If old Marlowe, or Mr. Clifford himself, could have followed Roland Sefton during his homeless wanderings, their rigorous sense of justice would have been satisfied that he was not escaping punishment, though he might elude the arbitrary penalty of the law.
As the summer advanced, and the throng of yearly tourists poured into the playground of Europe from every country, but especially from England, he was driven away from all the towns and villages where he might by chance be recognized by some fellow-countryman. Up into the mountain pastures he retreated, where he rambled from one chalet to another, sleeping on beds of fodder, with its keen night air piercing through the apertures of the roof and walls, yet bringing with it those intolerable stenches which exhale from the manure and mire lying ankle-deep round each picturesque little hut. The yelping of the watch-dogs; the snoring of the tired herdsmen lying within arm's length of him; the shrill tinkling of cow-bells, musical enough by day and in the distance, but driving sleep away too harshly; the sickness and depression produced by unwholesome food, and the utter compulsory abandonment of all his fastidious and dainty personal habits, made his mere bodily life intolerable to him. He had borne something like these discomforts and privations for a day or two at a time, when engaged in Alpine climbing, but that he should be forced to live a life compared with which that of an Irish bog-trotter was decent and civilized, was a daily torment to him.
It is true that during the long hours of daylight he wandered among the most sublime scenery. Sometimes he scaled solitary peaks and looked down upon far-stretching landscapes below him, with broad dead rivers of glaciers winding between the high and terrible masses of snow-clad rocks, and creeping down into peaceful valleys, where little living streams of silvery gray wandered among chalets looking no larger than the rocks strewn around them, with a tiny church in their midst lifting up its spire of glittering metal with a kind of childish confidence and exultation. Here and there in deep sunken hollows lay small tarns, black as night, and guilty looking, with precipices overhanging them fringed with pointed pine-trees, which sought in vain to mirror themselves in those pitch-dark waters. And above them all, gazing down in silent greatness, rose the snow-mountains, very cold, whiter than any other whiteness on earth, pure and stainless, and apparently as unapproachable in their far-off loveliness as the deep blue of the pure sky behind them.
But there was something unutterably awful to Roland Sefton in this sublimity. A bad man, whose ear has never heard the voice of Nature, and whose eye is blind to her ineffable beauty, may dwell in such places and not be crushed by them. The dull herdsmen, thinking only of their cattle and of the milking to be done twice a day, might live their own stupid, commonplace lives there. The chance visitor who spent a few hours in scaling difficult cliffs would perhaps catch a brief and fleeting sense of their awfulness, only too quickly dissipated by the unwonted toil and peril of his situation. But Roland Sefton felt himself exiled to their ice-bound solitudes, cut off from all companionship, and attended only by an accusing conscience.
Morning after morning, when his short and feverish night was ended, he went out in the early dawn while all the valleys below were still slumbering in darkness, self-driven into the wilderness of rock and snow rising above the wretched chalets. With coarse food sufficient for the wants of the day he strayed wherever his aimless footsteps led him. It was seldom that he stayed more than a night or two in the same herdsman's hut. When he was well out of the track of tourists he ventured down into the lower villages now and then, seeking a few days of comparative comfort. But some rumor, or the arrival of some chance traveller more enterprising and investigating than the mass, always drove him away again. There was no peace for him, either in the high Alps or the most secluded valleys.
How could there be peace while memory and conscience were gnawing at his heart? In a dreary round his thoughts went back to the first beginnings of the road that had led him hither; with that vague feeling which all of us have when retracing the irrevocable past, as if by some mighty effort of our will we could place ourselves at the starting-point again and run our race—oh, how differently!
Roland could almost fix the date when he had first wished that Mr. Clifford's bonds, bequeathed to him, were already his own. He recollected the very day when old Marlowe had asked him to invest his money for him in some safe manner for Phebe's benefit, and how he had persuaded himself that nothing could be safer than to use it for his own purposes, and to pay a higher interest than the old man could get elsewhere. What he had done for him had been still easier to do for other clients—ignorant men and women who knew nothing of business, and left it all to him, gratefully pleased with the good interest he paid them. The web had been woven with almost invisible threads at the first, but the finest thread among them was a heavy cable now.
But the one thought that haunted him, never leaving him for an instant in these terrible solitudes, was the thought of Felicita. His mother he could forget sometimes, or remember her with a dewy tenderness at his heart, as if he could feel her pitiful love clinging to him still; and his children he dreamed of at times in a day-dream, as playing merrily without him, in the blissful ignorance of childhood. But Felicita, who did not love him as his mother did, and could not remain in ignorance of his crime! Was she not something like these pure, distant snowy pinnacles, inapproachable and repellent, with icy-cold breath which petrified all lips that drew too near to them? And he had set a stain upon that purity as white as the driven snow. The name he had given to her was tarnished, and would be publicly dishonored if he failed in evading the penalty he merited. His death alone could save her from notorious and intolerable disgrace.
But though he was reckless of his life, he could not bring himself to be guilty of suicide. Death was wooing him in many forms, day by day, to seek refuge with him. When his feet slipped among the yawning crevasses of the glaciers, the smallest wilful negligence would have buried him in their blue depths. The common impulse to cast himself down the precipices along whose margin he crept had only to be yielded to, and all his earthly woe would be over. Even to give way to the weary drowsiness that overtook him at times as the sun went down, and the night fell upon him far away from shelter, might have soothed him into the slumber from which there is no awaking. But he dared not. He was willing enough to die, if dying had been all. But he believed in the punishment of sin here, or hereafter; in the dealing out of a righteous judgment to every man, whether he be good or evil.
As the autumn passed by, and the mountain chalets were shut up, the cattle and the herdsmen descending to the lower pastures, Roland Sefton was compelled to descend too. There was little chance of encountering any one who knew him at this late season; yet there were still stragglers lingering among the Alps. But when he saw himself again in a looking-glass, his face burned and blistered with the sun, and now almost past recognition, and his ragged hair and beard serving him better than any disguise, he was no longer afraid of being detected. He began to wonder in mingled hope and dread whether Felicita would come out to seek him. The message he had sent to her by Phebe could be interpreted by her alone. Would she avail herself of it to find him out? Or would she shrink from the toil and pain and danger of quitting England? A few weeks more would answer the question.
Sometimes he was overwhelmed with terror lest she should be watched, and her movements tracked, and that behind her would come the pursuers he had so successfully evaded. At other times an unutterable heart-sickness possessed him to see her once more, to hear her voice, to press his lips, if he dared, to her pale cheeks; to discover whether she would suffer him to hold her in his arms for one moment only. He longed to hear from her lips what had happened at home since he fled from it six months ago; what she had done, and was going to do, supposing that he were not arrested and brought to justice. Would she forgive him? would she listen to his pleas and explanations? He feared that she would hate him for the shame he had brought upon her. Yet there was a possibility that she might pity him, with a pity so much akin to love as that with which the angels look down upon sinful human beings.
Every day brought the solution of his doubts nearer. The rains of autumn had begun, and fell in torrents, driving him to any shelter he could find, to brood there hour after hour upon these hopes and fears. The fog and thick clouds hid the mountains, and all the valleys lay forlorn and cold under clinging veils of mist, through which the few brown leaves left upon the trees hung limp and dying on the bare branches. The villagers were settling down to their winter life; and though along the frequented routes a few travellers were still passing to and fro, the less known were deserted. It was safe now to go down to Engelberg, where, if ever again except as a prisoner in the hands of justice, he would see Felicita.
Impatient to anticipate the day on which he might again see her, he reached Engelberg a week before the appointed time. The green meadows and the forests of the little valley were hidden in mist and rain, and the towering dome of the Titlis was folded from sight in dense clouds, with only a cold gleam now and then as its snowy summit glanced through them for a minute. The innumerable waterfalls were swollen, and fell with a restless roar through the black depths of the forests. The daylight was short, for the sun rose late behind the encircling mountains, and hastened to sink again below them. But the place where he had first met Felicita was dear to him, though dark and gloomy with the cloudy days. He hastened to the church where his eyes had fallen upon the young, silent, absorbed girl so many years ago; and here, where the sun was shining fitfully for a brief half hour, he paced up and down the aisles, wondering what the coming interview would bring. Day after day he lingered there, with the loud chanting of the monks ringing in his ears, until the evening came when he said to himself, "To-morrow I shall see her once more."
Roland Sefton did not sleep that night. As the time drew near for Felicita to act upon his message to her, he grew more desponding of her response to it; yet he could not give up the feeble hope still flickering in his heart. If she did not come he would be a hopeless outcast indeed; yet if she came, what succor could she bring to him? He had not once cherished the idea that Mr. Clifford would forbear to prosecute him; yet he knew well that if he could be propitiated, the other men and women who had claims upon him would be easily satisfied and appeased. But how many things might have happened during the long six months, which had seemed almost an eternity to him. It was not impossible that Mr. Clifford might be dead. If so, and if a path was thus open to him to re-enter life, how different should his career be in the future! How warily would he walk; with what earnest penitence and thorough uprightness would he order all his ways! He would be what he had only seemed to be hitherto: a man following Christ, as his forefathers had done.
He was staying at a quiet inn in the village, and as soon as daybreak came he started down the road along which Felicita must come, and waited at the entrance of the valley, four miles from the little village. The road was bad, for the heavy rains had washed much of it away, and it had been roughly repaired by fir-trees laid along the broken edges; but it was not impassable, and a one-horse carriage could run along it safely. The rain had passed away, and the sun was shining. The high mountains and the great rocks were clear from base to summit. If she came to-day there was a splendid scene prepared for her eyes. Hour after hour passed by, the short autumnal day faded into the dusk, and the dusk slowly deepened into the blackness of night. Still he waited, late on into the night, till the monastery bells chimed for the last time; but there was no sign of her coming.
The next day passed as that had done. Felicita, then, had deserted him! He felt so sure of Phebe that he never doubted that she had not received his message. He had left only one thread of communication between himself and home—a slender thread—and Felicita had broken it. There was now no hope for him, no chance of learning what had befallen all his dear ones, unless he ran the risk of discovery, and ventured back to England.
But for Felicita and his children, he said to himself, it would be better to go back, and pay the utmost penalty he owed to the broken laws of his country. No hardships could be greater than those he had already endured; no separation from companionship could be more complete. The hard labor he would be doomed to perform would be a relief. His conscience might smite him less sharply and less ceaselessly if he was suffering the due punishment for his sin, in the society of his fellow-criminals. Dartmoor Prison would be better for him than his miserable and degrading freedom.
Still, as long as he could elude publicity and preserve his name from notoriety, the burden would not fall upon Felicita and his children. His mother would not shrink from bearing her share of any burden of his. But he must keep out of the dock, lest their father and husband should be branded as a convict.
A dreary round his thoughts ran. But ever in the centre of the circling thoughts lay the conviction that he had lost his wife and children forever. Whether he dragged out a wretched life in concealment, or was discovered, or gave himself up to justice, Felicita was lost to him. There were some women—Phebe Marlowe was one—who could have lived through the shame of his conviction and the dreary term of his imprisonment, praying to God for her husband, and pitying him with a kind of heavenly grace, and at the end of the time met him at the prison door, and gone out with him, tenderly and faithfully, to begin a new life in another country. But Felicita was not one of these women. He could never think of her as pardoning a transgression like his, though committed for her sake. Even now she would not stoop so low as to seek a meeting with one who deserved a penal punishment.
Night had set in, and he was trudging along the road, still heavy with recent rains, though the sky above was hung with glittering stars, and the crystal snow on Titlis shone against the deep blue depths, casting a wan light over the valley. Suddenly upon the stillness there came the sound of several voices, and a shrill yodel, pitched in a key that rang through the village, to call attention to the approaching party. It was in advance of him, nearer to Engelberg; yet though he had been watching the route from Stans all day, and was satisfied that Felicita could not have entered the valley unseen by himself, the hope flashed through him that she was before him, belated by the state of the roads. He hurried on, seeing before him a small group of men carrying lanterns. But in their midst they bore a rude litter, made of a gate taken hastily off the hinges. They passed out of sight behind a house as he caught sight of the litter, and for a minute or two he could not follow them, from the mere shock of dread lest the litter held her. Then he hurried on, and reached the hotel door as the procession marched into the hall and laid their burden cautiously down.
"An accident?" said the landlord.
"Yes," answered one of the peasants; "we found him under Pfaffenwand. He must have been coming from Engstlensee Alp; how much farther the good God alone knows. The paths are slippery this wet weather, and he had no guide, or there was no guide to be seen."
"That must be searched into," said the landlord; "is he dead?"
"No, no," replied two or three together.
"He has spoken twice," continued the peasant who had answered before, "and groaned much. But none of us knew what he said. He is dying, poor fellow!"
"English?" asked the landlord, looking down on the scarred face and eager eyes of the stranger, who lay silent on the litter, glancing round uneasily at the faces about him.
"Some of us would have known French, or German, or Italian," was the reply, "but not one of us knows English."
"Nor I," said the landlord; "and our English speaker went away last week, over the St. Gothard to Italy for the winter. Send round, Marie," he went on, speaking to his wife, "and find out any one in Engelberg who knows English. See! The poor fellow is trying to say something now."
"I can speak English," said Roland, pushing his way in amid the crowd and kneeling down beside the litter, on which a rough bed of fir pine-branches had been made. The unknown face beneath his eyes was drawn with pain, and the gaze that met his was one of earnest entreaty.
"I am dying," he murmured; "don't let them torture me. Only let me be laid on a bed to die in peace."
"I will take care of you," said Roland in his pleasant and soothing voice, speaking as tenderly as if he had been saying "God bless you!" to Felix in his little cot; "trust yourself to me. They shall do for you only what I think best."
The stranger closed his eyes with an expression of relief, and Roland, taking up one corner of the litter, helped to carry it gently into the nearest bedroom. He was gifted with something of a woman's softness of touch, and with a woman's delicate sympathy with pain; and presently, though not without some moans and cries, the injured man was resting peacefully on a bed: not unconscious, but looking keenly from face to face on the people surrounding him.
"Are you English?" he asked, looking at Roland's blistered face and his worn peasant's dress.
"Yes," he answered.
"Is there any surgeon here?" he inquired.
"No English surgeon," replied Roland. "I do not know if there is one even at Lucerne, and none could come to you for many hours. But there must be some one at the monastery close by, if not in the village—"
"No, no!" he interrupted, "I shall not live many hours; but promise me—I am quite helpless as you see—promise me that you will not let any village doctor pull me about."
"They are sometimes very skilful," urged Roland, "and you do not know that you must really die."
"I knew it as I was slipping," he answered; "at the first moment I knew it, though I clutched at the very stones to keep me from falling. Why! I was dead when they found me; only the pain of being pulled about brought me back to life. I'm not afraid to die if they will let me die in peace."
"I will promise not to leave you," replied Roland; "and if you must die, it shall be in peace."
That he must die, and was actually dying, was affirmed by all about him. One of the brothers from the monastery, skilled in surgery, came in unrecognized as a doctor by the stranger, and shook his head hopelessly when he saw him, telling Roland to let him do whatever he pleased so long as he lived, and to learn all he could from him during the hours of the coming night. There was no hope, he said; and if he had not been found by the peasants he would have been dead now. Roland must ask if he was a good Catholic or a heretic. When the monk heard that he was a heretic and needed none of the consolations of the Church, he bade him farewell kindly, and went his way.
Roland Sefton sat beside the dying man all the night, while he lingered from hour to hour: free from pain at times, at others restless and racked with agony. He wandered a little in delirium, and when his brain was clear he had not much to say.
"Have you no message to send to your friends?" inquired Roland, in one of these lucid intervals.
"I have no friends," he answered, "and no money. It makes death easier."
"There must be some one who would care to hear of you," said Roland.
"They'll see it in the papers," he replied. "No, I come from India, and was going to England. I have no near relations, and there is no one to care much. 'Poor Austin,' they'll say; 'he wasn't a bad fellow.' That's all. You've been kinder to me than anybody I know. There's about fifty pounds in my pocket-book. Bury me decently and take the rest."
He dozed a little, or was unconscious for a few minutes. His sunburnt face, lying on the white pillow, still looked full of health and the promise of life, except when it was contracted with pain. There was no weakness in his voice or dimness in his eye. It seemed impossible to believe that this strong young man was dying.
"I lost my valise when I fell," he said, opening his eyes again and speaking in a tranquil tone; "but there was nothing of value in it. My money and my papers are in my pocket-book. Let me see you take possession of it."
He watched Roland search for the book in the torn coat on the chair beside him, and his eyes followed its transfer to his breast-pocket under his blue blouse.
"You are an English gentleman, though you look a Swiss peasant," he said; "you are poor, perhaps, and my money will be of use to you. It is the only return I can make to you. I should like you to write down that I give it to you, and let me sign the paper."
"Presently," said Roland; "you must not exert yourself. I shall find your name and address here?"
"I have no address; of course I have a name," he answered; "but never mind that now. Tell me, what do you think of Christ? Does He indeed save sinners?"
"Yes," said Roland reluctantly; "He says, 'I came to seek and to save that which was lost.' Those are His own words."
"Kneel down quickly," murmured the dying man. "Say 'Our Father!' so that I can hear every word. My mother used to teach it to me."
"And she is dead?" said Roland.
"Years ago," he gasped.
Roland knelt down. How familiar, with what a touch of bygone days, the attitude came to him; how homely the words sounded! He had uttered them innumerable times; never quite without a feeling of their sacredness and sweetness. But he had not dared to take them into his lips of late. His voice faltered, though he strove to keep it steady and distinct, to reach the dying ears that listened to him. The prayer brought to him the picture of his children kneeling, morning and evening, with the self-same petitions. They had said them only a few hours ago, and would say them again a few hours hence. Even the dying man felt there was something more than mere emotion for him expressed in the tremulous tones of Roland Sefton's voice. He held out his hand to him when he had finished, and grasped his warmly.
"God bless you!" he said. But he was weary, and his strength was failing him. He slumbered again fitfully, and his mind wandered. Now and then during the rest of the night he looked up with a faint smile, and his lips moved inarticulately. He thought he had spoken, but no sound disturbed the unbroken silence.
It was as the bells of the Abbey rang for matins that the stranger died. For a few minutes Roland remained beside him, and then he called in the women to attend to the dead, and went out into the fresh morning air. It was the third day that the mountains had been clear from fog and cloud, and they stood out against the sky in perfect whiteness. The snow-line had come lower down upon the slopes, and the beautiful crystals of frost hung on the tapering boughs of the pine-trees in the forests about Engelberg. Here and there a few villagers were going toward the church, and almost unconsciously Roland followed slowly in their track.
The short service was over and the congregation was dispersing when he crossed the well-worn door-sill. But a few women, especially the late comers, were still scattered about praying mechanically, with their eyes wandering around them. The High Altar was deserted, but candles burning on it made a light in the dim place, and he listlessly sauntered up the centre aisle. A woman was kneeling on the steps leading up to it, and as the echo of his footsteps resounded in the quiet church she rose and looked round. It was Felicita! At that moment he was not thinking of her; yet there was no doubt or surprise in the first moment of recognition. The uncontrollable rapture of seeing her again arrested his steps, and he stood looking at her, with a few paces between them. It was plain that she did not know him.
How could she know him, he thought bitterly, in the rough blue blouse and coarse clothing and heavy hobnail boots of a Swiss peasant? His hair was shaggy and uncut, and the skin of his face was so peeled and blistered and scorched that his disguise was sufficient to conceal him even from his wife. Yet as he stood there with downcast head, as a devout peasant might have done before the altar, he saw Felicita make a slight but imperious sign to him to advance. She did not take a step toward him, but leaning against the altar rails she waited till he was near to her, within hearing. There Roland paused.
"Felicita," he said, not daring to draw closer to her.
"I am here," she answered, not looking toward him; her large, dark, mournful eyes lifted up to the cross above the altar, before which a lamp was burning, whose light was reflected in her unshed tears.
Neither of them spoke again for a while. It seemed as if there could be nothing said, so great was the anguish of them both. The man who had just died had passed away tranquilly, but they were drinking of a cup more bitter than death. Yet the few persons lingering over their morning devotions before the shrines in the side aisles saw nothing but a stranger looking at the painting over the altar, and a peasant kneeling on the lowest step deep in prayer.
"I come from watching a fellow-man die," he said at last; "would to God it had been myself!"
"Yes!" sighed Felicita, "that would have been best for us all."
"You wish me dead!" he exclaimed, in a tone of anguish.
"For the children's sake," she murmured, still looking away from him; "yes! and for the sake of our name, your father's name, and mine. I thought to bring honor to it, and you have brought flagrant dishonor to it."
"That can never be wiped away," he added.
"Never!" she repeated.
As if exhausted by these passionate words, they fell again into silence. The murmur of whispered prayers was about them, and the faint scent of incense floated under the arched roof. A gleam of morning light, growing stronger, though the sun was still far below the eastern mountains, glittered through a painted window, and threw a glow of color upon them. Roland saw her standing in its many-tinted brightness, but her wan and sorrowful face was not turned to look at him. He had not caught a glance from her yet. How vividly he remembered the first moment his eyes had ever beheld her, standing as she did now on these very altar steps, with uplifted eyes and a sweet seriousness on her young face! It was only a poor village church, but it was the most sacred spot in the whole world to him; for there he had met Felicita and received her image into his inmost heart. His ambition as well as his love had centred in her, the penniless daughter of the late Lord Riversford, an orphan, and dependent upon her father's brother and successor. But to Roland his wife Felicita was immeasurably dearer than the girl Felicita Riversford had been. All the happy days since he had won her, all the satisfied desires, all his successes were centred in her and represented by her. All his crime too.
"I have loved you," he cried, "better than the whole world."
There was no answer by word or look to his passionate words.
"I have loved you," he said, more sadly, "better than God."
"But you have brought me to shame!" she answered; "if I am tracked here—and who can tell that I am not?—and if you are taken and tried and convicted, I shall be the wife of the fraudulent banker and condemned felon, Roland Sefton. And Felix and Hilda will be his children."
"It is true," he groaned; "I could not escape conviction."
He buried his face in his hands, and rested them on the altar-rails. Now his bowed-down head was immediately beneath her eyes, and she looked down upon it with a mournful gaze; it could not have been more mournful if she had been contemplating his dead face lying at rest in his coffin. How was all this shame and misery for him and her to end?
"Felicita," he said, lifting up his head, and meeting the sorrowful farewell expression in her face, "if I could die it would be best for the children and you."
"Yes," she answered, in the sweet, too dearly loved voice he had listened to in happy days.
"I dare not open that door of escape for myself," he went on, "and God does not send death to me. But I see a way, a possible way. I only see it this moment; but whether it be for good or evil I cannot tell."
"Will it save us?" she asked eagerly.
"All of us," he replied. "This stranger, whose corpse I have just left—nobody knows him, and he has no friends to trouble about him—shall I give to him my name, and bury him as myself? Then I shall be dead to all the world, Felicita; dead even to you; but you will be saved. I too shall be safe in the grave, for death covers all sins. Even old Clifford will be satisfied by my death."
"Could it be done?" she asked breathlessly.
"Yes," he said; "if you consent it shall be done. For my own sake I would rather go back to England and deliver myself up to the law I have broken. But you shall decide, my darling. If I return you will be known as the wife of the convict Sefton. Say: shall I be henceforth dead forever to you and my mother and the children? Shall it be a living death for me, and deliverance and safety and honor for you all? You must choose between my infamy or my death."
"It must be," she answered, slowly yet without hesitation, looking away from him to the cross above the altar, "your death."
A shudder ran through her slight frame as she spoke, and thrilled through him as he listened. It seemed to them both as if they stood beside an open grave, on either side one, and parted thus. He stretched out his hand to her, and laid it on her dress, as if appealing for mercy; but she did not turn to him, or look upon him, or open her white lips to utter another word. Then there came more stir and noise in the church, footsteps sounded upon the pavement, and an inquisitive face peeped out of the vestry near the altar where they stood. It was no longer prudent to remain as they were, subject to curiosity and scrutiny. Roland rose from his knees, and without glancing again toward her, he spoke in a low voice of unutterable grief and supplication.
"Let me see you and speak to you once more," he said.
"Once more," she repeated.
"This evening," he continued, "at your hotel."
"Yes," she answered. "I am travelling under Phebe Marlowe's name. Ask for Mrs. Marlowe."
She turned away and walked slowly and feebly down the aisle; and he watched her, as he had watched the light tread of the young girl eleven years ago, passing through alternate sunshine and shadow. There was no sunshine now. Was it possible that so long a time had passed since then? Could it be true that for ten years she had been his wife, and that the tie between them was forever dissolved? From this day he was to be dead to her and to all the world. He was about to pass voluntarily into a condition of death amid life, as utterly bereft of all that had once been his as if the grave had closed over him. Roland Sefton was to exist no more.
Roland Sefton went back to the room in which the corpse of the stranger was now lying. The women were gone, and he turned down the sheet to look at the face of the man who was about to bear his name and the disgrace of his crime into the safe asylum of the grave. It was perfectly calm, with no trace of the night's suffering upon it; there was even a faint vestige of a smile about the mouth, as of one who sleeps well, and has pleasant dreams. He was apparently about Roland's own age, and a description given by strangers would not be such as would lead to any suspicion that there could have been a mistake as to identity. Roland looked long upon it before covering it up again, and then he sat down beside the bed and opened the pocket-book.
There were notes in it worth fifty pounds, but not many papers. There was a memorandum made here and there of the places he had visited, and the last entry was dated the day before at Engstlenalp. Roland knew every step of the road, and for a while he seemed to himself to be this traveller, starting from the little inn, not yet vacated by its peasant landlord, but soon to be left to icy solitude, and taking the narrow path along the Engstlensee, toiling up the Joch pass under the mighty Wendenstöcke and the snowy Titlis, clear of clouds from base to summit yesterday. The traveller must have had a guide with him, some peasant or herdsman probably, as far as the Trübsee Alp; for even in summer the route was difficult to find. The guide had put him on to the path for Engelberg, and left him to make his way along the precipitous slopes of the Pfaffenwand. All this would be discovered when an official inquiry was made into the accident. In the mean time it was necessary to invest this stranger with his own identity.
There were two or three well-worn letters in the pocket-book, but they contained nothing of importance. It seemed true, what the dying man had said, that there was no link of kinship or friendship binding him specially to his fellow-men. Roland opened his own pocket-book, and looked over a letter or two which he had carried about with him, one of them a childish note from Felix, preferring some simple request. His passport was there also, and his mother's portrait and those of the children, over which his eyes brooded with a hungry sorrow in his heart. He looked at them for the last time. But Felicita's portrait he could not bring himself to give up. She would be dead to him, and he to her. In England she would live among her friends as his widow, pitied, and comforted, and beloved. But what would the coming years bring to him? All that would remain to him of the past would be a fading photograph only.
So long he lingered over this mournful conflict that he was at last aroused from it by the entrance of the landlord, and the mayor and other officials, who had come to look at the body of the dead. Roland's pocket-book lay open on the bed, and he was still gazing at the portraits of his children. He raised his sunburnt face as they came in, and rose to meet them.
"This traveller," he said, "gave to me his pocket-book as I watched beside him last night. It is here, containing his passport, a few letters, and fifty pounds in notes, which he told me to keep, but which I wish to give to the commune."
"They must be taken charge of," said the mayor; "but we will look over them first. Did he tell you who he was?"
"The passport discloses that," answered Roland; "he desired only a decent funeral."
"Ah!" said the mayor, taking out the passport, "an English traveller; name Roland Sefton; and these letters, and these portraits—they will be enough for identification."
"He said he had no friends or family in England," pursued Roland, "and there is no address among his letters. He told me he came from India."
"Then there need be no delay about the interment," remarked the mayor, "if he had no family in England, and was just come from India. Bah! we could not keep him till any friends came from India. It is enough. We must make an inquiry; but the corpse cannot be kept above ground. The interment may take place as soon as you please, Monsieur."
"I suppose you will wish for some trifle as payment?" said the landlord, addressing Roland.
"No," he answered, "I only watched by him through the night; and I am but a passing traveller like himself."
"You will assist at the funeral?" he asked.
"If it can be to-morrow," replied Roland; "if not I must go on to Lucerne. But I shall come back to Engelberg. If it be necessary for me to stay, and the commune will pay my expenses, I will stay."
"Not necessary at all," said the mayor; "the accident is too simple, and he has no friends. Why should the commune lose by him?"
"There are the fifty pounds," suggested Roland.
"And there are the expenses!" said the mayor. "No, no. It is not necessary for you to stay; not at all. If you are coming back again to Engelberg it will be all right. You say you are coming back?"
"I am sure to come back to Engelberg," he answered, with gloomy emphasis.
For already Roland began to feel that he, himself, was dead, and a new life, utterly different from the old, was beginning for him. And this new life, beginning here, would often draw him back to its birth-place. There would be an attraction for him here, even in the humble grave where men thought they had buried Roland Sefton. It would be the only link with his former life, and it would draw him to it irresistibly.
"And what is your name and employment, my good fellow?" asked the mayor.
"Jean Merle," he answered promptly. "I am a wood-carver."
The deed he had only thought of an hour ago was accomplished, and there could be no undoing it. This passport and these papers would be forwarded to the embassy at Berne, where doubtless his name was already known as a fugitive criminal. He could not reclaim them, for with them he took up again the burden of his sin. He had condemned himself to a penalty and sacrifice the most complete that man could think of, or put into execution. Roland Sefton was dead, and his wife and children were set free from the degradation he had brought upon them.
He spent the remaining hours of the day in wandering about the forests in the Alpine valley. The autumn fogs and the dense rain-clouds were gathering again. But it was nothing to him that the snowy crests of the surrounding mountains were once more shrouded from view, or that the torrents and waterfalls which he could not see were thundering and roaring along their rocky channels with a vast effluence of waters. He saw and heard no more than the dead man who bore his name. He was insensible to hunger or fatigue. Except for Felicita's presence in the village behind him he would have felt himself in another world; in a beamless and lifeless abyss, where there was no creature like unto himself; only eternal gloom and solitude.
It was quite dark before he passed again through the village on his way to Felicita's hotel. The common light of lamps, and the every-day life of ordinary men and women busy over their evening meal, astonished him, as if he had come from another state of existence. He lingered awhile, looking on as at some extraordinary spectacle. Then he went on to the hotel standing a little out of and above the village.
The place, so crowded in the summer, was quiet enough now. A bright light, however, streamed through the window of the salon, which was uncurtained. He stopped and looked in at Felicita, who was sitting alone by the log fire, with her white forehead resting on her small hand, which partly hid her face. How often had he seen her sitting thus by the fireside at home! But though he stood without in the dark and cold for many minutes, she did not stir; neither hand nor foot moved. At last he grew terrified at this utter immobility, and stepping through the hall he told the landlady that the English lady had business with him. He opened the door, and then Felicita looked up.
Roland advanced a few paces into the gaudy salon, with its mirrors reflecting his and Felicita's figures over and over again, and stood still, at a little distance from her, with his rough cap in his hand. He looked like one of the herdsmen with whom he had been living during the summer. There was no one else in the large room, but the night was peering in through half a dozen great uncurtained windows, which might hold many spectators watching them, as he had watched her a minute ago. She scarcely moved, but the deadly pallor of her face and the dark shining of her tearless eyes fixed upon him made him tremble as if he had been a woman weaker than herself.
"It is done," he said.
"Yes," she answered, "I have been to see him."
There was an accent in her voice, of terror and repugnance, as of one who had witnessed some horrifying sight and was compelled to bear a reluctant testimony to it. Roland himself felt a shock of antipathy at the thought of his wife seeing this unknown corpse bearing his name. He seemed to see her standing beside the dead, and looking down with those beloved eyes upon the strange face, which would dwell for evermore in her memory as well as his. Why had she subjected herself to this needless pang?
"You wished it?" he said. "You consented to my plan?"
"Yes," she answered in the same monotonous tone of reluctant testimony.
"And it was best so, Felicita," he said tenderly; "we have done the dead man no wrong. Remember he was alone, and had no friends to grieve over his strange absence. If it had been otherwise there would have been a terrible sin in our act. But it has set you free; it saves you and my mother and the children. As long as I lived you would have been in peril; but now there is a clear, safe course laid open for you. You will go home to England, where in a few months it will be forgotten that your husband was suspected of crime. Only old Clifford, and Marlowe, and two or three others will remember it. When you have the means, repay those poor people the money I owe them. And take comfort, Felicita. It would have done them no good if I had been taken and convicted; that would not have restored their money. My name then will be clear of all but suspicion, and you will make it a name for our children to inherit."
"And you?" she breathed with lips that scarcely moved.
"I?" he said. "Why, I shall be dead! A man's life is not simply the breath he draws: it is his country, his honor, his home. You are my life, Felicita: you and my mother and Felix and Hilda; the old home where my forefathers dwelt; my townsmen's esteem and good-will; the work I could do, and hoped to do. Losing those I lost my life. I began to die when I first went wrong. The way seemed right in my own eyes, but the end of it was death. I told old Marlowe his money was as safe as in the Bank of England, when I was keeping it in my own hands; but I believed it then. That was the first step; this is the last. Henceforth I am dead."
"But how will you live?" she asked.
"Never fear; Jean Merle will earn his living," he answered. "Let us think of your future, my darling. Nay, let me call you darling once more. My death provides for you, for your marriage-settlement will come into force. You will have to live differently, my Felicita; all the splendor and the luxury I would have surrounded you with must be lost. But there will be enough, and my mother will manage your household well for you. Be kind to my poor mother, and comfort her. And do not let my children grow up with hard thoughts of their father. It will be a painful task to you."
"Yes," she said. "Oh, Roland, we ought not to have done this thing!"
"Yet you chose," he replied.
"Yes; and I should choose it again, though I hate the falsehood," she exclaimed vehemently. "I cannot endure shame. But all our future life will be founded on a lie."
"Let the blame be mine, not yours," he said; "it was my plan, and there is no going back from it now. But tell me about home. How are my children and my mother? They are still at home?"
"No," she answered; "the police watched it day and night, till it grew hateful to me. I shall never enter it again. We went away to the sea-side three months ago, and there our mother and the children are still. But when I get back we shall remove to London."
"To London!" he repeated. "Will you never go home to Riversborough?"
"Never again!" she replied. "I could not live there now; it is a hateful spot to me. Your mother grieves bitterly over leaving it; but even she sees that we can never live there again."
"I shall not even know how to think of you all!" he cried. "You will be living in some strange house, which I can never picture to myself. And the old home will be empty."
"Mr. Clifford is living in it," she said.
He threw up his hands with a gesture of grief and vexation. Whenever his thoughts flew to the old home, the only home he had ever known, it would be only to remember that the man he most dreaded, he who was his most implacable enemy, was dwelling in it. And when would he cease to think of his own birth-place and the birth-place of his children, the home where Felicita had lived? It would be impossible to blot the vivid memory of it from his brain.
"I shall never see it again," he said; "but I should have felt less banished from you if I could have thought of you as still at home. We are about to part forever, Felicita—as fully as if I lay dead down yonder, as men will think I do."
"Yes," she answered, with a mournful stillness.
"Even if we wished to hold any intercourse with each other," he continued, gazing wistfully at her, "it would be dangerous to us both. It is best for us both to be dead to one another."
"It is best," she assented; "only if you were ever in great straits, if you could not earn your living, you might contrive to let me know."
"There is no fear of that," he answered bitterly. "Felicita, you never loved me as I love you."
"No," she said, with the same inexpressible sadness, yet calmness, in her voice and face; "how could I? I was a child when you married me; we were both children. There is such a difference between us. I suppose I should never love any one very much—not as you mean. It is not in my nature. I can live alone, Roland. All of you, even the children, seem very far away from me. But I grieve for you in my inmost soul. If I could undo what you have done I would gladly lay down my life. If I could only undo what we did this morning! The shadow of it is growing darker and darker upon me. And yet it seemed so wise; it seems so still. We shall be safe again, all of us, and we have done that dead man no wrong."
"None," he said.
"But when I think of you," she went on, "how you, still living, will long to know what is befalling us, how the children are growing up, and how your mother is, and how I live, yet never be able to satisfy this longing; how you will have to give us up, and never dare to make a sign; how you will drag on your life from year to year, a poor man among poor, ignorant, stupid men; how I may die, and you not know it, or you may die, and I not know it; I wonder how we could have done what we did this morning."
"Oh, hush, hush, Felicita!" he exclaimed; "I have said all this to myself all this day, until I feel that my punishment is harder than I can bear. Tell me, shall we undo it? Shall I go to the mayor and deliver myself up as the man whose name I have given to the dead? It can be done still; it is not too late. You shall decide again."
"No; I cannot accept disgrace," she answered passionately; "it is an evil thing to do, but it must be done. We must take the consequences. You and I are dead to one another for evermore; but your death is more terrible than mine. I shall grieve over you more than if you were really dead. Why does not God send death to those that desire it? Good-by now forever, Roland. I return to England to act this lie, and you must never, never seek me out as your wife. Promise me that. I would repudiate you if I lay on my death-bed."
"I will never seek you out and bring you to shame," he said; "I promise it faithfully, by my love for you. As I hope ever to obtain pardon, I promise it."
"Then leave me," she cried; "I can bear this no longer. Good-by, Roland."
They were still some paces apart, he with his shaggy mountain cap in his hand standing respectfully at a distance, and she, sitting by the low, open hearth with her white, quiet face turned toward him. All the village might have witnessed their interview through the uncurtained windows. Slowly, almost mechanically, Felicita left her seat and advanced toward him with an outstretched hand. It was cold as ice as he seized it eagerly in his own; the hand of the dead man could not have been colder or more lifeless. He held it fast in a hard, unconscious grip.
"Good-by, my wife," he said; "God bless and keep you!"
"Is there any God?" she sobbed.
But there was a sound at the door, the handle was being turned, and they fell apart guiltily. A maid entered to tell Madame her chamber was prepared, and without another word Felicita walked quickly from the salon, leaving him alone.
He caught a glimpse of her again the next morning as she came down-stairs and entered the little carriage which was to take her down to Stansstad in time to catch the boat to Lucerne. She was starting early, before it was fairly dawn, and he saw her only by the dim light of lamps, which burned but feebly in the chilly damp of the autumn atmosphere. For a little distance he followed the sound of the carriage wheels, but he arrested his own footsteps. For what good was it to pursue one whom he must never find again? She was gone from him forever. He was a young man yet, and she still younger. But for his folly and crime a long and prosperous life might have stretched before them, each year knitting their hearts and souls more closely together; and he had forfeited all. He turned back up the valley broken-hearted.
Later in the day he stood beside the grave of the man who was bearing away his name from disgrace. The funeral had been hurried on, and the stranger was buried in a neglected part of the churchyard, being friendless and a heretic. It was quickly done, and when the few persons who had taken part in it were dispersed, Roland Sefton lingered alone beside the desolate grave.
Felicita hurried homeward night and day without stopping, as if she had been pursued by a deadly enemy. Madame and the children were not at Scarborough, but at a quiet little fishing village on the eastern coast; for Felicita had found Scarborough too gay in the month of August, and her cousins, the Riversfords, having appeared there, she retreated to the quietest spot that could be found. To this village she returned, after being absent little more than a week.
Madame knew nothing of her journey; but the mere fact that Felicita was going away alone had aroused in her the hope that it was connected in some way with Roland. In some vague manner this idea had been communicated to Felix, and both were expecting to see the long-lost father and son come back with her. Roland's prolonged and mysterious absence had been a sore trial to his mother, though her placid and trustful nature had borne it patiently. Surely, she thought, the trial was coming to an end.
Felicita reached their lodgings utterly exhausted and worn out. She was a delicate woman, in no way inured to fatigue, and though she had been insensible to the overstrain of the unbroken journey as she was whirled along railways and passed from station to station, a sense of complete prostration seized upon her as soon as she found herself at home. Day after day she lay in bed, in a darkened room, unwilling to lift her voice above a whisper, waiting in a kind of torpid dread for the intelligence that she knew must soon come.
She had been at home several days, and still there was no news. Was it possible, she asked herself, that this unknown traveller, and his calamitous fate, should pass on into perfect oblivion and leave matters as they were before? For a cloud would hang over her and her children as long as Roland was the object of pursuit. While he was a fugitive criminal, of interest to the police officers of all countries, there was no security for their future. The lie to which she had given a guilty consent was horrible to her, but her morbid dread of shame was more horrible. She had done evil that good might come; but if the good failed, the evil would still remain as a dark stain upon her soul, visible to herself, if to none else.
"I will get up to-day," she said at last, to Madame's great delight. She never ventured to exert any authority over her beautiful and clever daughter-in-law—not even the authority of a mildly expressed wish. She was willing to be to Felicita anything that Felicita pleased—her servant and drudge, her fond mother, or her quiet, attentive companion. Since her return from her mysterious journey she had been very tender to her, as tenderly and gently demonstrative as Felicita would ever permit her to be.
"Have you seen any newspapers lately?" asked Felicita.
"I never read the papers, my love," answered Madame.
"I should like to see to-day'sTimes," said Felicita.
But it was impossible to get it in this village without ordering it beforehand, and Felicita gave up her wish with the listless indifference of an invalid. When the late sun of the November day had risen from behind a heavy bank of clouds she ventured down to the quiet shore. There were no visitors left beside themselves, so there were no curious eyes to scan her white, sad face. For a short time Felix and Hilda played about her; but by and by Madame, thinking she was weary and worried, allured them away to a point where they were still in sight, though out of hearing. The low, cold sun shed its languid and watery rays upon the rocks and creeping tide, and, unnoticed, almost unseen, Felicita could sit there in stillness, gazing out over the chilly and mournful sea. There was something so unutterably sad about Felicita's condition that it awed the simple, cheerful nature of Madame. It was more than illness and exhaustion. The white, unsmiling face, the drooping head, the languor of the thin, long hands, the fathomless sorrow lurking behind her dark eyes—all spoke of a heart-sickness such as Madame had never seen or dreamed of. The children did not cheer their mother. When she saw that, Madame felt that there was nothing to be done but to leave her in the cold solitude she loved.
But as Felicita sat alone on the shore, looking listlessly at the fleeting sails which were passing to and fro upon the sea, she saw afar off the figure of a girl coming swiftly toward her from the village, and before many moments had passed she recognized Phebe Marlowe's face. A great throb of mingled relief and dread made her heart beat violently. Nothing could have brought Phebe away, so far from home, except the news of Roland's death.
The rosy color on Phebe's face was gone, and the brightness of her blue eyes was faded; but there was the same out-looking of a strong, simple, unselfish soul shining through them. As she drew near to Felicita she stretched out her arms with the instinctive gesture of one who was come to comfort and support, and Felicita, with a strange, impulsive feeling that she brought consolation and help, threw herself into them.
"I know it all," said Phebe in a low voice. "Oh, what you must have suffered! He was going to Engelberg to meet you, and you never saw him alive! Oh, why did not God let you meet each other once again? But God loved him. I can never think that God had not forgiven him, for he was grieved because of his sin when I saw him the night he got away. And in all things else he was so good! Oh, how good he was!"
Phebe's tears were falling fast, and her words were choked with sobs. But Felicita's face was hidden against her neck, and she could not see if she was weeping.
"Everybody is talking of him in Riversborough," she went on, "and now they all say how good he always was, and how unlikely it is that he was guilty. They will forget it soon. Those who remember him will think kindly of him, and be grieved for him. But oh, I would give worlds for him to have lived and made amends! If he could only have proved that he had repented! If he could only have outlived it all, and made everybody know that he was really a good man, one whom God had delivered out of sin!"
"It was impossible!" murmured Felicita.
"No, not impossible!" she cried earnestly; "it was not an unpardonable sin. Even if he had gone to prison, as he would, he might have faced the world when he came out again; and if he'd done all the good he could in it, it might have been hard to convince them he was good, but it would never be impossible. If God forgives us, sooner or later our fellow-creatures will forgive us, if we live a true life. I would have stood by him in the face of the world, and you would, and Madame and the children. He would not have been left alone, and it would have ended in every one else coming round to us. Oh, why should he die when you were just going to see each other again!"
Felicita had sunk down again into the chair which had been carried for her to the shore, and Phebe sat down on the sands at her feet. She looked up tearfully into Felicita's wan and shrunken face.
"Did any one ever win back their good name?" asked Felicita with quivering lips.
"Among us they do sometimes," she answered. "I knew a working-man who had been in jail five years, and he became a Christian while he was there, and he came back home to his own village. He was one of the best men I ever knew, and when he died there was such a funeral as had never been seen in the parish church. Why should it not be so? If God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, why shouldn't we forgive? If we are faithful and just, we shall."
"It could never be," said Felicita; "it cannot be the same as if Roland had not been guilty. No one can blot out the past; it is eternal."
"Yes," she replied, covering Felicita's hand with kisses and tears; "but oh, we love him more now than ever. He is gone into the land of thick darkness, and I cannot follow him in my thoughts. It is like a gulf between us and him. Even if he had been farthest away from us in the world—anywhere—we could imagine what he was doing; but we cannot see him or call across the gulf to him. It is all unknown. Only God knows!"
"God!" echoed Felicita; "if there is a God, let Him help me, for I am the most wretched woman on His earth to-day."
"God cannot keep from helping us all," answered Phebe. "He cannot rest while we are wretched. I understand it better than I used to do. I cannot rest myself while the poorest creature about me is in pain that I can help. It is impossible that He should not care. That would be an awful thing to think; that would make His love and pity less than ours. This I know, that God loves every creature He has made. And oh, He must have loved him, though he was suffered to fall over that dreadful precipice, and die before you saw him. It happened before you reached Engelberg?"
"Yes," said Felicita, shivering.
"The papers were sent on to Mr. Clifford," continued Phebe, "and he sent for me to come with him, and see you before the news got into the papers. It will be in to-morrow. But I knew more than he did, and I came on here to speak to you. Shall you tell him you went there to meet him?"
"Oh, no, no!" cried Felicita; "it must never be known, dear Phebe."
"And his mother and the children—they, know nothing?" she said.
"Not a word, and it is you who must tell them, Phebe," she answered. "How could I bear to tell them that he is dead? Never let them speak about it to me; never let his name be mentioned."
"How can I comfort you?" cried Phebe.
"I can never be comforted," she replied despairingly; "but it is like death to hear his name."
The voices of the children coming nearer reached their ears. They had seen from their distant playground another figure sitting close beside Felicita, and their curiosity had led them to approach. Now they recognized Phebe, and a glad shout rang through the air. She bent down hurriedly to kiss Felicita's cold hand once again, and then she rose to meet them, and prevent them from seeing their mother's deep grief.
"I will go and tell them, poor little things!" she said, "and Madame. Oh, what can I do to help you all? Mr. Clifford is at your lodgings, waiting to see you as soon as you can meet him."
She did not stay for an answer, but ran to meet Felix and Hilda; while slowly, and with much guilty shrinking from the coming interview, Felicita went back to the village, where Mr. Clifford was awaiting her.
Roland Sefton's pocket-book, containing his passport and the papers and photographs, had reached Mr. Clifford the day before, with an official intimation of his death from the consulate at Berne. The identification was complete, and the inquiry into the fatal accident had resulted in blame to no one, as the traveller had declined the services of a trustworthy guide from Meirengen to Engelberg. This was precisely what Roland would have done, the whole country being as familiar to him as to any native. No doubt crossed Mr. Clifford's mind that his old friend's son had met his untimely end while a fugitive from his country, from dread chiefly of his own implacable sense of justice.
Roland was dead, but justice was not satisfied. Mr. Clifford knew perfectly well that the news of his tragic fate would create an immediate and complete reaction in his favor among his fellow-townsmen. Hitherto he had been only vaguely accused of crime, which his absence chiefly had tended to fasten upon him; but as there had been no opportunity of bringing him to public trial, it would soon be believed that there was no evidence against him. Many persons thought already that the junior partner was away either on pleasure or business, because the senior had taken his place. Only a few, himself and the three or four obscure people who actually suffered from his defalcations, would recollect them. By and by Roland Sefton would be remembered as the kind, benevolent, even Christian man, whose life, so soon cut short, had been full of promise for his native town.
Mr. Clifford himself felt a pang of regret and sorrow when he heard the news. Years ago he had loved the frank, warm-hearted boy, his friend's only child, with a very true affection. He had an only boy, too, older than Roland by a few years, and these two were to succeed their fathers in the long-established firm. Then came the bitter disappointment in his own son. But since he had suffered his son to die in his sins, reaping the full harvest of his transgressions, he had felt that any forgiveness shown to other offenders would be a cruel injustice to him. Yet as Roland's passport and the children's photographs lay before him on his office desk—the same desk at which Roland was sitting but a few months ago, a man in the full vigor of life, with an apparently prosperous and happy future lying before him—Mr. Clifford for a moment or two yielded to the vain wish that Roland had thrown himself on his mercy. Yet his conscience told him that he would have refused to show him mercy, and his regret was mingled with a tinge of remorse.
His first care was to prevent the intelligence reaching Felicita by means of the newspapers, and he sent immediately for Phebe Marlowe to accompany him to the sea-side, in order to break the news to her. Phebe's excessive grief astonished him, though she had so much natural control over herself, in her sympathy for others, as to relieve him of all anxiety on her account, and to keep Felicita's secret journey from being suspected. But to Phebe, Roland's death was fraught with more tragic circumstances than any one else could conceive. He was hastening to meet his wife, possibly with some scheme for their future, which might have hope and deliverance in it, when this calamity hurried him away into the awful, unknown world, on whose threshold we are ever standing. But for her ardent sympathy for Felicita, Phebe would have been herself overwhelmed. It was the thought of her, with this terrible and secret addition to her sorrow, which bore her through the long journey and helped her to meet Felicita with something like calmness.
From the bay-window of the lodging-house Mr. Clifford watched Felicita coming slowly and feebly toward the house. So fragile she looked, so unutterably sorrow-stricken, that a rush of compassion and pity opened the floodgates of his heart, and suffused his stern eyes with tears. Doubtless Phebe had told her all. Yet she was coming alone to meet him, her husband's enemy and persecutor, as if he was a friend. He would be a friend such as she had never known before. There would be no vain weeping, no womanish wailing in her; her grief was too deep for that. And he would respect it; he would spare her all the pain he could. At this moment, if Roland could have risen from the dead, he would have clasped him in his arms, and wept upon his neck, as the father welcomed his prodigal son.
Felicita did not speak when she entered the room, but looked at him with a steadfastness in her dark sad eyes which again dimmed his with tears. Almost fondly he pressed her hands in his, and led her to a chair, and placed another near enough for him to speak to her in a low and quiet voice, altogether unlike the awful tones he used in the bank, which made the clerks quail before him. His hand trembled as he took the little photographs out of their envelope, so worn and stained, and laid them before her. She looked at them with tearless eyes, and let them fall upon her lap as things of little interest.
"Phebe has told you?" he said pitifully.
"Yes," she whispered.
"You did not know before?" he said.
She shook her head mutely. A long, intricate path of falsehood stretched before her, from which she could not turn aside, a maze in which she was already entangled and lost; but her lips were reluctant to utter the first words of untruth.
"These were found on him," he continued, pointing to the children's portraits. "I am afraid we cannot doubt the facts. The description is like him, and his papers and passport place the identity beyond a question. But I have dispatched a trusty messenger to Switzerland to make further inquiries, and ascertain every particular."
"Will he see him?" asked Felicita with a start of terror.
"No, my poor girl," said the old banker; "it happened ten days ago, and he was buried, so they say, almost immediately. But I wish to have a memorial stone put over his grave, that if any of us, I or you, or the children, should wish to visit it at some future time, it should not be past finding."
He spoke tenderly and sorrowfully, as if he imagined himself standing beside the grave of his old friend's son, recalling the past and grieving over it. His own boy was buried in some unknown commonfossein Paris. Felicita looked up at him with her strange, steady, searching gaze.
"You have forgiven him?" she said.
"Yes," he answered; "men always forgive the dead."
"Oh, Roland! Roland!" she cried, wringing her hands for an instant. Then, resuming her composure, she gazed quietly into his pitiful face again.
"It is kind of you to think of his grave," she said; "but I shall never go there, nor shall the children go, if I can help it."
"Hush!" he answered imperatively. "You, then, have not forgiven him? Yet I forgive him, who have lost most."
"You!" she exclaimed, with a sudden outburst of passion. "You have lost a few thousand pounds; but what have I lost? My faith and trust in goodness; my husband's love and care. I have lost him, the father of my children, my home—nay, even myself. I am no longer what I thought I was. That is what Roland robs me of; and you say it is more for you to forgive than for me!"
He had never seen her thus moved and vehement, and he shrank a little from it, as most men shrink from any unusual exhibition of emotion. Though she had not wept, he was afraid now of a scene, and hastened to speak of another subject.
"Well, well," he said soothingly, "that is all true, no doubt. Poor Roland! But I am your husband's executor and the children's guardian, conjointly with yourself. It will be proved immediately, and I shall take charge of your affairs."
"I thought," she answered, in a hesitating manner, "that there was nothing left, that we were ruined and had nothing. Why did Roland take your bonds if he had money? Why did he defraud other people? There cannot be any money coming to me and the children, and why should the will be proved?"
"My dear girl," he said, "you know nothing about affairs. Your uncle, Lord Riversford, would never have allowed Roland to marry you without a settlement, and a good one too. His death was the best thing for you. It saves you from poverty and dependence, as well as from disgrace. I hardly know yet how matters stand, but you will have little less than a thousand a year. You need not trouble yourself about these matters; leave them to me and Lord Riversford. He called upon me yesterday, as soon as he heard the sad news, and we arranged everything."
Felicita did not hear his words distinctly, though her brain caught their meaning vaguely. She was picturing herself free from poverty, surrounded with most of her accustomed luxuries, and shielded from every hardship, while Roland was homeless and penniless, cast upon his own resources to earn his daily bread and a shelter for every night, with nothing but a poor handicraft to support him. She had not expected this contrast in their lot. Poverty had seemed to lie before her also. But now how often would his image start up before her as she had seen him last, gaunt and haggard, with rough hair and blistered skin serving him as a mask, clad in coarse clothing, already worn and ragged, not at rest in the grave, as every one but herself believed him, but dragging out a miserable and sordid existence year by year, with no hopes for the future, and no happy memories of the past!
"Mr. Clifford," she said, when the sound of his voice humming in her ears had ceased, "I shall not take one farthing of any money settled upon me by my husband. I have no right to it. Let it go to pay the sums he appropriated. I will maintain myself and my children."
"You cannot do it," he replied; "you do not know what you are talking about. The money is settled upon your children; all that belongs to you is the yearly income from it."
"That, at least, I will never touch," she said earnestly; "it shall be set aside to repay those just claims. When all those are paid I will take it, but not before. Yours is the largest, and I will take means to find out the others. With my mother's two hundred a year and what I earn myself, we shall keep the children. Lord Riversford has no control over me. I am a woman, and I will act for myself."