* * * * *As the dawn broke, Nora stood at the prow of the vessel that was bearing her homewards, and welcomed the white bulwarks of England as they rose in majestic sovereignty out of the morning mists. Her eyes filled. She could have stretched out her arms in her pride and joy, and the whole world that she had left behind had vanished like some delirious dream.Miles away, in a quiet field on the outskirts of Berlin, two men faced each other at ten paces' distance, and awaited the signal. It was given, and two puffs of smoke issued from the outstretched weapons, and curled slowly upwards into the frosty air. One of the men reeled and fell, and lay quiet, with his face in the grass.They picked him up tenderly, and as they bore him thence his fading eyes opened."Do—not frighten her," he whispered. "Don't let her think that it is anything—serious——"In the same instant, Nora had turned joyously to the man at her side."Oh, thank God!" she cried. "Thank God, I am home at last!"Thus she returned to her own country and her own people, and a sea rolled between her and all that had been.END OF BOOK II.BOOK IIITHE BRIDGECHAPTER IHOMEMrs. Ingestre's bed had been drawn to the window, so that she could look out on to the drear landscape of snow-covered fields and catch the few rays of sunshine that here and there broke through the grey monotony of sky. It was her last stand against the shadow which was soon to blot out the whole world for ever from her eyes. There she had lain day after day, and with her imagination brightened the bleak outlook with the summer sunshine and the green trees which she was to see no more. There she had written cheery, hopeful letters to her daughter and had received cheery, hopeful letters in return. There mother and daughter, clasped in each other's arms, acknowledged that the letters had been no more than merciful lies, that the hope they had expressed had been disguised despair."How blind I must have been!" Mrs. Ingestre thought, as Nora, kneeling at her bedside, poured out the story of her short married happiness. "How blind not to have seen and understood!""How heartless, how self-absorbed I was not to have known!" Nora reproached herself, as she looked into the well-loved face on which death had set his unmistakable seal.But it was not of death which they spoke. It was as though the elder woman's life was already closed, as though she already stood afar off and saw the world and life with other and clearer eyes. There was no regret or fear in her attitude towards the unknown future, and that calm, high confidence inspired Nora with a curious awe which hushed all tears and passionate grief. She looked up to her mother as to a being high above all earthly sorrow, yet linked to the world by an infinite, all-comprehending pity. That pity was Nora's one refuge. The wild delight which had borne her up through that long night journey had died almost in the same hour that her father had clasped her in his arms and killed the fatted calf in honour of the long-despaired-of prodigal. Something like an icy disappointment had crept into her aching heart as she had woken the first morning in her girlhood's room and realised that this was her home, the home she had longed and prayed for, in which she had chosen to pass her life. She had laughed scorn at herself and had greeted the hideous church-spire which peered over the leafless trees with a seeming new-born affection, and to her father and brother she maintained that same seeming of delight and thankfulness. Before her mother she had broken down for a moment, and the stormy sobs which had shaken her had not wholly been the expression of a pent-up longing. She had recovered herself almost at once, the grave, clear eyes of the dying woman warning her, perhaps, that her secret was no longer entirely hidden, and now she knelt and told her story as she would have told it twenty-four hours before, with bitterness, resentment, and self-pity."It was all a dreadful mistake, mother," she said. "I believed I loved him enough to forget whom and what I was, but I could not. Every hour showed me that I was a stranger, and would always remain a stranger. I could not grow to love his people, and they hated me. You don't know how they hated me. When trouble began and there came the first rumour of war, they did not let a chance pass to hurt me. There were moments when I felt I could bear it no longer, but I held out until that night. Then—when I was in that crowd, and heard them cheering, and knew that it was against me—against us—I knew that I could never go back, that the strain of pretending or trying to pretend would send me mad. And oh, I longed so for my home and for you all! It was just as though I were in some frightful exile among enemies——""So you escaped," Mrs. Ingestre interrupted gently. "It was natural, and yet——"Nora looked into her mother's face, and wondered at the depth of pity which the low voice had betrayed."And yet——?" she asked."I was thinking of Wolff," Mrs. Ingestre said. "He must have suffered terribly.""Wolff!" The name burst almost angrily from Nora's lips. "How should he have suffered? Men of his stamp do not suffer. They have no room in their lives for such a feeling. Do you know—after that ball, when he had practically thrown Miles out of the house, when he knew that I was miserable, broken-hearted, he left me without a word, and worked with his door locked between us. He cared nothing—nothing—only for his ambition and himself. They are all like that, and their wives are just their servants, who must be satisfied with whatever is left over for them.Icould not stand it. It was like living with some piece of machinery——""Nora, he is your husband, and you loved him!"Nora sprang to her feet. The reproach had stung her, the more so because at the bottom she knew that her indignation was feigned. The panic and delirium of that night was over, and left her terribly calm, terribly cold, terribly clear as to what she had done."I did love him," she said—"or at least I thought I did. It is all the same thing. I was carried off my feet by the strangeness and newness of it all. How should I have known then what it meant to leave one's country and one's people? Leave them! If that had been all! But to go against them, to have to forget that one had ever loved them!"She was trying to rouse herself to those feelings which had been the cause of all her past misery and whose crisis had brought about the final desperate action. She was trying to rouse in her mother sympathy for those feelings, and it goaded her to know that both efforts failed. Mrs. Ingestre was gazing out of the window, and her pale face was still grave and pitiful."You see things with your own eyes, my Nora," she said, with a faint, wistful smile. "I see them from a long way off, and with eyes that suffering has cleared from all prejudice and hatred. And then—I was very fond of Wolff."Nora turned away, her small hands clenched."That—that means I have done wrong?" she said almost fiercely."Have I blamed you?""No, but——""I can have pity for both, Nora. I can see that you had much to bear—perhaps more than was tolerable for one so young and headstrong. But I can see Wolff's side too. I can see him come home that night and find you gone——"She stopped as though her imagination had led her before a sorrow for which she found no words, and Nora too was silent. Profoundly embittered and disappointed, she stood looking at the still beautiful face of the woman in whose sympathy she had had implicit trust. Was, then, everything to fail her, even in her home, the home which she had seen in her exile's dreams? Was she to stand alone? Was there no one who would understand her and all that she had endured?"When Miles believed that war had broken out he would not stay an hour longer," she said at last, and her voice had a defiant note. "He could not bear to be away from his own country. Why should I, because I am a woman, feel less than he?""Because you are a woman, and because you feel more, the greater sacrifice is asked of you," was the quiet answer. "In this life there is always some one who must bring the sacrifice, and it is always the one who feels deepest and loves most. That is why it is ordained that women should suffer for their children, and often for their husbands. It seems at first sight unjust. It is really the greatest compliment which God and Nature can pay us.""And I am unworthy of that compliment?" Nora demanded hotly."You will go back, Nora.""To my husband? Never." For the first time she spoke with real conviction, with an almost despairing conviction, "That is impossible. You do not know how impossible. Even if I would, Wolff would not take me back. He said so himself. I had to choose once and for all, and I have chosen. And, besides, there are the others—the people I know; stiff, straitlaced people who would never understand and never forgive.""Nevertheless, when the war is over you will go back," Mrs. Ingestre persisted steadily. "You will go back and bravely take up the work which lies before you—the work of reconciliation. You will fight the unhappy influence of the narrow-hearted fools and braggarts who have helped to bring catastrophe in your life and upon whole nations. You will retain your independence, your strength, your character; but in opening your heart to the goodness and strength in others you will bind them to you as no weak surrender could ever have done; you will win a greater, nobler victory than any victory won with the blood of men; you will build a bridge between Wolff's heart and yours; you will help build the bridge between the country of your birth and the country of your adoption!"Her voice rang triumphant, prophetic. For one brief moment Mrs. Ingestre, dying though she was, called back her lost youth and rose to the heights of youth's hope and faith.Nora took a deep breath."What can I do—a woman against thousands?" she demanded."Your best—your duty.""I have tried, and I have failed. I have no power to build the bridge——"Her mother's eyes rested on her face, and in their depths there was a serene confidence."God has given you the power," she said gently. "God has given you an instrument which cannot fail you. My Nora"—her voice failed her an instant—"a little child shall lead them"—she finished from afar off.Nora covered her face with her hands."It is too late," she said huskily. "Not even that can help me now."Her mother made no answer. She lay still with closed eyes, and a peaceful smile smoothed away the lines of pain from the sweet mouth. She was so quiet and the smile was so unchanging, so full of an almost unearthly wisdom, that every protest died in Nora's heart. She crept nearer to the bedside, awe-struck and afraid, as though already the curtain had fallen which was to divide them in the future life."Mother!" she whispered faintly.The serene eyes opened, the smile became infinitely tender."My little girl—leave me now. I am so tired, so weary. I shall be glad to sleep. Remember what I said. Kiss me."Nora obeyed. For one instant she lay like a child in the feeble arms, overwhelmed by a frightful forewarning of a pain she was yet to know in all its intensity."Good night, my darling," Mrs. Ingestre whispered.Nora crept softly away. She thought that her mother had spoken from amidst her dreams and had forgotten that it was still daylight. Yet the tender farewell haunted her as she went downstairs, and it haunted her long afterwards, when the speaker's face was obscured in the shadows of memory.She found her father in the old familiar dining-room, waiting for her. The months had made his shoulders more stooping, his manner feebler, more helpless. He looked so really wretched that she forgot her own grief and put her arms about him and kissed him."What is she doing?" he whispered, as though they stood in the invalid's room. "Is she asleep?"Nora nodded."Yes; I think so. Our talking made her very tired."A groan escaped from the man's quivering lips."The doctor said we must be prepared any moment for the worst," he said. "It is awful—I can scarcely bring myself to believe that it is God's will. How can I live without her?""We must help each other. And we must make the last days happy.""Yes, yes; we must try," he agreed, beginning to pace restlessly backwards and forwards. "We must make her happy. Nora——" He stopped and looked piteously at her over his spectacles. "Nora, you think she was happy?""Happy?" she echoed. Somehow, the thought of her mother's happiness had scarcely ever occurred to her."I mean—I have been thinking, since I knew that we were to lose her, that she would have been happier in another sort of life—that I did not think enough about her: I was always so busy with the poor and the parish. It is perhaps foolish of me. A man of sensitive conscience is liable to unreasonable remorse. I should be glad—I should be easier in my mind if you gave me your opinion.""Mother never complained," Nora said slowly.He nodded, as though her words had confirmed his protests against his own self-reproach."No; she never complained," he said, with a sigh of satisfaction. For a moment he was silent, then he turned to her again. "I cannot tell you how glad I am that you are here," he went on. "Weeks ago, when your mother became so ill, I wanted to send for you both—you and Miles—but she would not let me. Miles worried her, and she did not want your first months of married life overshadowed. Those were her very words. It seems almost providential that this war should have brought you home in time.""What news is there?" she asked quickly. "Is it really declared at last?""Surely, surely!" her father said. "The rumour was only a little in advance. It must come to war; there is no possible alternative. We have gone too far to draw back. But there is the squire, and Miles with him. Probably they are bringing the news."He went to the French window and threw it open, so that the new-comers could come in straight from the garden. Nora hung back, though her pulses were beating with excitement. The news that the declaration had been a false alarm, picked up with a reckless haste by Miles—perhaps for his own reasons—had not shaken her from her purpose. Arnold had assured her that it was only a question of hours before the rumour became truth, and she had believed him. But there had been a strange delay, a strange hush; there had been a talk of "negotiations," and it had made her afraid. She did not know of what she was afraid—whether it was of the war or of peace. She only knew that the uncertainty was unbearable. As she saw the squire, she knew that, one way or the other, the die was cast. Fury and indignation were written on every feature of the big, clean-shaven face; the small eyes, sunken under the bushy brows, glistened like two dangerous points of fire; the lips were compressed till they were almost colourless.For a moment he stood in the narrow doorway, his huge shoulders spreading from side to side, glaring into the room as though he sought his deadliest enemy. Then, as he saw the unspoken question with which the occupants greeted him, he nodded and, entering, flung his riding-crop on to the table with a loud, ringing curse.The Rev. John glanced anxiously at the ceiling, as though he thought his wife might have heard, and the squire, catching the movement, hastened to apologise."'Pon my word, I didn't mean to make such an infernal row," he said. "If I hadn't done something of the sort I should have had a fit. It's enough to send a man down into his grave with disgust. It's enough to make a man shake the dust off his boots and—and——" He stopped, stuttering with passion, and the Rev. John turned involuntarily to Miles, who had followed the squire into the room and was standing with his hands in his pockets, gazing sulkily at the floor."We've thrown up the sponge," he said, as though he knew he had been appealed to. "We've eaten humble pie, and the war's off. That's all.""Yes, that's all!" the squire burst out. "An English Fashoda—that's all! We're the laughing-stock of Europe with our threats and demands, and then this d——d surrender. They call it a compromise. It's not what I call it. We've just licked their dirty boots—and I'd like to see every man-jack of the Government hanged and quartered!"He was almost unintelligible in his fury, and the Rev. John made a mild gesture of protest."As a man of peace, I must rejoice," he said."As an Englishman, I curse!" the squire retorted, shaking his fist in the air. "It was a cowardly thing to do. We were ready and waiting for war. Every man of us had put his best foot forward. All my young fellows were learning to shoot and ride—I spent a small fortune on 'em; and now, what's the good? Their time and my money thrown clean away, and the humiliation of it all into the bargain! And to think we might have thrashed those confounded ruffians and settled them once and for all!"He paced up and down, grinding his teeth, and Nora's eyes followed him with a critical wonder. By a swift turn of the imagination, she was again in that huge crowd, watching company after company of trained men as they tramped past in stern, resolute silence. Was it possible that this great blundering squire could talk of thrashing that mighty force with men who were learning to shoot and ride? Was it possible that she had ever thought as he thought?He stopped in front of her, with his legs apart, and fixed her with a fierce, choleric stare."Come now, Miss Nora," he said, "you have been out there and know the blackguards. You must have hated 'em pretty well to have thrown up everything and come home?"Something like an electric shock passed through Nora's body."I—hate them?" she stammered."Yes; Miles has been telling me the whole story. No offence meant, of course; but between such old friends as you and I, it was a d——d mistake to have married that foreign fellow. I always said so, didn't I, Parson?"The Rev. John sighed resignedly."I said so myself," he answered; "but they were so determined that I could do nothing. It was a terrible blow to me.""It made me sick when I was there," Miles interposed viciously, "to think that I had to be civil to those boors because my sister had married one of them. I tell you, I blessed the war. It gave one the chance to pay back.""You! What couldyouhave done?"The question came from Nora, and her voice sounded curiously unsteady.Miles nodded."I could have done a lot more than you think, my dear sister," he said pointedly. "I could have put more than one spoke in your fine baron's wheel if I had chosen. And glad I should have been to have done it—swaggering bully that he was!""Miles—you forget—you are speaking of my husband!"She was leaning a little forward. Her cheeks were hot and her eyes alight with a passion which should have warned him. But Miles merely laughed."Your husband? My dear girl, I expect he has divorced you by now as a runaway and I don't know what else besides. They are pretty summary with that sort of thing in the Fatherland. Imagine"—he turned to the squire—"they treat their women-folk like underpaid servants. The fine gentlemen go about in their many-coloured coats, and the wives can patch together what they can on nothing a year. Poor wretches!""They don't mind," Nora put in sharply."It wouldn't make much difference if they did. And you needn't take up the cudgels like that! You grumbled enough that time Wolff said you couldn't have a new dress for the Hulsons' ball!""He gave it me," she retorted, in the same tone of repressed irritation."Yes; after you had worried enough. But I doubt very much if you would have got it if I hadn't been there to back you up. And the insolence of those fellows! He as good as called Arnold and me a pack of cowards because we wouldn't have anything to do with their idiotic duelling. As though we didn't know what a farce it all was! Whew! I am glad we are both well out of it, and I wish to goodness we could have given them a lesson they would not have forgotten in a hurry.""A bully is always a coward," the Rev. John said sententiously. "I have always heard those Prussians were terrible bullies.""I should think they are!" Miles agreed. "To hear my dear brother-in-law talk, one would have supposed that I was a raw recruit, or some inferior beast. I held my tongue for Nora's sake, but I tell you, there were moments——" He clenched his fist significantly, and Nora broke into a short angry laugh. "You were always a model of diplomacy, Miles," she said. Her tone was contemptuous, but her brother chose to take her words literally, and the other two were too absorbed to notice her."And that," said the squire furiously, "is the people we have kow-towed to—a lot of swaggering braggarts who don't know what to do with themselves for conceit. This comes of all our rubbishy peace-loving notions! The world only gives us credit for being afraid!"He went on explosively tirading, but Nora no longer listened. She was thinking of her mother's words and wondering if these then were the narrow-hearted fools and braggarts against whom she was to struggle. And in that moment the struggle began in her own heart. She went to the window and tried to shut her ears against all that was going on about her. She tried to understand herself and the strange, conflicting emotions which had come to life in the last few minutes. Everything that the squire and her brother had said goaded her to a hot retort. She felt herself quivering with indignation—because they were abusing a people she hated, the man whom she had deserted because she no longer loved him! Shewantedto ratify every word they said; she told herself that she had the right to do so, that it was all true; and yet her whole spirit rose in arms against their attack. What was worse, she felt a vague antipathy for these three men. She thought the squire coarse and arrogant; his entry and his greeting to her had been rough and without the respect to which she was accustomed. And why could Miles do nothing without his hands in his pockets? Why, when he sat down, had he to be either nursing his leg or "slouching"? Why was her father so weak and fussy-looking? And then, to her horror, Wolff stood before her eyes. Was it a feeling of pride which crept over her, pride in his upright bearing and dignity?Hehad never been rough or rude to her. His courtesy to her and all women had been unvarying. She turned quickly away, trying to stop her own thoughts. The squire was standing in his favourite attitude, with his legs wide apart, still tirading impartially against the German people and the English Government, who refused to wipe them off the face of the earth. Miles had collapsed into the most comfortable arm-chair, his head thrown back, his hands plunged deep in his pockets. The Rev. John stood between them, a picture of helpless dejection. It seemed to Nora that they had each taken up the attitude in which she hated them most. Hated! It was the word her thoughts had uttered. It could not be recalled. If she hated them—why, then, she had lost everything: her husband, her people, her own nationality! Why, then, she was nothing, she belonged to no one, no link of love bound her to any living being. Only her mother was left—her mother and that one other being the knowledge of whose existence had come too late to save her.In the same moment that her full misery broke upon Nora some one tapped at the door and, without awaiting an answer, a pale, terrified-looking servant rushed in."If you please, sir," she stammered, "will you come at once? The mistress is—asleep—and we cannot wake her——"The Rev. John uttered a smothered cry, and without a word to his guest hurried from the room. Miles followed him. But Nora remained quietly by the window and took no notice of the squire as, with an awkwardly expressed hope that "it would be all right," he left her to herself.She knew what had happened. Her mother had bidden her good night, and night had come. She was alone—in the whole world alone and friendless.CHAPTER IIEXILEDThere is only one sorrow in life which is really great, and that is the loss of those we love. The other sorrows seem great so long as we have been spared the hardest blow which life can deal us, and then we understand that, after all, they were very petty and that if we had chosen we could have borne them patiently, even cheerfully. Loss of health, loss of wealth, loss of position—they are all bad in their way, and as a rule we make the worst we can of them; but not till we have to bear themalone, without the support of some familiar, loving hand, have we the right to cry out that we can endure no more.And for the first time in her life Nora knew loneliness—not the loneliness which she had felt in her husband's home and amongst her husband's people, for that had been temporary, a state which could, if necessary, be overcome by a return to those whom she had left of her own free-will and whose love and sympathy she could still claim.Thisloneliness was final, unbridgeable. Death had raised up a wall between her and all return. The one being whose hand could have comforted her, in whose arms she could have found peace and rest, had passed beyond recall, and it was in vain that, in a childish agony of grief, she flung herself down by her mother's sofa and pleaded with the dead not to leave her comfortless. There was no answer. The patient, noble woman who had lain there day after day without complaint, watching the slow, painful fulfilment of her destiny, had gone and would come no more. She had gained her freedom. Even in her own stormy sorrow Nora realised so much—that her mother was free and that her life had been a long, bitter imprisonment, to which it would have been cruel to recall her. She had gone willingly, passing out of a sphere in which she had always been an exile, and taking with her the last—perhaps the only link which had ever bound Nora to her home. In those hours when Nora had hated the stuffy little flat and had longed for the scent of the home flowers, it had always been of her mother's garden which she had thought; when she had seen the picture of the Vicarage rise before her eyes it had always been her mother's room which had stood out clearest, which had tempted her by the tenderest recollections. And now that her mother had gone, that home had ceased to be her home. The flowers were dead in the garden, the rooms empty of the old haunting charm, the glamour which her exile's memory had cast about her old life became dull and faded. She saw now an ugly red-brick building, with dreary, silent rooms, and people with whom she had never been in sympathy save in her imagination. This last was the bitterest disappointment of all. In her anger against Wolff she had expected and believed so much of these "home people," and they had, after all, failed her.As she sat alone in the sad, empty room, she felt that those five days in England had taken from her not only the dearest hope but the last illusion. Her mother had said, "You do not belong here," and it was true. She was an exile in this narrow little world, and between her father and herself there was an insurmountable barrier of taste and thought. It had always been there, just as, like her mother, she had always been an exile, but in her girlhood's days it had been less pronounced, less clearly defined. Now that she had had experience in another world, she could no longer bear the trammels of her father's conventional prejudices. She had hated and despised her mode of life at Wolff's side; she began to see, though dimly, that it had had at least its great moments, that it was at least inspired by a great idea worthy of the sacrifices it demanded. Here there was no sacrifice and no idea—only vegetation, and her companion was not even a useful machine. He was a weak muddler, and his world was a little village which muddled along in a muddle-loving country and believed great things of itself and its institutions. Just as Nora had found the squire ridiculous with his two-week soldiers, so her father irritated her with his mingled piety, pusillanimity, and timid self-satisfaction. Not even their common grief had brought them together. They had stood wordless by their dead, and when the Rev. John had seemed about to speak, she had fled from him, dreading that his words might destroy the impression which the serene sleeper had made upon her mind. Since then they had hardly spoken, and Miles had wandered between them like a sullen, dissatisfied ghost. Somehow, he felt that his influence over Nora was at an end, that from the moment her feet had touched her native soil she had turned from him and his explanations with something like repugnance. He did not trouble to seek the reason—indeed, she could have given him none; but the shadow between them threw Nora back into even deeper loneliness.And the wonder which had come into her life—the miracle which had been revealed to her in her mother's eyes? She only knew that its revelation had come too late. Though all that was best and noblest in her stirred as if beneath some divine touch, she felt none of the exultation, none of the sanctified happiness which might have been hers. The gift which was to come to her was like a golden link in a broken chain, like a jewel without setting—beautiful but imperfect. She was indeed an exile and bore the exile's curse.Thus, when the first tempest of grief had passed she faced the future with the first fear turned to conviction. She had lost everything, even to her nationality. Those few months had been sufficient to imbue her, without her knowledge, with ideas and principles which made her a stranger in her own land. She could no longer admire without reservation; at every turn she was forced to compare and criticise with the same sharpness as she had compared and criticised in her German home, and a word against the people to whom she still theoretically belonged was sufficient to arouse the same indignation and resentment. Poor Nora! It was a bitter self-revelation which she had to face, and the only being who could have helped her in this conflict between the dual affections had been laid only a few hours before in the dreary churchyard whose walls she could distinguish through the leafless trees. The sight of those walls and the red spire of the church awakened her grief to its first intensity. She sprang up from her place by the empty sofa and hurried out of the room and out of the house. On her way she passed her father's room. The door stood open, and she saw him seated by the table, with his face buried in his hands. She knew that he was crying, but she shrank swiftly away, with the horrible conviction that she despised him. She wondered if Wolff had cried when he had returned and found that she had left him. She felt sure that he had gone on working, and the picture which rose before her fancy of a strong, broad-shouldered man bent over his maps and plans in unswervable devotion caused her a strange sensation of relief.It was already late afternoon as she left the village behind her. She had no definite goal save the one to be alone, and beyond the range of prying, curious eyes, and almost unconsciously she chose the path over the fields where, months before, she had gone to meet Robert Arnold. Then it had been late summer, and it was now winter, but so vividly did the scene recur to her that when a tall, well-known figure strode out of the mists towards her, she could have believed that all the preceding months, with their condensed history of bewildering change, had been no more than an hallucination and that she was once more Nora Ingestre, setting out to learn the mysteries of her own heart. But the next instant her hand was taken, and she was looking into a familiar face which was yet so altered that she would have known alone from its lines of care and grief that time had moved on, bringing with him his inevitable burden."Robert!" she cried. She saw his look of pain, and wondered at it. She did not know that he, too, had drawn the same comparison between then and now, and had been shocked by the change in the face which so short a time ago had been that of a girl—nay, almost of a child."Poor little Nora!" he said under his breath. "Poor little Nora!"She lifted her hand as though to stop all words of commiseration, and he turned quietly and walked at her side. He understood that he was helpless, that he could do nothing to comfort her in her grief, and yet he felt, too, that she was glad of his presence and silent sympathy.All at once she herself broke the silence, and her voice, save that it was intensely weary, sounded untroubled and calm."I did not know you were here," she said. "I thought you were with your regiment.""I have my Christmas leave," he answered. "They have no special need of me."There was a bitterness in his tone and words which she understood. She looked at him, and saw that he was frowning as though at some painful reflection."There will be no fighting?" she asked."No, none. We have given in. I suppose"—he controlled his voice with an effort—"I suppose we had to.""Had to?" she echoed."We were not ready," he said between his teeth. "Nothing was ready. I could never have believed it was possible had I not seen it with my own eyes. If there had been a war, it would have been a repetition of 1870, with London for a Sedan, and they knew it. No horses, reduced regiments, a crowd of half-trained men pitted against a nation which has been ready for war any day in the last years! The thing was obvious.""You were so sure," she said dully. "Everybody was so sure.""No one knew until the test came," he answered. "The outside of things was well enough, and there were plenty of able statesmen and generals to tell us that we had never been better prepared. We like listening to that sort of talk, and we like believing it. A belief like that is so comforting. It frees us from all sacrifice—all duty. 'When the call comes, we shall answer to it,' is our patriotic motto. 'An Englishman is worth three foreigners.' And then, when the call comes, a handful of half-trained youths who cannot stand a day's march, who can scarcely ride, scarcely shoot, is all that we have to show for our boasting." He clenched his fist with a movement of angry despair. "It's all wrong, Nora, all wrong! We have grown too easy-going, too fond of our smooth comfort. Even if we knew that our national existence were threatened, we should not rouse ourselves. We should vote for a few more Dreadnoughts and make a great outcry and bang the Party drum with talk. We think, because we have the money, that things can't go far wrong—we have won before, so we think there is a kind of lucky star to save us, however little we have deserved success. We can't see that the world has changed, that we have to face a race that has all our virtues in their youth and strength—all our tenacity, all our bulldog purpose, all our old stoicism; and we—God knows! We never forget our grand heritage; we never forget our forefathers nor the glory they won for us. But we forget to honour them with our own worthiness. How will it all end?""Whether it be in peace or in war, surely only the fittest can win," she said thoughtfully. "It will not be the richest, or the best-armed nation, but the best, the worthiest. Pray God we may prove ourselves to be that nation!""Pray God!" he echoed thoughtfully.For a minute they walked on in the gathering mist without speaking. Both were plunged in sad reflection, but in Nora's heart there had dawned a new relief, a new peace. Arnold had spoken without arrogance, with a proud humility, with a respect and admiration for those whom he had hitherto despised. She did not know what had brought about the change, but it comforted her, it brought her nearer to him; in some strange way it revived all her old love for England and her people. The squire's swaggering, her brother's calumnies had maddened her. She discovered dignity and candour in Arnold's words, and her aching heart filled with gratitude.Suddenly he stopped short and faced her. She saw then that a new thought had arisen in his mind."Nora, have you heard from your husband?" he demanded.She shook her head and went on walking, quickly, almost nervously."No.""Are you going to return to him—soon?""You know it is impossible that I should ever return," she answered. "In his eyes, at least, I have no excuse for what I did—none. He would never forgive me.""Not if he loved you?"She shrugged her shoulders."Even if he did—even if he forgave me, I could not return. I left him because I had ceased to love him, because the distance that separated us was too great. I did not understand his way of life, nor he mine. He said things I shall never forgive.""Not even if you loved him?""I do not love him!" she returned passionately. "He forfeited my love. He did not care enough to fight for it. How should I grow to love him again?"Arnold drove his stick into the soft turf. His face was white and deeply troubled."I feel as though I had done you a great wrong, Nora," he said. "I did you a wrong already in the beginning when I tried to force my love upon your inexperience—when I tried to bind you to me without having really won you. I failed, and I was justly punished. But I wronged you still more when I sought you out and offered you my friendship. I deceived you and I deceived myself. It was not friendship, and people were right to give it another name and to look askance at my part in your life. Nora, it is my one excuse that I did not know. I believed absolutely in my own loyalty, until that night of the ball. Then for the first time I knew that I was dangerous, and whether I had been recalled or not, I should have gone away. But Fate was too strong for me. If I had really been your friend, I should not have taken you with me that night. It was a mad thing to have done. But everything happened so quickly that I lost my self-control, my reason. Now I feel as though I had put an insurmountable barrier between you and your husband and had ruined your happiness—perhaps your life."She had listened to him in unbroken silence, her brows puckered into painful, ominous lines."You say you are not my friend?" she said. "What are you, then?""One who loves you," he answered, "and one who has never really ceased to long for you as his own.""And you talked of friendship!" she cried."God forgive me. Nora, a man does not know his own heart until the moment comes when he is put to the test as I was. I believed it possible that I could care for you in that way. I should have known better.""I also should have known better," she said."No; you were so young. You could not have known what a man is capable and incapable of performing. The blame is all mine. And if I have helped to bring sorrow into your life, my punishment will be more than I can bear."So much genuine grief and remorse revealed itself in his shaken voice that she laid her hand pityingly on his arm."Don't talk as though it were alone your fault," she said. "It was mine as well. If I could not have judged your heart, I could have judged my own.""Nora!" he exclaimed, horror-stricken."I did not love you," she went on, almost to herself, "and I do not love you. I do not believe that I love any one on earth; but I always knew that I might grow to love you. And—perhaps I have something of my father in me—I should not have run so great a risk.""Nora!" he repeated, and beneath the horror there rang a painful joy.She stopped and looked him sternly in the face."Do not misunderstand me, Robert. I did not love you. Then I loved my husband, and I do not believe you really came between us. There were other things, and you were only the instrument that helped me to escape from a life that was driving me mad. But, because of all that had been between us and that which might so easily have been, I ought never to have allowed you a place in my life. It was wrong, and the punishment is just this—that now our friendship is an impossibility."He walked on as though he could not bear to listen to her."I know, I know!" he said, impatient with pain. "I know it is true. I feel no friendship for you—only an immense love which has not learnt to be selfless. But it will come; it shall come. I swear it. And when it comes—will you never be able to trust me?""I don't know," she said listlessly."Do not punish me because I have been honest and confessed what I might have kept hidden.""I should have known sooner or later," she answered.They had taken the village path, and already the spire of the church rising above the clustering houses warned them that their moments together were numbered. As though by mutual consent, they stopped and stood silent, avoiding each other's eyes."I want you to know one thing," he said at last. "Whatever happens, I shall love you all my life, and that if you need me I shall prove worthy of your trust. Promise me you will turn to me as you would to a friend. Don't take that hope from me!""How can I take hope from any one?" she answered; "I who have no hope——"She broke off, and he took her hand and forced her to look at him."Oh, Nora!" he cried despairingly. "You are so young, and you speak as though your heart were broken!""I do not know whether it is broken-hearted to feel nothing," she said. "If so, then I am broken-hearted.""Nora, I believe you love your husband in spite of all you say. You must go back to him. Where there is love there must be forgiveness. You will forgive each other. You will put aside misunderstandings and foolish prejudices, and start afresh."He spoke with a painful enthusiasm like that of a man who is willing to trample on his own happiness; but Nora shook her head."No one understands how impossible it is," she said. "If there were nothing else to separate us, there would be the bitterness and hatred between our countries. It sounds terrible—absurd; but that is the truth. It was that hatred which poisoned our life together, and if I could go back it would poison our whole future. Oh——" she made a little passionate gesture of protest. "Why are we so mean and petty? Why cannot we watch the rise of another nation without hatred and jealousy? Why cannot we be generous and watch with sympathy and hope her progress along the path which we have trodden? Why cannot we go forward shoulder to shoulder with her, learning and teaching, fearing no one? If we are worthy of our great place in the world, we shall keep it, no matter how strong others may grow; if we are unworthy, nothing will save us, from downfall—not all our ships and wealth. It seems so obvious, and yet——" Her momentary outburst died down to the old listlessness. "I talk like that because I have suffered it so in my life," she said; "but it is all talk. At the bottom, the antagonism is still there. Nothing will ever bridge it over." She held out her hand with a wan smile. "Good-bye, Robert.""Good-bye; and God bless you, dear!"He watched her move slowly homewards. He suffered intensely because he knew that her pain was greater than his. He knew that the antagonism she had spoken of surrounded her whole life, and that she stood alone, without husband, without people, and without country.
* * * * *
As the dawn broke, Nora stood at the prow of the vessel that was bearing her homewards, and welcomed the white bulwarks of England as they rose in majestic sovereignty out of the morning mists. Her eyes filled. She could have stretched out her arms in her pride and joy, and the whole world that she had left behind had vanished like some delirious dream.
Miles away, in a quiet field on the outskirts of Berlin, two men faced each other at ten paces' distance, and awaited the signal. It was given, and two puffs of smoke issued from the outstretched weapons, and curled slowly upwards into the frosty air. One of the men reeled and fell, and lay quiet, with his face in the grass.
They picked him up tenderly, and as they bore him thence his fading eyes opened.
"Do—not frighten her," he whispered. "Don't let her think that it is anything—serious——"
In the same instant, Nora had turned joyously to the man at her side.
"Oh, thank God!" she cried. "Thank God, I am home at last!"
Thus she returned to her own country and her own people, and a sea rolled between her and all that had been.
END OF BOOK II.
BOOK III
THE BRIDGE
CHAPTER I
HOME
Mrs. Ingestre's bed had been drawn to the window, so that she could look out on to the drear landscape of snow-covered fields and catch the few rays of sunshine that here and there broke through the grey monotony of sky. It was her last stand against the shadow which was soon to blot out the whole world for ever from her eyes. There she had lain day after day, and with her imagination brightened the bleak outlook with the summer sunshine and the green trees which she was to see no more. There she had written cheery, hopeful letters to her daughter and had received cheery, hopeful letters in return. There mother and daughter, clasped in each other's arms, acknowledged that the letters had been no more than merciful lies, that the hope they had expressed had been disguised despair.
"How blind I must have been!" Mrs. Ingestre thought, as Nora, kneeling at her bedside, poured out the story of her short married happiness. "How blind not to have seen and understood!"
"How heartless, how self-absorbed I was not to have known!" Nora reproached herself, as she looked into the well-loved face on which death had set his unmistakable seal.
But it was not of death which they spoke. It was as though the elder woman's life was already closed, as though she already stood afar off and saw the world and life with other and clearer eyes. There was no regret or fear in her attitude towards the unknown future, and that calm, high confidence inspired Nora with a curious awe which hushed all tears and passionate grief. She looked up to her mother as to a being high above all earthly sorrow, yet linked to the world by an infinite, all-comprehending pity. That pity was Nora's one refuge. The wild delight which had borne her up through that long night journey had died almost in the same hour that her father had clasped her in his arms and killed the fatted calf in honour of the long-despaired-of prodigal. Something like an icy disappointment had crept into her aching heart as she had woken the first morning in her girlhood's room and realised that this was her home, the home she had longed and prayed for, in which she had chosen to pass her life. She had laughed scorn at herself and had greeted the hideous church-spire which peered over the leafless trees with a seeming new-born affection, and to her father and brother she maintained that same seeming of delight and thankfulness. Before her mother she had broken down for a moment, and the stormy sobs which had shaken her had not wholly been the expression of a pent-up longing. She had recovered herself almost at once, the grave, clear eyes of the dying woman warning her, perhaps, that her secret was no longer entirely hidden, and now she knelt and told her story as she would have told it twenty-four hours before, with bitterness, resentment, and self-pity.
"It was all a dreadful mistake, mother," she said. "I believed I loved him enough to forget whom and what I was, but I could not. Every hour showed me that I was a stranger, and would always remain a stranger. I could not grow to love his people, and they hated me. You don't know how they hated me. When trouble began and there came the first rumour of war, they did not let a chance pass to hurt me. There were moments when I felt I could bear it no longer, but I held out until that night. Then—when I was in that crowd, and heard them cheering, and knew that it was against me—against us—I knew that I could never go back, that the strain of pretending or trying to pretend would send me mad. And oh, I longed so for my home and for you all! It was just as though I were in some frightful exile among enemies——"
"So you escaped," Mrs. Ingestre interrupted gently. "It was natural, and yet——"
Nora looked into her mother's face, and wondered at the depth of pity which the low voice had betrayed.
"And yet——?" she asked.
"I was thinking of Wolff," Mrs. Ingestre said. "He must have suffered terribly."
"Wolff!" The name burst almost angrily from Nora's lips. "How should he have suffered? Men of his stamp do not suffer. They have no room in their lives for such a feeling. Do you know—after that ball, when he had practically thrown Miles out of the house, when he knew that I was miserable, broken-hearted, he left me without a word, and worked with his door locked between us. He cared nothing—nothing—only for his ambition and himself. They are all like that, and their wives are just their servants, who must be satisfied with whatever is left over for them.Icould not stand it. It was like living with some piece of machinery——"
"Nora, he is your husband, and you loved him!"
Nora sprang to her feet. The reproach had stung her, the more so because at the bottom she knew that her indignation was feigned. The panic and delirium of that night was over, and left her terribly calm, terribly cold, terribly clear as to what she had done.
"I did love him," she said—"or at least I thought I did. It is all the same thing. I was carried off my feet by the strangeness and newness of it all. How should I have known then what it meant to leave one's country and one's people? Leave them! If that had been all! But to go against them, to have to forget that one had ever loved them!"
She was trying to rouse herself to those feelings which had been the cause of all her past misery and whose crisis had brought about the final desperate action. She was trying to rouse in her mother sympathy for those feelings, and it goaded her to know that both efforts failed. Mrs. Ingestre was gazing out of the window, and her pale face was still grave and pitiful.
"You see things with your own eyes, my Nora," she said, with a faint, wistful smile. "I see them from a long way off, and with eyes that suffering has cleared from all prejudice and hatred. And then—I was very fond of Wolff."
Nora turned away, her small hands clenched.
"That—that means I have done wrong?" she said almost fiercely.
"Have I blamed you?"
"No, but——"
"I can have pity for both, Nora. I can see that you had much to bear—perhaps more than was tolerable for one so young and headstrong. But I can see Wolff's side too. I can see him come home that night and find you gone——"
She stopped as though her imagination had led her before a sorrow for which she found no words, and Nora too was silent. Profoundly embittered and disappointed, she stood looking at the still beautiful face of the woman in whose sympathy she had had implicit trust. Was, then, everything to fail her, even in her home, the home which she had seen in her exile's dreams? Was she to stand alone? Was there no one who would understand her and all that she had endured?
"When Miles believed that war had broken out he would not stay an hour longer," she said at last, and her voice had a defiant note. "He could not bear to be away from his own country. Why should I, because I am a woman, feel less than he?"
"Because you are a woman, and because you feel more, the greater sacrifice is asked of you," was the quiet answer. "In this life there is always some one who must bring the sacrifice, and it is always the one who feels deepest and loves most. That is why it is ordained that women should suffer for their children, and often for their husbands. It seems at first sight unjust. It is really the greatest compliment which God and Nature can pay us."
"And I am unworthy of that compliment?" Nora demanded hotly.
"You will go back, Nora."
"To my husband? Never." For the first time she spoke with real conviction, with an almost despairing conviction, "That is impossible. You do not know how impossible. Even if I would, Wolff would not take me back. He said so himself. I had to choose once and for all, and I have chosen. And, besides, there are the others—the people I know; stiff, straitlaced people who would never understand and never forgive."
"Nevertheless, when the war is over you will go back," Mrs. Ingestre persisted steadily. "You will go back and bravely take up the work which lies before you—the work of reconciliation. You will fight the unhappy influence of the narrow-hearted fools and braggarts who have helped to bring catastrophe in your life and upon whole nations. You will retain your independence, your strength, your character; but in opening your heart to the goodness and strength in others you will bind them to you as no weak surrender could ever have done; you will win a greater, nobler victory than any victory won with the blood of men; you will build a bridge between Wolff's heart and yours; you will help build the bridge between the country of your birth and the country of your adoption!"
Her voice rang triumphant, prophetic. For one brief moment Mrs. Ingestre, dying though she was, called back her lost youth and rose to the heights of youth's hope and faith.
Nora took a deep breath.
"What can I do—a woman against thousands?" she demanded.
"Your best—your duty."
"I have tried, and I have failed. I have no power to build the bridge——"
Her mother's eyes rested on her face, and in their depths there was a serene confidence.
"God has given you the power," she said gently. "God has given you an instrument which cannot fail you. My Nora"—her voice failed her an instant—"a little child shall lead them"—she finished from afar off.
Nora covered her face with her hands.
"It is too late," she said huskily. "Not even that can help me now."
Her mother made no answer. She lay still with closed eyes, and a peaceful smile smoothed away the lines of pain from the sweet mouth. She was so quiet and the smile was so unchanging, so full of an almost unearthly wisdom, that every protest died in Nora's heart. She crept nearer to the bedside, awe-struck and afraid, as though already the curtain had fallen which was to divide them in the future life.
"Mother!" she whispered faintly.
The serene eyes opened, the smile became infinitely tender.
"My little girl—leave me now. I am so tired, so weary. I shall be glad to sleep. Remember what I said. Kiss me."
Nora obeyed. For one instant she lay like a child in the feeble arms, overwhelmed by a frightful forewarning of a pain she was yet to know in all its intensity.
"Good night, my darling," Mrs. Ingestre whispered.
Nora crept softly away. She thought that her mother had spoken from amidst her dreams and had forgotten that it was still daylight. Yet the tender farewell haunted her as she went downstairs, and it haunted her long afterwards, when the speaker's face was obscured in the shadows of memory.
She found her father in the old familiar dining-room, waiting for her. The months had made his shoulders more stooping, his manner feebler, more helpless. He looked so really wretched that she forgot her own grief and put her arms about him and kissed him.
"What is she doing?" he whispered, as though they stood in the invalid's room. "Is she asleep?"
Nora nodded.
"Yes; I think so. Our talking made her very tired."
A groan escaped from the man's quivering lips.
"The doctor said we must be prepared any moment for the worst," he said. "It is awful—I can scarcely bring myself to believe that it is God's will. How can I live without her?"
"We must help each other. And we must make the last days happy."
"Yes, yes; we must try," he agreed, beginning to pace restlessly backwards and forwards. "We must make her happy. Nora——" He stopped and looked piteously at her over his spectacles. "Nora, you think she was happy?"
"Happy?" she echoed. Somehow, the thought of her mother's happiness had scarcely ever occurred to her.
"I mean—I have been thinking, since I knew that we were to lose her, that she would have been happier in another sort of life—that I did not think enough about her: I was always so busy with the poor and the parish. It is perhaps foolish of me. A man of sensitive conscience is liable to unreasonable remorse. I should be glad—I should be easier in my mind if you gave me your opinion."
"Mother never complained," Nora said slowly.
He nodded, as though her words had confirmed his protests against his own self-reproach.
"No; she never complained," he said, with a sigh of satisfaction. For a moment he was silent, then he turned to her again. "I cannot tell you how glad I am that you are here," he went on. "Weeks ago, when your mother became so ill, I wanted to send for you both—you and Miles—but she would not let me. Miles worried her, and she did not want your first months of married life overshadowed. Those were her very words. It seems almost providential that this war should have brought you home in time."
"What news is there?" she asked quickly. "Is it really declared at last?"
"Surely, surely!" her father said. "The rumour was only a little in advance. It must come to war; there is no possible alternative. We have gone too far to draw back. But there is the squire, and Miles with him. Probably they are bringing the news."
He went to the French window and threw it open, so that the new-comers could come in straight from the garden. Nora hung back, though her pulses were beating with excitement. The news that the declaration had been a false alarm, picked up with a reckless haste by Miles—perhaps for his own reasons—had not shaken her from her purpose. Arnold had assured her that it was only a question of hours before the rumour became truth, and she had believed him. But there had been a strange delay, a strange hush; there had been a talk of "negotiations," and it had made her afraid. She did not know of what she was afraid—whether it was of the war or of peace. She only knew that the uncertainty was unbearable. As she saw the squire, she knew that, one way or the other, the die was cast. Fury and indignation were written on every feature of the big, clean-shaven face; the small eyes, sunken under the bushy brows, glistened like two dangerous points of fire; the lips were compressed till they were almost colourless.
For a moment he stood in the narrow doorway, his huge shoulders spreading from side to side, glaring into the room as though he sought his deadliest enemy. Then, as he saw the unspoken question with which the occupants greeted him, he nodded and, entering, flung his riding-crop on to the table with a loud, ringing curse.
The Rev. John glanced anxiously at the ceiling, as though he thought his wife might have heard, and the squire, catching the movement, hastened to apologise.
"'Pon my word, I didn't mean to make such an infernal row," he said. "If I hadn't done something of the sort I should have had a fit. It's enough to send a man down into his grave with disgust. It's enough to make a man shake the dust off his boots and—and——" He stopped, stuttering with passion, and the Rev. John turned involuntarily to Miles, who had followed the squire into the room and was standing with his hands in his pockets, gazing sulkily at the floor.
"We've thrown up the sponge," he said, as though he knew he had been appealed to. "We've eaten humble pie, and the war's off. That's all."
"Yes, that's all!" the squire burst out. "An English Fashoda—that's all! We're the laughing-stock of Europe with our threats and demands, and then this d——d surrender. They call it a compromise. It's not what I call it. We've just licked their dirty boots—and I'd like to see every man-jack of the Government hanged and quartered!"
He was almost unintelligible in his fury, and the Rev. John made a mild gesture of protest.
"As a man of peace, I must rejoice," he said.
"As an Englishman, I curse!" the squire retorted, shaking his fist in the air. "It was a cowardly thing to do. We were ready and waiting for war. Every man of us had put his best foot forward. All my young fellows were learning to shoot and ride—I spent a small fortune on 'em; and now, what's the good? Their time and my money thrown clean away, and the humiliation of it all into the bargain! And to think we might have thrashed those confounded ruffians and settled them once and for all!"
He paced up and down, grinding his teeth, and Nora's eyes followed him with a critical wonder. By a swift turn of the imagination, she was again in that huge crowd, watching company after company of trained men as they tramped past in stern, resolute silence. Was it possible that this great blundering squire could talk of thrashing that mighty force with men who were learning to shoot and ride? Was it possible that she had ever thought as he thought?
He stopped in front of her, with his legs apart, and fixed her with a fierce, choleric stare.
"Come now, Miss Nora," he said, "you have been out there and know the blackguards. You must have hated 'em pretty well to have thrown up everything and come home?"
Something like an electric shock passed through Nora's body.
"I—hate them?" she stammered.
"Yes; Miles has been telling me the whole story. No offence meant, of course; but between such old friends as you and I, it was a d——d mistake to have married that foreign fellow. I always said so, didn't I, Parson?"
The Rev. John sighed resignedly.
"I said so myself," he answered; "but they were so determined that I could do nothing. It was a terrible blow to me."
"It made me sick when I was there," Miles interposed viciously, "to think that I had to be civil to those boors because my sister had married one of them. I tell you, I blessed the war. It gave one the chance to pay back."
"You! What couldyouhave done?"
The question came from Nora, and her voice sounded curiously unsteady.
Miles nodded.
"I could have done a lot more than you think, my dear sister," he said pointedly. "I could have put more than one spoke in your fine baron's wheel if I had chosen. And glad I should have been to have done it—swaggering bully that he was!"
"Miles—you forget—you are speaking of my husband!"
She was leaning a little forward. Her cheeks were hot and her eyes alight with a passion which should have warned him. But Miles merely laughed.
"Your husband? My dear girl, I expect he has divorced you by now as a runaway and I don't know what else besides. They are pretty summary with that sort of thing in the Fatherland. Imagine"—he turned to the squire—"they treat their women-folk like underpaid servants. The fine gentlemen go about in their many-coloured coats, and the wives can patch together what they can on nothing a year. Poor wretches!"
"They don't mind," Nora put in sharply.
"It wouldn't make much difference if they did. And you needn't take up the cudgels like that! You grumbled enough that time Wolff said you couldn't have a new dress for the Hulsons' ball!"
"He gave it me," she retorted, in the same tone of repressed irritation.
"Yes; after you had worried enough. But I doubt very much if you would have got it if I hadn't been there to back you up. And the insolence of those fellows! He as good as called Arnold and me a pack of cowards because we wouldn't have anything to do with their idiotic duelling. As though we didn't know what a farce it all was! Whew! I am glad we are both well out of it, and I wish to goodness we could have given them a lesson they would not have forgotten in a hurry."
"A bully is always a coward," the Rev. John said sententiously. "I have always heard those Prussians were terrible bullies."
"I should think they are!" Miles agreed. "To hear my dear brother-in-law talk, one would have supposed that I was a raw recruit, or some inferior beast. I held my tongue for Nora's sake, but I tell you, there were moments——" He clenched his fist significantly, and Nora broke into a short angry laugh. "You were always a model of diplomacy, Miles," she said. Her tone was contemptuous, but her brother chose to take her words literally, and the other two were too absorbed to notice her.
"And that," said the squire furiously, "is the people we have kow-towed to—a lot of swaggering braggarts who don't know what to do with themselves for conceit. This comes of all our rubbishy peace-loving notions! The world only gives us credit for being afraid!"
He went on explosively tirading, but Nora no longer listened. She was thinking of her mother's words and wondering if these then were the narrow-hearted fools and braggarts against whom she was to struggle. And in that moment the struggle began in her own heart. She went to the window and tried to shut her ears against all that was going on about her. She tried to understand herself and the strange, conflicting emotions which had come to life in the last few minutes. Everything that the squire and her brother had said goaded her to a hot retort. She felt herself quivering with indignation—because they were abusing a people she hated, the man whom she had deserted because she no longer loved him! Shewantedto ratify every word they said; she told herself that she had the right to do so, that it was all true; and yet her whole spirit rose in arms against their attack. What was worse, she felt a vague antipathy for these three men. She thought the squire coarse and arrogant; his entry and his greeting to her had been rough and without the respect to which she was accustomed. And why could Miles do nothing without his hands in his pockets? Why, when he sat down, had he to be either nursing his leg or "slouching"? Why was her father so weak and fussy-looking? And then, to her horror, Wolff stood before her eyes. Was it a feeling of pride which crept over her, pride in his upright bearing and dignity?Hehad never been rough or rude to her. His courtesy to her and all women had been unvarying. She turned quickly away, trying to stop her own thoughts. The squire was standing in his favourite attitude, with his legs wide apart, still tirading impartially against the German people and the English Government, who refused to wipe them off the face of the earth. Miles had collapsed into the most comfortable arm-chair, his head thrown back, his hands plunged deep in his pockets. The Rev. John stood between them, a picture of helpless dejection. It seemed to Nora that they had each taken up the attitude in which she hated them most. Hated! It was the word her thoughts had uttered. It could not be recalled. If she hated them—why, then, she had lost everything: her husband, her people, her own nationality! Why, then, she was nothing, she belonged to no one, no link of love bound her to any living being. Only her mother was left—her mother and that one other being the knowledge of whose existence had come too late to save her.
In the same moment that her full misery broke upon Nora some one tapped at the door and, without awaiting an answer, a pale, terrified-looking servant rushed in.
"If you please, sir," she stammered, "will you come at once? The mistress is—asleep—and we cannot wake her——"
The Rev. John uttered a smothered cry, and without a word to his guest hurried from the room. Miles followed him. But Nora remained quietly by the window and took no notice of the squire as, with an awkwardly expressed hope that "it would be all right," he left her to herself.
She knew what had happened. Her mother had bidden her good night, and night had come. She was alone—in the whole world alone and friendless.
CHAPTER II
EXILED
There is only one sorrow in life which is really great, and that is the loss of those we love. The other sorrows seem great so long as we have been spared the hardest blow which life can deal us, and then we understand that, after all, they were very petty and that if we had chosen we could have borne them patiently, even cheerfully. Loss of health, loss of wealth, loss of position—they are all bad in their way, and as a rule we make the worst we can of them; but not till we have to bear themalone, without the support of some familiar, loving hand, have we the right to cry out that we can endure no more.
And for the first time in her life Nora knew loneliness—not the loneliness which she had felt in her husband's home and amongst her husband's people, for that had been temporary, a state which could, if necessary, be overcome by a return to those whom she had left of her own free-will and whose love and sympathy she could still claim.Thisloneliness was final, unbridgeable. Death had raised up a wall between her and all return. The one being whose hand could have comforted her, in whose arms she could have found peace and rest, had passed beyond recall, and it was in vain that, in a childish agony of grief, she flung herself down by her mother's sofa and pleaded with the dead not to leave her comfortless. There was no answer. The patient, noble woman who had lain there day after day without complaint, watching the slow, painful fulfilment of her destiny, had gone and would come no more. She had gained her freedom. Even in her own stormy sorrow Nora realised so much—that her mother was free and that her life had been a long, bitter imprisonment, to which it would have been cruel to recall her. She had gone willingly, passing out of a sphere in which she had always been an exile, and taking with her the last—perhaps the only link which had ever bound Nora to her home. In those hours when Nora had hated the stuffy little flat and had longed for the scent of the home flowers, it had always been of her mother's garden which she had thought; when she had seen the picture of the Vicarage rise before her eyes it had always been her mother's room which had stood out clearest, which had tempted her by the tenderest recollections. And now that her mother had gone, that home had ceased to be her home. The flowers were dead in the garden, the rooms empty of the old haunting charm, the glamour which her exile's memory had cast about her old life became dull and faded. She saw now an ugly red-brick building, with dreary, silent rooms, and people with whom she had never been in sympathy save in her imagination. This last was the bitterest disappointment of all. In her anger against Wolff she had expected and believed so much of these "home people," and they had, after all, failed her.
As she sat alone in the sad, empty room, she felt that those five days in England had taken from her not only the dearest hope but the last illusion. Her mother had said, "You do not belong here," and it was true. She was an exile in this narrow little world, and between her father and herself there was an insurmountable barrier of taste and thought. It had always been there, just as, like her mother, she had always been an exile, but in her girlhood's days it had been less pronounced, less clearly defined. Now that she had had experience in another world, she could no longer bear the trammels of her father's conventional prejudices. She had hated and despised her mode of life at Wolff's side; she began to see, though dimly, that it had had at least its great moments, that it was at least inspired by a great idea worthy of the sacrifices it demanded. Here there was no sacrifice and no idea—only vegetation, and her companion was not even a useful machine. He was a weak muddler, and his world was a little village which muddled along in a muddle-loving country and believed great things of itself and its institutions. Just as Nora had found the squire ridiculous with his two-week soldiers, so her father irritated her with his mingled piety, pusillanimity, and timid self-satisfaction. Not even their common grief had brought them together. They had stood wordless by their dead, and when the Rev. John had seemed about to speak, she had fled from him, dreading that his words might destroy the impression which the serene sleeper had made upon her mind. Since then they had hardly spoken, and Miles had wandered between them like a sullen, dissatisfied ghost. Somehow, he felt that his influence over Nora was at an end, that from the moment her feet had touched her native soil she had turned from him and his explanations with something like repugnance. He did not trouble to seek the reason—indeed, she could have given him none; but the shadow between them threw Nora back into even deeper loneliness.
And the wonder which had come into her life—the miracle which had been revealed to her in her mother's eyes? She only knew that its revelation had come too late. Though all that was best and noblest in her stirred as if beneath some divine touch, she felt none of the exultation, none of the sanctified happiness which might have been hers. The gift which was to come to her was like a golden link in a broken chain, like a jewel without setting—beautiful but imperfect. She was indeed an exile and bore the exile's curse.
Thus, when the first tempest of grief had passed she faced the future with the first fear turned to conviction. She had lost everything, even to her nationality. Those few months had been sufficient to imbue her, without her knowledge, with ideas and principles which made her a stranger in her own land. She could no longer admire without reservation; at every turn she was forced to compare and criticise with the same sharpness as she had compared and criticised in her German home, and a word against the people to whom she still theoretically belonged was sufficient to arouse the same indignation and resentment. Poor Nora! It was a bitter self-revelation which she had to face, and the only being who could have helped her in this conflict between the dual affections had been laid only a few hours before in the dreary churchyard whose walls she could distinguish through the leafless trees. The sight of those walls and the red spire of the church awakened her grief to its first intensity. She sprang up from her place by the empty sofa and hurried out of the room and out of the house. On her way she passed her father's room. The door stood open, and she saw him seated by the table, with his face buried in his hands. She knew that he was crying, but she shrank swiftly away, with the horrible conviction that she despised him. She wondered if Wolff had cried when he had returned and found that she had left him. She felt sure that he had gone on working, and the picture which rose before her fancy of a strong, broad-shouldered man bent over his maps and plans in unswervable devotion caused her a strange sensation of relief.
It was already late afternoon as she left the village behind her. She had no definite goal save the one to be alone, and beyond the range of prying, curious eyes, and almost unconsciously she chose the path over the fields where, months before, she had gone to meet Robert Arnold. Then it had been late summer, and it was now winter, but so vividly did the scene recur to her that when a tall, well-known figure strode out of the mists towards her, she could have believed that all the preceding months, with their condensed history of bewildering change, had been no more than an hallucination and that she was once more Nora Ingestre, setting out to learn the mysteries of her own heart. But the next instant her hand was taken, and she was looking into a familiar face which was yet so altered that she would have known alone from its lines of care and grief that time had moved on, bringing with him his inevitable burden.
"Robert!" she cried. She saw his look of pain, and wondered at it. She did not know that he, too, had drawn the same comparison between then and now, and had been shocked by the change in the face which so short a time ago had been that of a girl—nay, almost of a child.
"Poor little Nora!" he said under his breath. "Poor little Nora!"
She lifted her hand as though to stop all words of commiseration, and he turned quietly and walked at her side. He understood that he was helpless, that he could do nothing to comfort her in her grief, and yet he felt, too, that she was glad of his presence and silent sympathy.
All at once she herself broke the silence, and her voice, save that it was intensely weary, sounded untroubled and calm.
"I did not know you were here," she said. "I thought you were with your regiment."
"I have my Christmas leave," he answered. "They have no special need of me."
There was a bitterness in his tone and words which she understood. She looked at him, and saw that he was frowning as though at some painful reflection.
"There will be no fighting?" she asked.
"No, none. We have given in. I suppose"—he controlled his voice with an effort—"I suppose we had to."
"Had to?" she echoed.
"We were not ready," he said between his teeth. "Nothing was ready. I could never have believed it was possible had I not seen it with my own eyes. If there had been a war, it would have been a repetition of 1870, with London for a Sedan, and they knew it. No horses, reduced regiments, a crowd of half-trained men pitted against a nation which has been ready for war any day in the last years! The thing was obvious."
"You were so sure," she said dully. "Everybody was so sure."
"No one knew until the test came," he answered. "The outside of things was well enough, and there were plenty of able statesmen and generals to tell us that we had never been better prepared. We like listening to that sort of talk, and we like believing it. A belief like that is so comforting. It frees us from all sacrifice—all duty. 'When the call comes, we shall answer to it,' is our patriotic motto. 'An Englishman is worth three foreigners.' And then, when the call comes, a handful of half-trained youths who cannot stand a day's march, who can scarcely ride, scarcely shoot, is all that we have to show for our boasting." He clenched his fist with a movement of angry despair. "It's all wrong, Nora, all wrong! We have grown too easy-going, too fond of our smooth comfort. Even if we knew that our national existence were threatened, we should not rouse ourselves. We should vote for a few more Dreadnoughts and make a great outcry and bang the Party drum with talk. We think, because we have the money, that things can't go far wrong—we have won before, so we think there is a kind of lucky star to save us, however little we have deserved success. We can't see that the world has changed, that we have to face a race that has all our virtues in their youth and strength—all our tenacity, all our bulldog purpose, all our old stoicism; and we—God knows! We never forget our grand heritage; we never forget our forefathers nor the glory they won for us. But we forget to honour them with our own worthiness. How will it all end?"
"Whether it be in peace or in war, surely only the fittest can win," she said thoughtfully. "It will not be the richest, or the best-armed nation, but the best, the worthiest. Pray God we may prove ourselves to be that nation!"
"Pray God!" he echoed thoughtfully.
For a minute they walked on in the gathering mist without speaking. Both were plunged in sad reflection, but in Nora's heart there had dawned a new relief, a new peace. Arnold had spoken without arrogance, with a proud humility, with a respect and admiration for those whom he had hitherto despised. She did not know what had brought about the change, but it comforted her, it brought her nearer to him; in some strange way it revived all her old love for England and her people. The squire's swaggering, her brother's calumnies had maddened her. She discovered dignity and candour in Arnold's words, and her aching heart filled with gratitude.
Suddenly he stopped short and faced her. She saw then that a new thought had arisen in his mind.
"Nora, have you heard from your husband?" he demanded.
She shook her head and went on walking, quickly, almost nervously.
"No."
"Are you going to return to him—soon?"
"You know it is impossible that I should ever return," she answered. "In his eyes, at least, I have no excuse for what I did—none. He would never forgive me."
"Not if he loved you?"
She shrugged her shoulders.
"Even if he did—even if he forgave me, I could not return. I left him because I had ceased to love him, because the distance that separated us was too great. I did not understand his way of life, nor he mine. He said things I shall never forgive."
"Not even if you loved him?"
"I do not love him!" she returned passionately. "He forfeited my love. He did not care enough to fight for it. How should I grow to love him again?"
Arnold drove his stick into the soft turf. His face was white and deeply troubled.
"I feel as though I had done you a great wrong, Nora," he said. "I did you a wrong already in the beginning when I tried to force my love upon your inexperience—when I tried to bind you to me without having really won you. I failed, and I was justly punished. But I wronged you still more when I sought you out and offered you my friendship. I deceived you and I deceived myself. It was not friendship, and people were right to give it another name and to look askance at my part in your life. Nora, it is my one excuse that I did not know. I believed absolutely in my own loyalty, until that night of the ball. Then for the first time I knew that I was dangerous, and whether I had been recalled or not, I should have gone away. But Fate was too strong for me. If I had really been your friend, I should not have taken you with me that night. It was a mad thing to have done. But everything happened so quickly that I lost my self-control, my reason. Now I feel as though I had put an insurmountable barrier between you and your husband and had ruined your happiness—perhaps your life."
She had listened to him in unbroken silence, her brows puckered into painful, ominous lines.
"You say you are not my friend?" she said. "What are you, then?"
"One who loves you," he answered, "and one who has never really ceased to long for you as his own."
"And you talked of friendship!" she cried.
"God forgive me. Nora, a man does not know his own heart until the moment comes when he is put to the test as I was. I believed it possible that I could care for you in that way. I should have known better."
"I also should have known better," she said.
"No; you were so young. You could not have known what a man is capable and incapable of performing. The blame is all mine. And if I have helped to bring sorrow into your life, my punishment will be more than I can bear."
So much genuine grief and remorse revealed itself in his shaken voice that she laid her hand pityingly on his arm.
"Don't talk as though it were alone your fault," she said. "It was mine as well. If I could not have judged your heart, I could have judged my own."
"Nora!" he exclaimed, horror-stricken.
"I did not love you," she went on, almost to herself, "and I do not love you. I do not believe that I love any one on earth; but I always knew that I might grow to love you. And—perhaps I have something of my father in me—I should not have run so great a risk."
"Nora!" he repeated, and beneath the horror there rang a painful joy.
She stopped and looked him sternly in the face.
"Do not misunderstand me, Robert. I did not love you. Then I loved my husband, and I do not believe you really came between us. There were other things, and you were only the instrument that helped me to escape from a life that was driving me mad. But, because of all that had been between us and that which might so easily have been, I ought never to have allowed you a place in my life. It was wrong, and the punishment is just this—that now our friendship is an impossibility."
He walked on as though he could not bear to listen to her.
"I know, I know!" he said, impatient with pain. "I know it is true. I feel no friendship for you—only an immense love which has not learnt to be selfless. But it will come; it shall come. I swear it. And when it comes—will you never be able to trust me?"
"I don't know," she said listlessly.
"Do not punish me because I have been honest and confessed what I might have kept hidden."
"I should have known sooner or later," she answered.
They had taken the village path, and already the spire of the church rising above the clustering houses warned them that their moments together were numbered. As though by mutual consent, they stopped and stood silent, avoiding each other's eyes.
"I want you to know one thing," he said at last. "Whatever happens, I shall love you all my life, and that if you need me I shall prove worthy of your trust. Promise me you will turn to me as you would to a friend. Don't take that hope from me!"
"How can I take hope from any one?" she answered; "I who have no hope——"
She broke off, and he took her hand and forced her to look at him.
"Oh, Nora!" he cried despairingly. "You are so young, and you speak as though your heart were broken!"
"I do not know whether it is broken-hearted to feel nothing," she said. "If so, then I am broken-hearted."
"Nora, I believe you love your husband in spite of all you say. You must go back to him. Where there is love there must be forgiveness. You will forgive each other. You will put aside misunderstandings and foolish prejudices, and start afresh."
He spoke with a painful enthusiasm like that of a man who is willing to trample on his own happiness; but Nora shook her head.
"No one understands how impossible it is," she said. "If there were nothing else to separate us, there would be the bitterness and hatred between our countries. It sounds terrible—absurd; but that is the truth. It was that hatred which poisoned our life together, and if I could go back it would poison our whole future. Oh——" she made a little passionate gesture of protest. "Why are we so mean and petty? Why cannot we watch the rise of another nation without hatred and jealousy? Why cannot we be generous and watch with sympathy and hope her progress along the path which we have trodden? Why cannot we go forward shoulder to shoulder with her, learning and teaching, fearing no one? If we are worthy of our great place in the world, we shall keep it, no matter how strong others may grow; if we are unworthy, nothing will save us, from downfall—not all our ships and wealth. It seems so obvious, and yet——" Her momentary outburst died down to the old listlessness. "I talk like that because I have suffered it so in my life," she said; "but it is all talk. At the bottom, the antagonism is still there. Nothing will ever bridge it over." She held out her hand with a wan smile. "Good-bye, Robert."
"Good-bye; and God bless you, dear!"
He watched her move slowly homewards. He suffered intensely because he knew that her pain was greater than his. He knew that the antagonism she had spoken of surrounded her whole life, and that she stood alone, without husband, without people, and without country.