience to myself.”
Mabin could not understand it either, knowing as she did that Mrs. Dale had expected her visitor. In the present state of affairs every unlooked-for occurrence assumed a portentous aspect, so that she felt rather alarmed.
“I will go and tell her you are here,” she said.
She was glad to be out of the presence of this terrible woman. And as she ran out into the garden and then dropped into a sedate walk as she passed the drawing-room windows, her heart went out to the old lady’s victim more than it did to that of the young one.
Under the lime-trees, where she had last seen Mrs. Dale, she met Rudolph alone. She greeted him with a white face, and without a smile.
“Where is she—Mrs. Dale?” she then asked at once.
Rudolph, flushing a little at her manner, answered gravely:
“She was sent for to see some one, and went indoors. But then she fainted, and they took her into the dining-room.”
“Thank you. I must go to her.”
Rudolph ran after her as she returned to the house.
“What has happened? You have learned something, found out something. What is it?”
Mabin turned, and he saw that the tears were springing to her eyes.
“I have, oh, I have!” she whispered hoarsely. “But don’t ask me now. I can’t tell you now. I must go to her.”
He did not detain her, and she ran into the house and softly opened the door of the dining-room. Mrs. Dale was lying on the hard horsehair sofa, with her eyes closed. Two of the servants were present, with fans and smelling-salts, and the usual remedies for a fainting-fit.
As usual in the case of a household where there is a skeleton in the cupboard, the servants took sides, and each of the opposing parties was represented on this occasion. For while the housemaid, Annie, was her mistress’ sworn champion, the parlormaid, who also waited on Mrs. Dale, was suspected to be in the pay of the enemy, the old lady now in the drawing-room.
As Mabin entered Mrs. Dale opened her eyes, and sat up.
“I must go, I must go,” she said in a weak and husky voice, as if hardly yet mistress of herself.
“Yes, you shall go, in one minute,” said Mabin. And springing forward with ready kindness and affection in her face, she signed to the servants to leave them together. “Let me do your hair for you; I can do it, I know I can,” she went on gently, touching the beautiful fair hair which had become loose and disordered, and looking with tender compassion into the blue eyes, which seemed to have lost their brilliancy, their bright color.
Mrs. Dale stared with wide-open, dull eyes at the forms of the two servants, as they left the room. Then she turned her head slowly, and looked long at the young girl whose arm was now around her.
“Why are you so kind to me now?” she asked at last in a weak and almost childish voice that went straight to Mabin’s heart. “You were not kind last night!”
The first answer Mabin gave was a slight pressure of the arm upon Mrs. Dale’s shoulder. Then Mabin bent down and whispered in her ear:
“I didn’t know so much then!”
The little slender form in her arm shivered.
“What—what do you know now?” Then recollecting the events which had preceded her own loss of consciousness, she suddenly sprang off the sofa. “I know! I know! That cruel woman told you! I must go to her; oh, I must go!”
“Well, let me do up your dress first.”
And Mrs. Dale then perceived that the upper part of her bodice had been unfastened by the maids, and that her face was still wet from the sprinkling of water they had given her. She submitted to Mabin’s assistance, therefore, in arranging her hair and her dress, without another word being exchanged between them. When she was ready to go, however, she stopped on her way to the door, and gave Mabin one long, curious look. It made the girl spring forward, with a world of sympathy in her eyes.
“Oh, I’m so sorry for you!” she whispered. “So very, very sorry. Much more than before I knew anything.”
Then Mrs. Dale gave way, and seeming for the first time to recover her powers of thought and of speech, she sank down on the nearest chair, and burst into tears, natural, healing tears, while she poured into Mabin’s ears a broken, incoherent confession:
“It is quite true that I did it—did what she told you. But you know, oh, Mabin, you do know how bitterly I have repented it! I would have given my life to have been able to live those few minutes over again! What did she tell you? Tell me, tell me! And how did she say it? Of course she made the very worst of it; but it was bad enough without that. Oh, Mabin, Mabin! Don’t you think she might forgive me now?”
While she talked in this wandering and excited way Mabin hardly knew what to do; whether to try to divert her thoughts, or to let her know in what a vixenish and hard manner the elder woman had made the announcement of the terrible action which had cut short one life and ruined another.
“Of course she ought to forgive you!” she said at last. “But you must not give way to despair if she does not. She is a hard woman; she will never treat you as tenderly as your own friends do.”
She paused, not liking to tell Mrs. Dale that the visitor was waiting for her, and wondering whether her friend had forgotten the fact. As she glanced toward the door, Mrs. Dale caught her eye, and suddenly threw herself upon her knees, burying her head in the girl’s lap.
“Oh, I daren’t, I daren’t go in—just yet!” she whispered almost pleadingly. “I know I sent for her; I know I must see her; but now that the moment has come, I feel as if I could not bear it. I know how she will look—what she will say. And it is upon her, all upon her, that my life, my very life depends!”
Mabin said nothing. She could not help thinking, from the wild words and wilder manner of the wretched woman before her, that the great strain of her crime and her repentance had ended by weakening her mind. Unless——
The girl drew a long breath, frightened by the awful possibility, which had just occurred to her, that the grim visitor in the drawing-room had been threatening Mrs. Dale with the extreme penalty of her crime. Mrs. Dale’s words—“My life depends upon her!” were explicit enough. Instinctively Mabin’s arm closed more tightly round the sobbing woman.
“Hush, hush, dear!” she whispered soothingly. “She will not dare, she will not dare to be more cruel than she has been already! You must try and be brave, and to bear her hard words; but she won’t do anything more than scold you!”
In the midst of her grief Mrs. Dale looked up in the girl’s face with a sad smile.
“Oh, she has dared so much more than that already!” she said hopelessly. “I don’t want to excuse myself—nothing can excuse me—but I want you to know the share she had in it all. For she had a share. It would never have happened but for her.”
Mrs. Dale sprang to her feet, and walking up and down the room with her little white hands clinched till the nails marked her flesh, she began to pour into the young girl’s ears a story which kept her hearer fascinated, spellbound.
“Listen, listen!” said Mrs. Dale in a low, breathless voice, without glancing at the girl. “It is not a story for you; I would never have told you a word of it if it had not been forced upon us both. But now, as you have heard so much, told in one way, you must hear the rest, told in another.”
Mabin said nothing.
In fact, it seemed to her that Mrs. Dale hardly cared whether she listened or not. She went on with her story in the same hurried, monotonous tone, as if it was merely the relief of putting it into words that she wanted:
“I had always been spoiled, always had my own way, until I was married. My father and mother both died when I was a little thing of six, and I lived with my guardian and his family, and they let me do just as I liked. I was supposed to be rich, almost an heiress; but when my guardian died, it was found that the money had all gone; I had nothing. I was not yet eighteen then. And Sir Geoffrey Mallyan wanted to marry me. Every one said I must; that there was nothing else for me to do. I didn’t care for him; but then I didn’t care for any one else; so nobody thought it mattered. It was taken for granted, don’t you see, that there was no question of my saying no.”
Mrs. Dale stopped short, and for the first time looked at Mabin:
“That’s what people always think, that it doesn’t matter whom a girl marries, if she’s very young. But it does, oh, it does! And he had a brother——”
Mabin started, and thought at once of Mr. Banks.
“A younger brother, who had been ordered home from India on sick leave. No, I didn’t care for him,” she went on emphatically, reading the expression of sympathy on the girl’s face. “But he was livelier than his grave brother, my husband, and we were very good friends. Nobody would have thought that there was any harm in that if old Lady Mallyan hadn’t interfered. You can guess now, I suppose, who Lady Mallyan is!”
Mabin nodded emphatically without speaking.
“She came posting to the place to find out the evil which was only in her own mind. We had been getting on quite well together, my husband and I. I was rather afraid of him, but I liked him, and he was kind to me. I believe he was really fond of me; and that I should have grown fond of him. I was fond of him in a way; but he was fifteen years older than I, and very quiet and grave in his manners. But he let me do what I liked, and took me to all the dances and races I wanted, and was proud of me, and seemed pleased that I should enjoy myself. But when his mother came, everything was changed. She had great influence with him, and she told him that he was spoiling me, and making me fit for nothing but amusement, and that these constant gayeties were ruining my character. And so he told me, very gently, very kindly, that I must settle down, and live a quieter life.
“I was sorry, disappointed, and not too grateful to Lady Mallyan. Would you have been? Would anybody have been? But I submitted. There were some scenes first, of course. I had been spoiled; I am bad-tempered, I know; and I was indignant with her for her interference. What harm had I been doing, after all? I was not unhappy, however, and it was easy to reconcile myself to everything but to her. For she seemed to have settled down in my husband’s house, and I did not dare to hint that I resented this. Then things went on smoothly for a time. I had given up my balls, and nearly all what my mother-in-law was pleased to call ‘dissipations.’ But now that I was oftener at home, I naturally saw more of Willie, my husband’s brother, than before, since he was not strong enough to go out so much as Sir Geoffrey and I had done.
“We were all very anxious about him, as he seemed to be on the verge of consumption. He was very bright and amusing, however, even then, and I was certainly more at ease with him than I was with my mother-in-law, or even with my own husband, who was a silent and undemonstrative man. But it was shameful of Lady Mallyan to suspect that I cared more for him than for my husband; it never entered into his head or mine to suppose any one would think such a wicked thing; and certainly Sir Geoffrey would never have thought of such a thing except at the suggestion of his mother.
“I cannot tell you, child, of the wretchedness this miserable old woman brought about, in her jealousy at Sir Geoffrey’s love for me, and her anxiety to get back the influence over him which she thought I had usurped. Of course if I had been an older woman, as old as I am now, for example, I should have rebelled; I should have insisted on her leaving the house where she had brought nothing but misery. I should have known how to take my proper place as mistress of the house in which she was only an interloper.
“But I did not know how to do it, although I knew what I ought to do.
“So it went on, the misery of every one growing greater every day, Willie and I feeling a restraint which made us afraid to exchange a word under her eyes; my husband growing shorter in his manner, more reserved in his speech, having had his mind poisoned against his brother and against me.
“At last a crisis came. Willie told us that he was going away. I knew he was in no fit state to travel, but I did not dare to tell him to stay, or to tell the fears I felt for him. When he was ready to go, I spoke out to him at last. We were in the drawing-room, standing by the fire, and I told him it was his mother who had made us all miserable and afraid to speak to one another, and I begged him to come with me to Sir Geoffrey, and to back me up in telling him the truth, in insisting that Lady Mallyan should leave the house.
“ ‘If you go away now, without speaking to Geoffrey,’ I said, ‘I shall be left in the power of this hateful, wicked woman for the rest of my life. For she will never leave of her own accord; and I dare not speak to Geoffrey about her with no one to back me up.’
“And then I saw Lady Mallyan’s shadow outside the window on the path. She had been listening, she was always listening; hoping to find out something as we said good-by.
“I ran to the window, but she escaped me. When Willie was gone, I went to look for my husband. He was in the gun-room, looking harder than usual. His mother had just left him. I had never seen him look so stern, and I was frightened. I began to see that I was powerless against the mischievous woman who was spoiling our lives.
“ ‘Geoffrey!’ I said. ‘What has your mother been saying to you? She has been saying something unkind I know; something untrue, probably. What is it?’
“Then he said something which made me feel as if I had been turned into stone. Lady Mallyan had been with him, had misrepresented my words to Willie, had put a hideous meaning into all we had said. I forget Sir Geoffrey’s exact words; if I remembered them I would not repeat them. But they were cold, full of suspicion. They roused in me a mad feeling of hatred. I can remember that I shook till my dress rustled; that I could not speak. Then—God forgive me! I took up a little pistol—revolver—I don’t know what they call it; but it was something so small it looked like a toy—and, hardly knowing what I did, I pointed it at him, and—and—he cried out, and fell down.
“I don’t know what happened then, whether I shrieked out, or what happened. But they came in, a lot of them, and took me away. And—and I never saw him again. She would not even let me see him when he lay dead. Though I begged, how I begged!”
Suddenly Mrs. Dale stopped in her speech, and crossed quickly to the door. Flinging it open suddenly, she revealed Lady Mallyan, standing within a couple of feet of it, erect, very pale.
Mrs. Dale smiled.
“Come in, pray come in, your ladyship. You have not lost your old habits, I see,” she said with cutting emphasis as she bowed to her visitor.
Itwas with a throbbing brain and a heavy heart that Mabin, dismissed by Mrs. Dale with a warm pressure of the hand and a little pathetic smile, went through the hall and out of the house.
What was the meaning of old Lady Mallyan’s coming? Why had Mrs. Dale sent for her? Surely, the girl felt, there could be but one answer to this question; and in that answer lay the key to the mystery about “Mr. Banks.”
Mabin remembered the likeness she had seen in his face, in one of his sterner moments, to the visitor whom she now knew as Lady Mallyan. And she could have little doubt, on putting together the facts of the story she had just heard and the details she knew concerning her father’s tenant, that it was indeed Sir Geoffrey Mallyan’s brother Willie, one of the causes, if not the sole cause, of the tragedy which had wrecked Mrs. Dale’s life, who had settled down, unknown to the lady herself, as her nearest neighbor.
A hot blush came into Mabin’s face, alone though she was, as this conclusion forced itself upon her. For even she, young and innocent as she was, could not help seeing that his behavior, since he had lived at Stone House, was inconsistent with Mrs. Dale’s account of the blameless relations which had existed between them.
Mrs. Dale had represented this “Willie” as a light-hearted young fellow, who had felt only the comradeship of a younger brother toward his brother’s beautiful wife. But “Mr. Banks” had behaved, not only like a lover, but like a lover, once favored, whom despair had driven to the verge of madness.
On the other hand, Mabin, in her loyalty toward her friend, was ready to believe that, even if the feelings these two unhappy creatures had had for each other had been less innocent than Mrs. Dale had represented, they had been themselves less to blame than either of the two other persons concerned in the terrible history.
Mrs. Dale, naturally enough constrained by her own remorse to speak well of her dead husband, had yet been able to give no very attractive picture of the man who had misunderstood his young wife, frightened away her confidence, and allowed himself to be alienated from her by the interference of his mother. And of that mother herself Mabin had seen enough to be more than ready to give her her fair share of the blame.
The young girl’s heart went out, more than it had ever done before, to the little woman, whom nature had made so frivolous, and circumstances so miserable, and around whom misfortune seemed to be closing once more.
It was the one gleam of comfort she had to know how sincerely Mrs. Dale was trying to do what was right in the matter. Instead of attempting to see “Mr. Banks,” which would have been easy enough for her to do, she had sent for his mother, repugnant though such a course must always be to her; so that, whatever indiscretion she might have shown in the past, it was clear that she meant to keep herself free from all suspicion now.
And this was the more creditable on her part, so Mabin felt, since the strange elation she had shown by fits and starts since the day before, when she heard the voice of “Mr. Banks” for the first time, proved clearly that she was not so indifferent, not so unimpressionable, as she had professed to be.
And here Mabin felt her heart grow very tender; she pictured to herself what she would feel, if circumstances were to put Rudolph and herself in the same position toward each other, as were “Mr. Banks” and “Mrs. Dale.”
If she were to have to live within a stone’s throw of him, not only always loving, always longing, but conscious that the same feelings which drew her heart toward him were forever drawing him toward her.
Mabin began to cry softly. And then the application of the story to her own case caused her thoughts to take another turn; and she asked herself, with the generous Quixotism of her youth and her loyal nature, whether she ought not to wish for, to encourage, the process by which Rudolph’s love was being diverted from herself, the uninteresting, awkward girl without any history, to the unhappy lady around whom there clung the romance of a tragedy.
These questions, which had indeed risen in her mind before, but which had now acquired a new force with her extended knowledge, were entirely consistent with the bent of Mabin’s mind. Accustomed from her childhood to consider others rather than herself, and inclined by her own modesty to underrate her deserts as well as her attractions, she found it easy, not indeed to stifle her own feelings, but to control them. She told herself that she would show Rudolph no more petulance, no more “childish” jealousy or curiosity; and if, as seemed inevitable, he found that he had made a mistake in thinking he cared for herself, she would be the first to wish him happiness with a more attractive bride.
Perhaps it showed rather a touching sense of her own devotion to her lover, that Mabin never once doubted his power to console Mrs. Dale for all her troubles, nor that lady’s readiness to be comforted by him.
And it was while these thoughts were fresh in her mind that Mabin, turning the angle in the path toward the kitchen-garden, came face to face with Rudolph.
Meeting him at such a moment, it was not surprising that she stopped short, turned first red, then white, and presented to his view a countenance so deeply impressed with a sort of shy alarm, that the young man was rather puzzled as to the kind of greeting he might expect.
Recovering herself quickly, Mabin wisely put off explanations by dashing straight into an exciting subject:
“Oh, do you know,” she asked in a hurried, constrained voice, “that I have had to leave poor Mrs. Dale to that dragon? Oh yes, I know who she is now; I know who they both are. Mrs. Dale herself has told me that, told me everything;” added Mabin, in answer to an interrogative and puzzled look which she detected on his face.
Rudolph looked dubious.
“Everything?” he repeated doubtfully.
“And,” went on Mabin with calm triumph, “old Lady Mallyan has told me something too. And as I had a long talk with Mr. Banks yesterday, I think perhaps the tables are turned, and I know more than you do now.”
Mabin seated herself, as she spoke, on the garden seat which was placed, most charmingly as far as picturesque effect was concerned, but most inconveniently, if one considered earwigs and green flies, under a tall lime-tree and against a dark hedge of yew. Rudolph was intensely relieved to find that her jealous and angry mood of the evening before had passed away; and although he was puzzled by her new manner, which was easy, friendly, but not affectionate, he thought it better to fall in with her mood and not to risk the pleasure of the moment, by asking for explanations just yet. Mabin, on her side, felt a curiously pleasant sense of present enjoyment and irresponsibility. It was happiness to be with Rudolph, without any dispute to trouble their intercourse. And she found that by turning his attention and her own away from themselves to the subject of Mrs. Dale and her troubles, she got not only the full delight of Rudolph’s attention, but the satisfaction that she was stifling, if not conquering, her own weakness.
Rudolph was charmed by the new and undefinable change to greater frankness, to less shyness, in her manner.
“Well,” said he, pulling down the bough of a guelder rose-tree and beginning with great precision to strip off the leaves, “I couldn’t help myself, could I? I couldn’t tell you somebody else’s secrets without permission. And you see you haven’t had to wait very long to know all about it.”
“Oh, I’m not thinking about that,” said Mabin superbly. “It was annoying at the time not to know what you were all talking about; but I soon got over that. What I am thinking about now is the best thing to be done for Mrs. Dale. You know who this Mr. Banks is, I suppose?”
Her assumption of a lofty standpoint of deep knowledge combined with great indifference amused Rudolph.
“Do you?” retorted he.
“I suppose,” she answered almost in a whisper, and looking down on the ground as she spoke, “that he is Lady Mallyan’s son Willie.”
Rudolph looked astonished.
“You do know something then!” said he at last. “Yes, I suppose he is.”
“And Mrs. Dale knows it?—knew it yesterday, I suppose?—when she heard his voice?”
“Yes, I think so, I suppose so. But I must tell you that she was so much upset that I didn’t attempt to ask her any questions about it. I only tried to quiet her, and offer, when she said she must see Lady Mallyan, to send off the telegram.”
Mabin, too much excited to sit still, sprang to her feet on the gravel path beside him.
“Isn’t it hard? Oh, isn’t it hard for her? She does exactly what is right, what is best. She ought not to be persecuted by either of them, by mother or son!”
But instead of answering her fervent outbreak in the same tone, or at least with sympathy, she saw, to her indignation, that Rudolph had difficulty in suppressing a smile.
“The persecution won’t last long,” said he. Then noting the revulsion of feeling expressed in Mabin’s face, he added quickly: “When Lady Mallyan and Mr. Banks meet, they will have to come to an understanding; and I can answer for it that after that Mrs. Dale will be left in peace.”
“That’s what Mr. Banks himself seems to think,” said Mabin ingenuously. “But Lady Mallyan was shocked when she heard he lived so near, and she doesn’t want to meet him.”
Rudolph was in an instant on fire with excitement.
“Oh, doesn’t she, though? Then I’ll take jolly good care that she shall!” He took three or four rapid steps away from her and came back again. His face was glowing with excitement. “Look here, Mabin, I want you to mount guard over the house, and see that the old lady doesn’t get away before I get back with Mr. Banks. Mind, it is very important. You must do anything rather than let her go. It’s just possible she may get an idea of something of the kind, and may try to get away.”
“All right,” said Mabin very quietly, but none the less showing in the firm set of her lips and the steadiness of her eyes that she would prove a firm ally. “But don’t be long gone; for I am afraid of what may be going on between that hard woman and poor little Mrs. Dale!”
“I’ll be as quick as I can. You may trust me.”
And then, taking her entirely by surprise, he flung his arms round her, pressed upon her startled lips a long kiss, and ran off before she had breath to utter a word.
She had just sense enough left to remember her promise, to stagger round to the front of the house, and to take her place as sentinel under the dining-room wall. There was no window on this side, the space where one had originally been having been blocked up and filled with a painted imitation of one. It was impossible therefore for Mabin to tell, in this position, whether the interview between the two ladies was over or not.
So she went into the hall, where it was now so dark that she felt her way, stumbling, in the direction of the dining-room door. She was close to it before she was assured, so low was the voice speaking within the room, that the ladies were still there. But the piteous, subdued tones of Mrs. Dale, which met her ear as she came near, told her that the little lady in black was still pleading to her tyrant.
Withdrawing quickly, her heart throbbing in sympathy with the unfortunate woman, Mabin returned to the garden, and waited near the garden gate.
She now had leisure to dwell on that intoxicating kiss, which had for the moment thrown her back into the world of happiness into which Rudolph’s avowal of love had introduced her, and from which more recent events had seemed to combine to thrust her out. Could it be that he was still the same as ever, in spite of her jealous fears, of her Quixotic imaginings? Mabin’s brain seemed to be set on fire at the thought. She began to look out at the treeless fields which lay between “The Towers” and the sea, with eyes which saw nothing. Though mechanically from time to time she turned to glance at the front door of the house, she had forgotten for whom she was watching.
Suddenly she was startled by the sound of light footsteps on the gravel behind her, and looking round, she saw the parlormaid running toward the gate.
“The cab, miss, have you seen the cab? The lady wants to go now, and of course the stupid man is out of sight.”
“It is at the corner of the road,” answered Mabin, waking up to the realities of life with a start. “But don’t go for it yet. Mr. Bonnington wants to speak to Lady Mallyan first.”
The girl was evidently startled and impressed by the discovery that Mabin knew the visitor’s name. She hesitated.
“But she wants to catch a train, miss!” she protested at last.
As Mabin was about to answer, a figure in the road outside caught her eye. The maid saw it too.
“Who—who was that?” Mabin asked quickly.
The maid, who looked rather scared, hesitated, stammered.
“Was it—Mrs. Dale?” pursued Mabin almost in a whisper.
And as she spoke, her heart sickened with a vague fear. Quickly as the form had passed by, and disappeared from sight in the deep shadows of the trees at the bend of the road below, there had been something about its rapid and noiseless flight, in the very bend of the head and flutter of the dress, which alarmed the young girl.
Besides if it was Mrs. Dale, what was she doing, at this late hour of the evening, on the road which led down to the cliff, to the sea? She must have gone out by the door at the back of the house, too;—surely a strange thing to do!
But even as these thoughts crowded into her mind, there came another and less disquieting one. The road she had taken passed the front of “Stone House;” perhaps she had gone to seek herself an interview with “Mr. Banks.”
Even as she made this suggestion to herself, and while the voice of the maid still murmured that she must go and fetch the cab, Mabin heard men’s voices in the road below.
Recognizing that of Rudolph, she stepped outside the gates, and waited with anxiety for his appearance.
But he came slowly; perhaps, thought Mabin, he was talking to Mrs. Dale. She listened more intently; but as the voices came gradually nearer, she was able to assure herself that they were only those of Rudolph and of “Mr. Banks.” Scarcely able to control her anxiety, she stepped out through the gates into the road, at the very moment that Lady Mallyan’s harsh voice sounded behind her, speaking to the parlormaid:
“Where is my cab?”
Rudolph heard these words, and he hurried forward with his companion. It was now almost dark. Mabin saw who the man was beside him, but she could not distinguish his face.
“I beg your pardon, madam,” said Rudolph, raising his hat and walking quickly after the old lady, who had passed through the gate and was hurrying down the road: “Your son wishes to speak to you. He cannot walk so fast as you, but he has sent me with this message.”
She stopped short, appeared to hesitate, and then turned back without a word.
It was close to where Mabin stood, stupidly, not knowing exactly what was going to happen, or what she ought to do on behalf of Mrs. Dale, that mother and son met.
Dark as it was out there, with only a line of pale yellow light left in the horizon, shading off through sea-green into the blue above, Mabin saw enough to know that the meeting was one of deep import. Old Lady Mallyan seemed uneasy; the harshness which Mabin had hitherto believed to be her most salient quality had almost disappeared from her tones as she addressed her son:
“I am sorry,” she said, quite gently, as she put out her arms toward him, “to find you here. It can do no good. It might have done great harm. Why did you not let me know where you were? Why did you deceive me?”
But “Mr. Banks” did not accept the offered caress of the outstretched arms.
“I will tell you why, mother, presently. But now, where is Dorothy? I want to see her. I must see her. Surely,” he went on as she did not at first answer, “surely she will see me now you are here. Surely she will not refuse!”
There was again a silence of a few seconds, during which Mabin, who had only withdrawn a little way, and who was striving to attract the attention of Rudolph, who stood with his back to her, uttered a little cry of pain and distress.
Mr. Banks went on impatiently:
“Where is she? Is she in the house? I must go to her; I must see her!”
Then Lady Mallyan spoke, in a voice which was greatly changed. She seemed to be trying to control some real alarm.
“You cannot,” she said quickly. “She will not see you. She refuses—absolutely. As a gentleman you cannot persist. She is as hard and cold-hearted as ever. She will not see you again. She has gone away.”
At these words, which Mabin heard, the young girl uttered a sharp cry. But “Mr. Banks” did not heed her. He spoke again, in such piteous tones that Mabin and Rudolph, young and susceptible both, felt their hearts wrung.
“Mother, I must see her, I must. Once, once only, I won’t ask for more. Go after her; go after her. Tell her I love her, I love her always. She will not refuse to see me once—before—before I die!”
Mabin waited no longer. Rushing between the mother and son, she panted out:
“I will go. I will fetch her! I will bring her back. And she will come! Oh, she will come! She is not hard. Trust me, trust me, she will come—sheshallcome.”
She gave him no time for more than a hoarse whisper of thanks, and a murmured blessing. She was off, down the hill, as if on the wings of the wind.
And as she drew into the black shadow of the trees on the hill, she heard footsteps and a voice behind her:
“Mabin! Mabin! Don’t be frightened. Where has she gone, dear? Where has she gone?”
Panting, breathless, not halting a moment as she ran, Mabin whispered, in a low voice which thrilled him: