“I am compelled to tell you, and these gentlemen, that your statement is a lie!”“I am compelled to tell you, and these gentlemen, that your statement is a lie!”
“Exactly. The carriage was yours. You intended every one to recognize it. But you have omitted to state, both here and in other places, that the lady bought that carriage from you for two hundred and sixty guineas—a good deal more than its worth, I should imagine. You heard her say that she was thinking of buying a victoria, and you offered her yours—pressed her to buy it. It was too small for your horses, you said, and you were hard up. You even had it sent round to her stables without her consent. I have heard thisstory before, sir, and I have furnished myself with proofs of its falsehood. This, gentlemen,” he added, drawing some papers from his pocket, “is Mr. Thorndyke’s receipt for the two hundred and sixty guineas for a victoria, signed, as you will see, in his own handwriting, and here is the lady’s cheque with Mr. Thorndyke’s endorsement, cancelled and paid.”
The papers were handed round. Thorndyke picked up his hat, but Matravers barred his egress.
“With regard to the insinuation which you coupled with your falsehood,” he continued, “both are equally and absolutely false. I know her to be a pure and upright woman. A short time ago you took advantage of your position to make certain cowardly and disgraceful propositions to her, since when her doors have been closed upon you! I would have you know, sir, and remember, that the honour of that lady,whom last night I asked to be my wife, is as dear to me as my own, and if you dare now, or at any future time, to slander her, I shall treat you as you deserve. You can go.”
“And be very careful, sir,” thundered the old Earl of Ellesmere, veteran member of the club, “that you never show your face inside these doors again, or, egad, I’m an old man, but I’ll kick you out myself.”
Thorndyke left the room amidst a chilling and unsympathetic silence. As soon as he could get away, Matravers followed him. There was a strange pain at his heart, a sense of intolerable depression had settled down upon him. After all, what good had he done? Only a few more days and her name, which for the moment he had cleared, would be besmirched in earnest. His impeachment of Thorndyke would sound to these men then like mock heroics. There would be no one to defend her any more.There would be no defence. For ever in the eyes of all these people she was doomed to become one of the Magdalens of the world.
It seemed a very unreal London through which Matravers was whirled on his way from the club to Paddington. But before a third of the distance was accomplished, there was a sudden check. A little boy, who had wandered from his nurse in crossing the road, narrowly escaped being run over by a carriage and pair, only to find himself knocked down by the shaft of Matravers’ hansom. There was a cry, and the driver pulled his horse on to her haunches, but apparently just a second too late. With a sickening sense of horror, Matravers saw the little fellow literally under the horse’s feet, and heard his shrill cry of terror.
He leaped out, and was the first to pickthe child up, immeasurably relieved to find that after all he was not seriously hurt. His clothes were torn, and his hands were scratched, and there, apparently, the mischief ended. Matravers lifted him into the cab, and turned to the frightened nurse-girl for the address.
“Nine, Greenfield Gardens, West Kensington, sir,” she told him; “and please tell the master it wasn’t my fault. He is so venturesome, I can’t control him nohow. His name is Drage—Freddy Drage, sir.”
And then once more Matravers felt that strange dizziness which had come to him earlier in the day. Again he had that curious sense of moving in a dream, as though he had, indeed, become part of an unreal and shadowy world. The renewed motion of the cab as they drove back again along Pall Mall, recalled him to himself. He leaned back and looked at the boy steadily.
Yes, they were her eyes. There was nodoubt about it. The little fellow, not in the least shy, and, in fact, now become rather proud of his adventure, commenced to prattle very soon. Matravers interrupted him with a question,—
“Won’t your mother be frightened to see you like this?” The child stared at him with wide-open eyes.
“Why, mammy ain’t there,” he exclaimed. “Mammy went away ever so long ago. I don’t think she’s dead, though, ’cos daddy wouldn’t let me talk about her, only just lately, since he was ill. You see,” he went on with an explanatory wave of the hand, “daddy’s been a very bad man. He’s better now—leastways, he ain’t so bad as he was; but I ’spect that’s why mammy went away. Don’t you?”
“I daresay, Freddy,” Matravers answered softly.
“We’re getting very near now,” Freddy remarked, looking over the apron of thecab. “My! won’t dada be surprised to see me drive up in a cab with you! I hope he’s at the window!”
“Will your father be at home now?” Matravers asked.
Freddy stared at him.
“Why, of course! Dad’s always at home! Is my face very buggy? Don’t rub it any more, please. That’s Jack Mason over there! I play with him. I want him to see me. Hullo! Jack,” he shouted, leaning out of the cab, “I’ve been run over, right over, face all buggy. Look at it! Hands too,” spreading them out. “He’s a nice boy,” Freddy continued as the cab turned a corner, “but he can’t run near so fast as me, and he’s lots older. Hullo! here we are!” kicking vigorously at the apron.
Matravers looked up in surprise. They had stopped short before a long row of shabby-genteel houses in the outskirts of Kensington. He took the boy’s outstretchedhand and pushed open the gate. The door was open, and Freddy dragged him into a room on the ground floor.
A man was lying on a sofa before the window, wrapped in an untidy dressing-gown, and with the lower part of his body covered up with a rug. His face, fair and florid, with more than a suggestion of coarseness in the heavy jaw and thick lips, was drawn and wrinkled as though with pain. His lips wore an habitually peevish expression. He did not offer to rise when they came in. Matravers was thankful that Freddy spared him the necessity of immediate speech. He had recognized in a moment the man who had sat alone night after night in the back seats of the New Theatre, whose slow drawn-out cry of agony had so curiously affected him on that night of her performance. He recognized, too, the undergraduate of his college sent down for flagrant misbehaviour, the leader of aset whom he himself had denounced as a disgrace to the University. And this man was her husband!
“Daddy,” the boy cried, dropping Matravers’ hand and running over to the couch, “I’ve been run over by a hansom cab, and I’m all buggy, but I ain’t hurt, and this gentleman brought me home. Daddy can’t get up, you know,” Freddy explained; “his legs is bad.”
“Run over, eh!” exclaimed the man on the couch. “It’s like that girl’s damned carelessness.”
He patted the boy’s head, not unkindly, and Matravers found words.
“My cab unfortunately knocked your little boy down near Trafalgar Square, but I am thankful to say that he was not hurt. I thought that I had better bring him straight home, though, as he has had a roll in the dust.”
At the sound of Matravers’ voice, theman started and looked at him earnestly. A dull red flush stained his cheeks. He looked away.
“It was very good of you, Mr. Matravers,” he said. “I can’t think what the girl could have been about.”
“I did not see her until after the accident. I am glad that it was no worse,” Matravers answered. “You have not forgotten me, then?”
John Drage shook his head.
“No, sir,” he said. “I have not forgotten you. I should have known your voice anywhere. Besides, I knew that you were in London. I saw you at the New Theatre.”
There was a short silence. Matravers glanced around the room with an inward shiver. The usual horrors of a suburban parlour were augmented by a general slovenliness, and an obvious disregard for any sort of order.
“I am afraid, Drage,” he said gently, “that things have not gone well with you.”
“You are quite right,” the man answered bitterly. “They have not! They have gone very wrong indeed; and I have no one to blame but myself.”
“I am sorry,” Matravers said. “You are an invalid, too, are you not?”
“I am worse than an invalid,” the man on the couch groaned. “I am a prisoner on my back, most likely for ever; curse it! I have had a paralytic stroke. I can’t think why I couldn’t die! It’s hard lines!—damned hard lines! I wish I were dead twenty times a day! I am alone here from morning to night, and not a soul to speak to. If it wasn’t for Freddy I should jolly soon end it!”
“The little boy’s mother?” Matravers ventured, with bowed head.
“She left me—years ago. I don’t know that I blame her, particularly. Sitdown, if you will, for a bit. I never have a visitor, and it does me good to talk.”
Matravers took the only unoccupied chair, and drew it back a little into the darker part of the room.
“You remember me then, Drage,” he remarked. “Yet it is a long time since our college days.”
“I knew you directly I heard your voice, sir,” the man answered. “It seemed to take me back to a night many years ago—I want you to let me remind you of it. I should like you to know that I never forgot it. We were at St. John’s then; you were right above me—in a different world altogether. You were a leader amongst the best of them, and I was a hanger-on amongst the worst. You were in with the gentlemen set and the reading set. Neither of them would have anything to do with me—and they were quite right. I was what they thought me—a cad. I’d nohead for work, and no taste for anything worth doing, and I wasn’t a gentleman, and hadn’t sense to behave like one. I’d no right to have been at the University at all, but my poor old dad would have me go. He had an idea that he could make a gentleman of me. It was a mistake!”
Matravers moved slightly in his chair,—he was suffering tortures.
“Is it worth while recalling all these things?” he asked quietly. “Life cannot be a success for all of us; yet it is the future, and not the past.”
“I have no future,” the man interrupted doggedly; “no future here, or in any other place. I have got my deserts. I wanted to remind you of that night when you came to see me in my rooms, after I’d been sent down for being drunk. I suppose you were the first gentleman who had ever crossed my threshold, and I remember wondering what on earth you’d come for! You didn’tlecture me, and you didn’t preach. You came and sat down and smoked one of my cigars, and talked just as though we were friends, and tried to make me see what a fool I was. It didn’t do much good in the end—but I never forgot it. You shook hands with me when you left, and for once in my life I was ashamed of myself.”
“I am sorry,” Matravers said with an effort, “that I did not go to see you oftener.”
Drage shook his head.
“It was too late then! I was done for,—done for as far as Oxford was concerned. But that was only the beginning. I might easily have picked up if I’d had the pluck! The dad forgave me, and made me a partner in the business before he died. I was a rich man, and I might have been a millionaire; instead of that I was a damned fool! I can’t help swearing! you mustn’t mind, sir! Remember what I am! I don’tswear when Freddy’s in the room, if I can help it. I went the pace, drank, kept women, and all the rest of it. My wife found me out and went away. I ain’t saying a word against her. She was a good woman, and I was a bad man, and she left me! She was right enough! I wasn’t fit for a decent woman to live with. All the same, I missed her; and it was another kick down Hellward for me when she went. I got desperate then; I took to drink worse than ever, and I began to let my business go and speculate. You wouldn’t know anything of the city, sir; but I can tell you this, when a cool chap with all his wits about him starts speculating outside his business, it’s touch and go with him; when a chap in the state I was in goes for it, you can spell the result in four letters! It’sRUIN, ruin! That’s what it meant for me. I lost two hundred thousand pounds in three years, and my business went topot too. Then I had this cursed stroke, and here I am! I may stick on for years, but I shall never be able to earn a penny again. Where Freddy’s schooling is to come from, or how we are to live, I don’t know!”
“I am very sorry,” Matravers said gently. “Have you no friends then, or relations who will help you?”
“Not a damned one,” growled the man on the couch. “I had plenty of pals once, only too glad to count themselves John Drage’s friends; but where they are now I don’t know. They seem to have melted away. There’s never a one comes near me. I could do without their money or their help, somehow, but it’s damned hard to lie here for ever and have not one of ’em drop in just now and then for a bit of a talk and a cheering word. That’s what gives me the blues! I always was fond of company; I hated being alone, and it’s like hell to lie here day after day and see no one buta cross landlady and a miserable servant girl. Lately, I can’t bear to be alone with Freddy. He’s so damned like his mother, you know. It brings a lump in my throat. I wouldn’t mind so much if it were only myself. I’ve had my cake! But it’s rough on the boy!”
“It is rough on the boy, and it is rough on you,” Matravers said kindly. “I wonder you have never thought of sending him to his mother! She would surely like to have him!”
The man’s face grew black.
“Not till I’m dead,” he said doggedly. “I don’t want him set against me! He’s all I’ve got! I’m going to keep him for a bit. It ought not to be so difficult for us to live. If only I could get down to the city for a few hours!”
“Could not a friend there do some good for you?” Matravers asked.
“Of course he could,” Mr. Drage answeredeagerly; “but I haven’t got a friend. See here!”
He took a little account book from under his pillow, and with trembling fingers thrust it before his visitor.
“You see all these amounts. They are all owing to me from those people—money lent, and one thing and another. There is an envelope with bills and I O U’s. They belong to me, you understand,” he said, with a sudden touch of dignity. “I never failed! My business was stopped when I was taken ill, but there was enough to pay everybody. Now some of these amounts have never been collected. If I could see these people myself, they would pay, or if I could get a friend whom I could trust! But there isn’t a man comes near me!”
“I—am not a business man,” Matravers said slowly; “but if you cared to explain things to me, I would go into the city and see what I could do.”
The man raised himself on his elbow and gazed at his visitor open-mouthed.
“You mean this!” he cried thickly. “Say it again,—quick! You mean it!”
“Certainly,” Matravers answered. “I will do what I can.”
John Drage did not doubt his good fortune for a moment. No one ever looked into Matravers’ face and failed to believe him.
“I—I’ll thank you some day,” he murmured. “You’ve done me up! Will you—shake hands?”
He held out a thin white hand. Matravers took it between his own.
In a few moments they were absorbed in figures and explanations. Finally the book was passed over to Matravers’ keeping.
“I will see what I can do,” he said quietly. “Some of these accounts should certainly be recovered. I will come down and let you know how I have got on.”
“You mean this!” he cried thickly. “Say it again—quick!”“You mean this!” he cried thickly. “Say it again—quick!”
“If you would! If you don’t mind! And, I wonder,—do you take a morning paper? If so, will you bring it when you’ve done with it, or an old one will do? I can’t read anything but newspapers; and lately I haven’t dared to spend a penny,—because of Freddy, you know! It’s so cursed lonely!”
“I will come, and I will bring you something to read,” Matravers promised. “I must go now!”
John Drage held out his hand wistfully.
“Good-by,” he said. “You’re a good man! I wish I’d been like you. It’s an odd thing for me to say, but—God bless you, sir.”
Matravers stood on the doorstep with his watch in his hand. It was half-past three. There was just time to catch the four-thirty from Waterloo! For a moment the little street faded away from before his eyes! He saw himself at his journey’s end!Berenice was there to meet him! A breath of the country came to him on the breeze—a breath of sweet-smelling flowers, and fresh moorland air, and the low murmur of the blue sea. Yes, there was Berenice, with her dark hair blowing in the wind, and that look of passionate peace in her pale, tired face! Her arms were open, wide open! She had been weary so long! The struggle had been so hard! and he, too, was weary——
He started! He was still on the doorstep! Freddy was drumming on the pane, and behind, there was a man lying on the couch, with his face buried in his hands. He waved his hand and descended the steps firmly.
“Back to my rooms, 147, Piccadilly,” he told the cabman. “I shall not be going away to-day.”
Aman wrote it, from his little room in the heart of London, whilst night faded into morning. He wrote it with leaden heart and unwilling mechanical effort—wrote it as a man might write his own doom. Every fresh sentence, which stared up at him from the closely written sheets seemed like another landmark in his sad descent from the pinnacles of his late wonderful happiness down into the black waters of despair. When he had finished, and the pen slipped from his stiff, nerveless fingers, there were lines and marks in his face which had never been there before, and which could never altogether pass away.
... A woman read it, seated on a shelving slant of moorland with the blue sky overhead,and the soft murmur of the sea in her ears, and the sunlight streaming around her. When she had finished, and the letter had fallen to her side, crushed into a shapeless mass, the light had died out of the sky and the air, and the song of the birds had changed into a wail. And this was what the man had said to the woman:—
“Berenice, I have had a dream! I dreamed that I was coming to you, that you and I were together somewhere in a new world, where the men were gods and the women were saints, where the sun always shone, and nothing that was not pure and beautiful had any place! And now I am awake, and I know that there is no such world.“You and I are standing on opposite sides of a deep, dark precipice. I may not come to you! You must not come to me.“I have thought over this matter with all the seriousness which befits it. You willnever know how great and how fierce the struggle has been. I am feeling an older and a tired man. But now that is all over! I have crossed the Rubicon! The mists have rolled away, and the truth is very clear indeed to me! I shudder when I think to what misery I might have brought you, if I had yielded to that sweetest and most fascinating impulse of my life, which bade me accept your sacrifice and come to you. Berenice, you are very young yet, and you have woven some new and very beautiful fancies which you have put into a book, and which the world has found amusing! To you alone they have become the essence of your life: they have become by constant contemplation a part of yourself. Out of the greatness of your heart you do not fear to put them into practice! But, dear, you must find a new world to fit your fancies, for the one in which we are forced to dwell, the world which, in theory, finds them delightful,would find another and an uglier world if we should venture upon their embodiment! After all we are creatures of this world, and by this world’s laws we shall be judged. The things which are right are right, and the things which are pure are pure. Love is the greatest power in the world, but it cannot alter things which are unalterable.“Once when I was climbing with a friend of mine in the Engadine, we saw a white flower growing virtually out of a cleft in the rocks, high above our heads. My friend was a botanist, and he would have that flower! I lay on my back and watched him struggle to reach it, watched him often slipping backwards, but gradually crawling nearer and nearer, until at last, breathless, with torn clothes and bleeding hands, he grasped the tiny blossom, and held it out to me in triumph! Together we admired it ceaselessly as we retraced our steps. Butas we left the high altitudes and descended into the valley, a change took place in the flower. Its petals drooped, its leaves shrank and faded. White became grey, the freshness which had been its chief beauty faded away with every step we took. My friend kept it, but he kept it with sorrow! It was no longer a beautiful flower.“Berenice, you are that flower! You are beautiful, and pure, and strong! You think that you are strong enough to live in the lowlands, but you are not! No love of mine, changeless and whole as it must ever be, could keep your soul from withering in the nether land of sin! For it would be sin! In these days when you are young, when the fires of your enthusiasm are newly kindled, and the wings of your imagination have not been shorn, you may say to yourself that it is not sin! You may say that love is the only true and sweet shrine before which we need keep our lives holy andpure, and that the time for regrets would never come!“Illusion! I, too, have tried to reason with myself in this manner! I have tried passionately, earnestly, feverishly. I have failed! I cannot! No one can! I know that to you I seem to be writing like a Philistine, like a man of a generation gone by! You have filled your little world with new ideals, you have lit it with the lamp of love, and it all seems very real and beautiful to you! But some day, though the lamp may burn still as brightly as ever, a great white daylight will break in through the walls. You will see things that you have never seen before, and the light of that lamp will seem cold and dim and ghostly. Nothing, nothing can ever alter the fact that your husband lives, and that your little boy is growing up with a great void in his heart. Some day he will ask for his mother; even now he may be asking for her! Berenice,would he ever look with large, indulgent eyes upon that little world of yours! Alas!“I have read my letter over to myself, Berenice, and I fear that it must sound to you very commonplace, even perhaps cold! Yet, believe me when I tell you that I have passed through a very fire of suffering, and if I am calm now it is with the calm of an ineffable despair! In my life at Oxford, and later, here in London, women have never borne any share. Part of my scheme of living has been to regard them as something outside my little cycle, an influence great indeed, but one which had passed me by.“Yet I am now one of the world’s great sufferers, one of those who have found at once their greatest joy linked with an unutterable despair. For I love you, Berenice! Never doubt it! Though I should neverlook upon your face again—which God in His mercy forbid—my love for you must be for ever a part and the greatest part of my life! Always remember that, I pray you!“It seems strange to talk of one’s plans with such a great, black cloud of sorrow filling the air! But the outward form of life does not change, even when the light has gone out and one’s heart is broken! I have some work before me which I must finish; when it is over I shall go abroad! But that can wait! When you are back in London, send for me! I am schooling myself to meet a new Berenice—my friend! And I have something still more to say to you!“Matravers.”
“Berenice, I have had a dream! I dreamed that I was coming to you, that you and I were together somewhere in a new world, where the men were gods and the women were saints, where the sun always shone, and nothing that was not pure and beautiful had any place! And now I am awake, and I know that there is no such world.
“You and I are standing on opposite sides of a deep, dark precipice. I may not come to you! You must not come to me.
“I have thought over this matter with all the seriousness which befits it. You willnever know how great and how fierce the struggle has been. I am feeling an older and a tired man. But now that is all over! I have crossed the Rubicon! The mists have rolled away, and the truth is very clear indeed to me! I shudder when I think to what misery I might have brought you, if I had yielded to that sweetest and most fascinating impulse of my life, which bade me accept your sacrifice and come to you. Berenice, you are very young yet, and you have woven some new and very beautiful fancies which you have put into a book, and which the world has found amusing! To you alone they have become the essence of your life: they have become by constant contemplation a part of yourself. Out of the greatness of your heart you do not fear to put them into practice! But, dear, you must find a new world to fit your fancies, for the one in which we are forced to dwell, the world which, in theory, finds them delightful,would find another and an uglier world if we should venture upon their embodiment! After all we are creatures of this world, and by this world’s laws we shall be judged. The things which are right are right, and the things which are pure are pure. Love is the greatest power in the world, but it cannot alter things which are unalterable.
“Once when I was climbing with a friend of mine in the Engadine, we saw a white flower growing virtually out of a cleft in the rocks, high above our heads. My friend was a botanist, and he would have that flower! I lay on my back and watched him struggle to reach it, watched him often slipping backwards, but gradually crawling nearer and nearer, until at last, breathless, with torn clothes and bleeding hands, he grasped the tiny blossom, and held it out to me in triumph! Together we admired it ceaselessly as we retraced our steps. Butas we left the high altitudes and descended into the valley, a change took place in the flower. Its petals drooped, its leaves shrank and faded. White became grey, the freshness which had been its chief beauty faded away with every step we took. My friend kept it, but he kept it with sorrow! It was no longer a beautiful flower.
“Berenice, you are that flower! You are beautiful, and pure, and strong! You think that you are strong enough to live in the lowlands, but you are not! No love of mine, changeless and whole as it must ever be, could keep your soul from withering in the nether land of sin! For it would be sin! In these days when you are young, when the fires of your enthusiasm are newly kindled, and the wings of your imagination have not been shorn, you may say to yourself that it is not sin! You may say that love is the only true and sweet shrine before which we need keep our lives holy andpure, and that the time for regrets would never come!
“Illusion! I, too, have tried to reason with myself in this manner! I have tried passionately, earnestly, feverishly. I have failed! I cannot! No one can! I know that to you I seem to be writing like a Philistine, like a man of a generation gone by! You have filled your little world with new ideals, you have lit it with the lamp of love, and it all seems very real and beautiful to you! But some day, though the lamp may burn still as brightly as ever, a great white daylight will break in through the walls. You will see things that you have never seen before, and the light of that lamp will seem cold and dim and ghostly. Nothing, nothing can ever alter the fact that your husband lives, and that your little boy is growing up with a great void in his heart. Some day he will ask for his mother; even now he may be asking for her! Berenice,would he ever look with large, indulgent eyes upon that little world of yours! Alas!
“I have read my letter over to myself, Berenice, and I fear that it must sound to you very commonplace, even perhaps cold! Yet, believe me when I tell you that I have passed through a very fire of suffering, and if I am calm now it is with the calm of an ineffable despair! In my life at Oxford, and later, here in London, women have never borne any share. Part of my scheme of living has been to regard them as something outside my little cycle, an influence great indeed, but one which had passed me by.
“Yet I am now one of the world’s great sufferers, one of those who have found at once their greatest joy linked with an unutterable despair. For I love you, Berenice! Never doubt it! Though I should neverlook upon your face again—which God in His mercy forbid—my love for you must be for ever a part and the greatest part of my life! Always remember that, I pray you!
“It seems strange to talk of one’s plans with such a great, black cloud of sorrow filling the air! But the outward form of life does not change, even when the light has gone out and one’s heart is broken! I have some work before me which I must finish; when it is over I shall go abroad! But that can wait! When you are back in London, send for me! I am schooling myself to meet a new Berenice—my friend! And I have something still more to say to you!
“Matravers.”
The week that followed the sending of his letter was, to Matravers, with his love for equable times and emotions, like a week in hell! He had set himself a task not easy even to an ordinary man of business, but to him trebly difficult and harassing. Day after day he spent in the city—a somewhat strange visitor there, with his grave, dignified manner and studied fastidiousness of dress and deportment. He was unversed in the ways of the men with whom he had to deal, and he had no commercial aptitude whatever. But in a quiet way he was wonderfully persistent, and he succeeded better, perhaps, than any other emissary whom John Drage could have employed. The sum of money which he eventuallycollected amounted to nearly fifteen hundred pounds, and late one evening he started for Kensington with a bundle of papers under his arm and a cheque-book in his pocket.
It was his last visit,—at any rate, for the present,—he told himself with a sense of wonderful relief, as he walked through the Park in the gathering twilight. For of late, something in connection with his day’s efforts had taken him every evening to the shabby little house at Kensington, where his coming was eagerly welcomed by the tired, sick man and the lonely boy. He had esteemed himself a man well schooled in all manner of self-control, and little to be influenced in a matter of duty by his personal likes and dislikes. But these visits were a torture to him! To sit and talk for hours with a man, grateful enough, but peevish and commonplace, and with a curious lack of virility or self-reliance in hisuntoward circumstances, was trial enough to Matravers, who had been used to select his associates and associations with delicate and close care. But to remember that this man had been, and indeed was, the husband of Berenice, was madness! It was this man, whom at the best he could only regard with a kindly and gentle contempt, who stood between him and such surprising happiness, this man and the boy with his pale, serious face and dark eyes. And the bitterness of fate—for he never realized that it would have been possible for him to have acted otherwise—had made him their benefactor!
Just as he was leaving the Park he glanced up at the sound of a carriage passing him rapidly, and as he looked up he stood still! It seemed to him that life itself was standing still in his veins. Berenice had been silent. There had come no word from her! But nothing so tragic, so horribleas this, had ever occurred to him! His heart had been full of black despair, and his days had been days of misery; but even the possibility of seeking for himself solace, by means not altogether worthy, had never dawned upon him. Nor had he dreamed it of her! Yet the man who waved his hand from the box-seat of the phaeton with a courtesy seemingly real, but, under the circumstances, brutally ironical, was Thorndyke, and the woman who sat by his side was Berenice!
The carriage passed on down the broad drive, and Matravers stood looking after it. Was it his fancy, or was that, indeed, a faint cry which came travelling through the dim light to his ears as he stood there under the trees—a figure turned to stone. A faint cry, or the wailing of a lost spirit! A sudden dizziness came over him, and he sat down on one of the seats close at hand. There was a singing in his ears, and a painat his heart. He sat there with half-closed eyes, battling with his weakness.
Presently he got up, and continued his journey. He found himself on the doorstep of the shabby little house, and mechanically he passed in and told the story of his day’s efforts to the man who welcomed him so eagerly. With his pocket-book in his hand he successfully underwent a searching cross-examination, faithfully recording what one man had said and what another, their excuses and their protestations. He made no mistakes, and his memory served him amply. But when he had come to the end of the list, and had placed the cheque-book in John Drage’s fingers, he felt that he must get away. Even his stoical endurance had a measurable depth. But it was hard to escape from the man’s most unwelcome gratitude. John Drage had not the tact to recognize in his benefactor the man to whom thanks are hateful.
“And I had no claim upon you whatever!” the sick man wound up, half-breathless. “If you had cut me dead, after my Oxford disgrace, it would only have been exactly what I deserved. That’s what makes it so odd, your doing all this for me. I can’t understand it, I’m damned if I can!”
Matravers stood over him, a silent, unresponsive figure, seeking only to make his escape. With difficulty he broke in upon the torrent of words.
“Will you do me the favour, Mr. Drage,” he begged earnestly, “of saying no more about it. Any man of leisure would have done for you what I have done. If you really wish to afford me a considerable happiness, you can do so.”
“Anything in this world!” John Drage declared vehemently.
Matravers thought for a moment. The proposition which he was about to makehad been in his mind from the first. The time had come now to put it into words.
“You must not be offended at what I am going to say,” he began gently. “I am a rich man, and I have taken a great fancy to your boy. I have no children of my own; in fact, I am quite alone in the world. If you will allow me, I should like to undertake Freddy’s education.”
A light broke across the man’s coarse face, momentarily transfiguring it. He raised himself on his elbow, and gazed at his visitor with eager scrutiny. Then he drew a deep sigh, and there were tears in his eyes. He did not say a word. Matravers continued.
“It will be a great pleasure for me,” he said quietly. “What I propose is to invest a thousand pounds for that purpose in Freddy’s name. In fact, I have taken the liberty of already doing it. The papers are here.”
Matravers laid an envelope on the little table between them. Then he rose up.
“Will you forgive me now,” he said, “if I hurry away? I will come and see you again, and we will talk this over more thoroughly.”
And still John Drage said nothing, but he held out his hand. Matravers pressed the thin fingers between his own.
“You must see Freddy,” he said eagerly. “I promised him that he should come in before you went.”
But Matravers shook his head. There was a pain at his heart like the cutting of a knife.
“I cannot stay another instant,” he declared. “Send Freddy over to my rooms any time. Let him come and have tea with me!”
Then they parted, and Matravers walked through a world of strange shadows to Berenice’s house. Her maid, recognizinghim, took him up to her room without ceremony. The door was softly opened and shut. He stood upon the threshold. For a moment everything seemed dark before him.
Berenice seemed to dwell always in the twilight. At first Matravers thought that the room was empty, and he advanced slowly towards the window. And then he stopped short. Berenice was lying in a crumpled heap on the low couch, almost within touch of his hands. She was lying on her side, her supple figure all doubled up, and the folds of her loose gown flowing around her in wild disorder. Her face was half hidden in her clasped hands.
“Berenice,” he cried softly.
Berenice was lying in a crumpled heap on the low couchBerenice was lying in a crumpled heap on the low couch
She did not answer. She was asleep. He stood looking down upon her, his heart full of an infinite tenderness. She, too, had suffered, then. Her hair was in wild confusion, and there were marks of recent tearsupon her pale cheeks. A little lace handkerchief had slipped from her fingers down on to the floor. He picked it up. It was wet! The glow of the heavily-shaded lamp was upon her clasped white fingers and her bowed head. He watched the rising and falling of her bosom as she slept. To him, so great a stranger to women and their ways, there was a curious fascination in all the trifling details of her toilette and person, the innate daintiness of which appealed to him with a very potent and insidious sweetness. Whilst she slept, he felt as one far removed from her. It was like a beautiful picture upon which he was gazing. The passion which had been raging within him like an autumn storm was suddenly stilled. Only the purely æsthetic pleasure of her presence and his contemplation of it remained. It seemed to him then that he would have had her stay thus for ever! Before his fixed eyes therefloated a sort of mystic dream. There was another world—was it the world of sleep or of death?—where they might join hands and dwell together in beautiful places, and there was no one, not even their consciences, to say them nay. The dust of earthly passion and sin, and all the commonplace miseries of life, had faded for ever from their knowledge. It was their souls which had come together ... and there was a wonderful peace.
Then she opened her eyes and looked up at him. There was no more dreaming! The old, miserable passion flooded his heart and senses. His feet were upon the earth again! The whole world of those strange, poignant sensations, stronger because of their late coming, welled up within him.
“Berenice!”
She was only half awake, and she held up her soft, white arms to him, gleaming like marble through the lace of her widesleeves. She looked up at him with the faint smile of a child.
“My love!”
He stooped down, and her arms closed around him like a soft yoke. But he kissed her forehead so lightly that she scarcely realized that this was almost his first caress.
“Berenice, you have been angry with me!”
She sat up, and the lamplight fell upon his face.
“You have been ill,” she cried in a shocked tone.
“It is nothing. I am well. But to-night—I had a shock; I saw you with—Mr. Thorndyke!”
Her eyes met his. The hideous phantom which had been dogging his steps was slain. He was ashamed of that awful but nameless fear.
“It is true. Mr. Thorndyke has offered me an apology, which I am forced to believesincere. He has asked me to be his wife! I was sorry for him.”
“He is a bad man! He has spoken ill of you! He has already a wife!”
“I am glad of it. I can obey my instincts now, and see him no more. Personally he is distasteful to me! I had an idea he was honest! It is nothing!”
She dismissed the subject with a wave of the hand. To her it was altogether a minor matter. Then she looked at him.
“Well!”
“You never answered my letter.”
“No, there was no answer. I came back.”
“You did not let me know.”
“You will find a message at your rooms when you get back.”
He walked up and down the room. He knew at once that all he had done hitherto had been in vain. The battle was still before him. She sat and watched him withan inscrutable smile. Once as he passed her, she laid her hand upon his arm. He stopped at once.
“Your white flower was born to die and to wither,” she said. “A night’s frost would have killed it as surely as the lowland air. It is like these violets.” She took a bunch from her bosom. “This morning they were fresh and beautiful. Now they are crushed and faded! Yet they have lived their life.”
She threw them down upon the floor.
“Do you think a woman is like that?” she said softly. “You are very, very ignorant! She has a soul.”
He held out his hand.
“A soul to keep white and pure. A soul to give back—to God!”
Again she smiled at him slowly, and shook her dark head. “You are like a child in some things! You have lived so long amongst the dry bones of scholarship,that you have lost your touch upon humanity. And of us women, you know—so very little. You have tried to understand us from books. How foolish! You must be my disciple, and I will teach you.”
“It is not teaching,” he cried; “it is temptation.”
She turned upon him with a gleam of passion in her eyes.
“Temptation!” she cried. “There spoke the whole selfishness of the philosopher, the dilettante in morals! What is it that you fear? It is the besmirchment of your own ideals, your own little code framed and moulded with your own hands. What do you know of sin or of purity, you, who have held yourself aloof from the world with a sort of delicate care, as though you, forsooth, were too precious a thing to be soiled with the dust of human passion and human love! That is where you are all wrong. That is where you make your great mistake.You have judged without experience. You speak of a soul which may be stained with sin; you have no more knowledge than the Pharisees of old what constitutes sin. Love can never stain anything! Love that is constant and true and pure is above the marriage laws of men; it is above your little self-constructed ideals; it is a thing of Heaven and of God! You wrote to me like a child,—and you are a child, for until you have learnt what love is, you are without understanding.”
Suddenly her outstretched hands dropped to her side. Her voice became soft and low; her dark eyes were dimmed.
“Come to me, and you shall know. I will show you in what narrow paths you have been wandering. I will show you how beautiful a woman’s love can make your life!”
“If we can love and be pure,” he said hoarsely, “what is sin? What is that?”
He was standing by the window, and he pointed westwards with shaking finger. The roar of Piccadilly and Regent Street came faintly into the little room. She understood him.
“You have a great deal to learn, dear,” she whispered softly. “Remember this first, and before all, Love can sanctify everything.”
“But they too loved in the beginning!”
She shook her head.
“That they never could have done. Love is eternal. If it fades or dies, then it never was love. Then it was sin.”
“But those poor creatures! How are they to tell between the true love and the false?”
She stamped her foot, and a quiver of passion shook her frame.
“We are not talking about them. We are talking about ourselves! Do you doubt your love or mine?”
“I cannot,” he answered. “Berenice!”
“Yes!”
“Did you ever tell—your husband that you loved him?”
“Never!”
“Did he love you?”
“I believe, so far as he knew how to love anything,—he did.”
“And now?”
She waved her hand impatiently.
“He has forgotten. He was shallow, and he was fond of life. He has found consolation long ago. Do not talk of him. Do not dare to speak of him again! Oh, why do you make me humble myself so?”
“He may not have forgotten. He may have repented. He may be longing for you now,—and suffering. Should we be sinless then?”
She swept from her place, and stood before him with flashing eyes.
“I forbid you to remind me of myshame. I forbid you to remind me that I, too, like those poor women on the street, have been bought and sold for money! I have worked out my own emancipation. I am free. It was while I was living with him as his wife that I sinned,—for I hated him! Speak to me no more of that time! If you cannot forget it, you had better go!”
He stretched out his hands and held hers tightly.
“Berenice, if you were alone in the world, and there was some great barrier to our marriage, I would not hesitate any longer. I would take you to myself. Don’t think too hardly of me. I am like a man who is denying himself heaven. But your husband lives. You belong to him. You do not know whether he is in prosperity, or whether he has forgotten. You do not know whether he has repented, or whether his life is still such as to justifyyour taking the law into your own hands, and forsaking him for ever. Listen to me, dear! If you will find out these things, if you can say to yourself and to me, and to your conscience, ‘he has found happiness without me, he has ignored and forgotten the tie between us, he does not need my sympathy, or my care, or my companionship,’ then I will have no more scruples. Only let us be sure that you are morally free from that man.”
She wrenched her hands away from his. There was a bright, red spot of colour flaring on her cheeks. Her eyes were on fire.
“You are mad!” she cried; “you do not love me! No man can know what love is who talks about doubts and scruples like you do! You are too cold and too selfish to realize what love can be! And to think that I have stopped to reason, to reason with you! Oh! my God! What have I done to be humbled like this?”
“Berenice!”
“Leave me! Don’t come near me any more! I shall thrust you out of my life! You never loved me! I could not have loved you! Go away! It has been a hideous mistake!”
“Berenice!”
“My God! Will you leave me?” she moaned. “You are driving me mad! I hate you!”
Her white hand flashed out into the darkness, as though she would have struck him! He bowed his head and went.
Matravers knew after that night that his was a broken life. Any future such as he had planned for himself of active, intellectual toil had now, he felt, become impossible. His ideals were all broken down. A woman had found her way in between the joints of an armour which he had grown to believe impenetrable, and henceforth life was a wreck. The old, quiet stoicism, which had been the inner stimulus of his career, was a thing altogether overthrown and impotent. He was too old to reconstruct life anew; the fragments were too many, and the wreck too complete. Only his philosophy showed him very plainly what the end must be. Acrossthe sky of his vision it seemed to be written in letters of fire.
Early in the morning, having made his toilette as usual with a care almost fastidious, he went out into the sunlit streets, moving like a man in a deep dream amongst scenes which had become familiar to him day by day. At his lawyer’s he made his will, and signed it, thankful for once for his great loneliness, insomuch as there was no one who could call the disposal of his property to a stranger an injustice—for he had left all to little Freddy; left it to him because of his mother’s eyes, as he thought with a faint smile. Then he called at his publisher’s and at the office of a leading review to which he was a regular contributor, telling them to expect no more work from him for a while; he was going abroad to take a long-earned holiday. He lunched at his club, speaking in a more than usually friendly manner to the few menwith whom at times he had found it a pleasure to associate, and finally, with that sense of unreality growing stronger and stronger, he found himself once more in the Park, in his usual chair, looking out with the same keen sympathy upon the intensely joyous, beautiful phase of life which floated around him. The afternoon breeze rustled pleasantly among the cool green leaves above his head, and the sunlight slanted full across the shaded walk. On every hand were genial voices, cordial greetings, and light farewells. With a sense almost of awe, he thought of the days when he had sat there waiting for her carriage, that he might look for a few moments upon that pale-faced woman, whose influence over him seemed already to have commenced before even any words had passed between them. He sat there, gravely acknowledging the salutes of those with whom he was acquainted, wearing alwaysthe same faint and impenetrable smile—wonderful mask of a broken heart. And still the memories came surging into his brain. He thought of that grey morning when he had sat there alone, oppressed by some dim premonitions of the tragedy amongst whose shadows he was already passing, so that even the wind which had followed the dawn, and shaken the rain-drops down upon him, had seemed to carry upon its bosom wailing cries and sad human voices. As the slow moments passed along, he found himself watching for her carriage with some remnant of the old wistfulness. But it never came, and for that he was thankful.
At last he rose, and walked leisurely back to his rooms. He gave orders to his servant to pack all his things for a journey; then, for the last time, he stood up in the midst of his possessions, looking around him with a vague sorrowfulness at the littlefamiliar objects which had become dear to him, both by association and by reason of a certain sense of companionship which he had always been able to feel for beautiful things, however inanimate. It was here that he had come when he had first left Oxford, full of certain definite ambitions, and with a mind fixed at least upon living a serene and well-ordered life. He had woven many dreams within these four walls. How far away those days now seemed to be from him! He would never dream any more; for him the world’s great dream was very close at hand.
He poured himself out a glass of wine from a quaintly cut decanter, and set it down on his writing-desk, emptying into it with scrupulous care the contents of a little packet which he had been carrying all day in his waistcoat pocket. He paused for a moment before taking up his pen, to move a little on one side the deep blue china bowlof flowers which, summer and winter alike, stood always fresh upon his writing-table. To-day it chanced, by some irony of fate, that they were roses, and a swift flood of memories rushed into his tingling senses as the perfume of the creamy blossoms floated up to him.
He set his teeth, and, taking out some paper, began to write.