Evelyn, instead of having been paralyzed by the shock, found it had quickened every instinct. She felt as if she were charged with a new and strange force, a kind of super-consciousness which made her the recipient of a thousand telepathic messages, along which communications carried with the speed and safety of a telegram. It took her away from ordinary surroundings and left her indifferent even to all Brand said and did—although he naturally spared her nothing. There is an inner chamber to every heart, a place of refuge and concealment of which at times one may mercifully turn the key. Evelyn withdrew there now when he attacked her; safe within its four walls, she listened to his criticism of Farquharson as one listens to the ravings of a madman. He could touch her no longer; he could hurt her no more. That is the comfort of receiving a mortal wound. The thrust of spear and bayonet may tear and lacerate to an unendurable pitch of torture, but a blow at the heart kills."As we have seen nothing of Mrs. Farquharson," said Lady Wereminster, "we will charitably suppose that for once she has been of use to her husband. There are women who fail in every minor office who can yet rise to occasions. And a man in trouble must have sympathy, no matter from what source. Dora Farquharson has got the opportunity of her life if she did but know. Never expect me to pity a woman who can't keep her husband. She's a fool, and I hate fools. Men are naturally more domestic animals than women. The ties of daily intimacy make enduring claims upon them. A man may be consumed by the fire of undying passion for one woman, but he's dependent on the one he lives with, if she will only minister to his daily needs, and never let his supply of whisky or cigarettes run short, and be ready with a new dish or a soothing medicine as each is required.""If Dora fails her husband now——" said Evelyn. She stopped."Oh, if it were but the ideal marriage," said Lady Wereminster. "With the right woman he would have braved all this and carried it through triumphantly. They have been married long enough now to have begun to form the deeper ties of union and of confidence. It partly amuses, partly hurts me when people talk of the early days of marriage as though all the sweetness and ardour and passion and tenderness of life were concentrated in them. When two people really love each other those things not only endure and strengthen, but take exquisite sanctity as years go by. The plant strengthens. Its blooms are finer. As the years go, its colour and texture are fit to grow in the Garden of God. Something of the Eternal Love has filtered directly through from some crevice of heaven and shone upon them; their scent isn't of this world, but eternity.""And you think that might apply to Mr. Farquharson and his wife?" said Evelyn. She stood quite silently, looking away from Lady Wereminster."Never," said Lady Wereminster; "but men are human. They're like dogs who are hurt. They cringe away into corners where, for a while, they miss accustomed voices, and presently creep out, ready to lick the hand of even the hardest master so long as he is master. When men are hurt they slink off, in much the same way; but daily routine tells. They are creatures of habit, who miss even the harshest voice if they have once got used to it. Dora Farquharson is on the spot, and there's the other tie.... How far that will tell one doesn't know. Fatherhood affects different men differently, but I have an idea it will constitute a strong claim on Mr. Farquharson."There was a knock at Evelyn's bedroom door; her maid entered with a letter."The man is waiting for an answer, ma'am.""Excuse me," said Evelyn. The letter was from Mrs. Farquharson, so hurried, so incoherent that she did not at first grasp the meaning of the few excited words."Please come at once, no matter what you're doing. I must have you; I must speak to you. I am almost out of my mind with agony and horror; you mustn't fail me. Richard doesn't know I'm writing. I don't know what to do. For God's sake, come at once.""She's failed him again," said Evelyn slowly. Lady Wereminster snatched the letter from her."It isn't that at all. Here, get on your things, I'll take you on in the car. That it should come to-day of all days—poor Mr. Farquharson!"Dawn—cold, grey, chilling. The stir and bustle of servants' steps; low voices. The household at Chester Street had been hurrying to and fro sending telegrams and dispatches and messages ever since Evelyn had arrived at twelve o'clock on the previous day. While the Leader of the Opposition was preparing his vote of censure on the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and such members as were in the country were hurriedly returning to town in order to be present at one of the most dramatic debates of the century, the fate of Farquharson's child hung in the balance between life and death.Lady Wereminster was right; when Evelyn entered the house she saw at once how matters stood and sent for the doctor. She had found Dora in a state bordering on frenzy, bitter, reproachful, incoherent. The torrent of words with which she was met dazed Evelyn so that she could scarcely take in their full force; Farquharson, very still and pale, was standing upright by the fire-place in the dining-room, listening with a face that might have been carved in marble, so still was it, so utterly expressionless. But Evelyn, entering, saw the deep lines cut obliquely from nostril to lip; saw the furrows in the brow, cut as if by a chisel—those lines of ineradicable pain which the years deepen instead of smoothing.She swept across the room, and, catching Dora's trembling figure in her arms, put her hand above the girl's mouth and checked the hideous torrent of words."You must come up-stairs at once to your room," she said sharply. "You've sent for the nurse, of course, Mr. Farquharson? Then please do so at once. Come up with me, Dora—or, better still, let your husband carry you. No, I'm not going to listen to a word now; you're better for the moment, and this sort of scene does you no good at all. You may think I'm speaking harshly, but I'm not. Send for Felice, Mr. Farquharson, will you? Or, if she's hysterical, the head housemaid, please; she's a sensible woman.""It's awful, it's ghastly," said Dora, fighting them both, as they tried to carry her up-stairs, between spasms of pain. "It's unendurable, and I won't bear it. Doctors are beasts; I know this man won't give me chloroform until the very end. I won't bear it till the end, do you hear? Why should I be tortured so for a man I loathe? I won't have it, I tell you; I won't have it!" Her voice rose to a shriek. "Make the doctor come, Evelyn; make him give me something. I won't stand it, I tell you; I won't stand—oh, God——"This was the prelude of hours of revolt and rebellion. It seemed to Evelyn that for a lifetime she had listened to Dora's ravings. She tried to excuse them on the score of delirium, and failed. In some ways Dora was a typical modern woman, eager to take all that life offered her and pay no penalty; rebellious at the gift of a new responsibility which compelled her to take life from another point of view.Nurse and doctor both came presently, and then another nurse was sent for, Mrs. Farquharson was too unmanageable for one alone.Evelyn, sitting in the room beyond, was called for ceaselessly. No one could do anything so well as Evelyn. No one else fanned Dora in the right way, or knew when she wanted her pillows moved. Now she must have her head laved; now she wanted special scent on her handkerchief. The pillows were wrong again now.... No, Evelyn could not have anything to eat at this moment. How could she when Dora was in such pain? She could go down-stairs and have something presently, when the nurse had finished her meal.But the "presently" never came. Hour after hour Evelyn sat, waging perhaps the hardest battle of her life, as Dora's rebellion gave way to hatred, and hatred to passion so intense that the very room seemed charged with it. Evelyn had seen Farquharson come to the door; from her bed his wife had recognized him, and poured out such a torrent of contempt that Evelyn ran to her and put her hand upon the quivering mouth.She dragged her tired limbs now to the head of the stairs, but Farquharson had gone. She wondered which would be the hardest ordeal, the facing of that stern tribunal before which he would presently stand at bay, or the one through which he had just passed.Of late Evelyn's prayers had been merely mechanical. To-night they concentrated; let him have this at least, dear God—one thing in the world which might comfort and cheer him.... But where it became a question of the child's life or Dora's there was, in Dora's mind, no choice. She had never wanted the child from the first, she loved her own life.At midnight Evelyn heard Farquharson return. She knew by the sound of his footsteps that the vote had gone against him. She tried to disengage her hand from Dora's, but failed. By the time she was free, he had gone to his own room; she heard him move heavily across it.Physically spent herself after hours of struggle with a woman whose strength in intervals of pain was almost incredible, Evelyn watched day dawn, with a face that was haggard and worn. Dora's shrinking at pain she would have borne so gladly shattered her. In moments of physical anguish souls are revealed, and she had never seen Dora in so pitiful, so low, so unworthy a light as she did now. Wearied out at last, she moved mechanically, like one in a dream, going to and from the sick-room as she was bidden. Dora had got her way; the doctor had administered chloroform long before he would have given it in the case of a courageous patient. Sitting alone in the little anteroom, Evelyn watched grey shadows come and go, frightened servants stepping on tiptoe, the doctor and the nurse, even Farquharson, whose ravaged face put him beyond the reach even of her spoken sympathy. In the house it was presently rumoured that the real struggle with death had begun; the piteous struggle of the child to whom Dora had denied any chance of vitality which might have given her one added pain.The end came in the morning as light trembled into being. As if in a dream, Evelyn heard a cry that pierced her heart; a cry that seemed to sound the death-knell of her own dream-child, that put Farquharson further away from her. Some smell of chloroform or ether—she was no longer able to distinguish between the two—was penetrating into the inner room. When presently her name was called, it seemed to make a definite atmosphere through which she feebly groped her way to Dora's bedroom. One of the nurses met her there with a tiny bundle in her arms. Evelyn took it; it was pitifully light."He may not live," the nurse said; "the doctor thought his father would like to see him. I must go back to the room, Mrs. Farquharson is so dreadfully nervous and hysterical; we are both quite worn out. Just hark at her now! Would you kindly take the baby down, Mrs. Brand."The gods have an unlimited belief in one's powers of endurance. Slowly, with breaking heart, her eyes drowned partly for self-pity, partly for fear lest the flickering little life she held might breathe its last before the end of her journey, she went downstairs and entered the sitting-room where Farquharson stood waiting. She saw his face as he greeted her, its pallor, its anxiety transfigured suddenly by the light which comes but once in a lifetime to a man, and that only when he looks upon his firstborn son. Without a word he held out his arms; without a word Evelyn handed him her dear burden. Then the room rocked, she put out her hands blindly, swaying. So bitter, so cruel, so overwhelming was the moment's agony, that it was as though a chord had snapped in her heart, and left her struggling for breath. But Farquharson neither saw nor heard. She closed the door gently—how she did not know—and left him alone with his son.CHAPTER X"The cord breaks at the last by the weakest pull."—Old Spanish Proverb.At one point in pain, all sense of value dies. Nothing is left but the overwhelming realization that, throb by throb, it will increase until it reaches the climax, when a woman bites her pillow to stifle her shrieks, and a man in all probability blows out his brains—the shortest way of escape. To the woman there succeeds what may be called reaction, a temporary lull, in which body, mind and soul are alike so bruised and stricken that, possibly from sheer weariness, sleep may come for a brief hour. But next day the pain begins again and concentrates again, and so on and on from day to day and week to week, the only change being that soul and mind and body become daily a little more bruised, a little more stricken.This is worse than a mere period of spiritual dryness; it is an active wrestling with the powers of hell. It is in such moments that religion fails, and the faith to which one was born seems to spell restriction. One would prefer to fling it away altogether, to deny its truth, to escape to a world where the light of the heart might give out its full radiance, even if the soul shrank in gloom.Doubts creep in in such moments of peril. Catholics do not mince matters. They do not expect to cheat God in their lives and the devil in their deaths by tardy repentance. If they sin, they risk eternal damnation, and know it.The description of a picture she had once seen had often been in Evelyn's thoughts lately. God sat in judgment on His throne. Before Him was ranged a tribe of kneeling figures—kings laying down their sceptres, soldiers their swords, queens their jewels, men their symbols of ambition, women their guerdons of beauty. Some hung back as though unwilling to give up so soon all that was pleasant. In the foreground of the picture knelt a young girl's shrinking form. Her eyes, mystical and reverent, were looking at the throne; she held one hand bravely outstretched, but the other was concealed within the drapery of her gown. In the hand that pointed direct to God there was the half of a little human heart, her own, all that she had to give, for the other half was withheld. Amongst so vast a crowd of worshippers she thought that perhaps God might not see the gift she offered was divided.Torn with conflict, every energy, every force concentrated on one prevailing thought, the daily routine of her life temporarily suspended, what had Evelyn now to give God? Little pitiful utterings of prayer, the mechanical moving of lips to the rhythm of habitual words—that was all. Yet, after all, what proof had she that what she had been taught in childhood was true?—Think of the bitterness that would come, if at the end of life, when the secrets of all are revealed, we were to find that we had given up love, in bitterness and agony, for the sake of a phantom God and a phantom creed....The thought passed. Belief held her still. But in the conflict between self and soul lay her real torment.It was the sight of Farquharson's child that had broken her, a child born in rebellion and anger, wresting its life from the God of Being in spite of its mother's cowardice. She felt as if her own child had been stolen from her. Wounded and weeping tears of blood, she must stand by and watch it in another woman's arms.The inscrutable laws of human destiny! Call them rather those of blind chance, since some of us seem born only to be first tossed to and fro on the waves of disaster, and then thrown, helpless and mangled beyond recognition, upon the shore with other refuse.It was in such a mood as this that Evelyn awaited Lady Wereminster's arrival a week after the vote of censure. Farquharson had allowed himself this specified time in which to battle with public opinion. If at the end it still went against him he would hand in his resignation. It is only when a man is called upon to defend his honour that he knows which are his friends and which his foes.All through the week Evelyn had hoped against hope; had worked and striven on his behalf as much as she dared, only to meet an icy wall of indifference. The world had given its verdict. Temporarily the Farquharsons were to be ostracized. When your acquaintances in high places are openly accused of bribery and corruption by the foreign Press, it is high time to revise your visiting-list. Obviously Mr. Farquharson had to resign. That he should continue to hold such an important post would make matters very uncomfortable for all who knew him. Eventually things might blow over; but in the meantime society shrugged its shoulders, and shook its discreet skirts free from the least trace of contamination."The time is up. We shall know Mr. Farquharson's decision to-night," Lady Wereminster said. "I must save you from hearing the news shouted in the open street. I shall come on to see you directly his announcement is made, if it is made to-night."The moments crept by, and hours, while Evelyn waited. Mercifully she was alone. Brand had been called to the country on some mysterious business, and she had sent her servant away for the night. West Kensington is not usually a neighbourhood where there is much traffic during the social hours of the evening; its inmates are more inclined to go by foot or rail to their engagements than by carriage or motor. But it seemed to Evelyn that night that the streets were full of noise and movement. Time after time she heard the approaching hoot of a motor, and went to the door to find that the sound existed only in imagination.But Lady Wereminster came at last, slowly, with head bent and lagging steps. Her news was written on her face. Evelyn drew her into the inner room without a word."He has resigned," Lady Wereminster whispered. "And he looks as if it were his death-blow.""I must try to tell you consecutively," she went on presently. She stretched her hand out trembling towards the liqueur glass of brandy which Evelyn had poured out for her, and drank it off at a gulp. "I'm unnerved, I suppose. It was one of the most awful things I've ever witnessed. The scene in the House the other night was nothing to it; men were beside themselves then with the sudden shock, the very noise and tumult helped to carry one through. But to-night there was a frozen silence, a great icy wall of horror and contempt and deadly purpose, that turned the very blood in one's veins. When Mr. Farquharson entered, I thought of a time in Egypt when I had seen the people shrink from a man who was stricken with leprosy. One looked to right and left and asked, 'Where are his friends? Where are the people who have canonized him and idolized him, fawned at his feet, and cringed before him?'"There were tears in her eyes; she stopped abruptly. Evelyn, quite tearless, listened."And then?" she said."It was as though when he spoke they were stripping him threadbare," said Lady Wereminster, her mouth rigid. "To my mind, he dealt with charge upon charge with absolute sincerity and conviction. His hearers listened with the air of spectators at a play, a play whose chief actor lacked what the French callvraisemblance. There's nothing so impossible to grip as an audience that has wrapped itself in the cloak of indifference. I suppose at heart there isn't a man in the House but covets Farquharson's position; not a man but thinks he could fill it as adequately were he called upon to do so. And jealousy, as you know, has been at the root of every betrayal, of every libel, since the world began.""Were there no cheers, no interruptions?" asked Evelyn. Her hands, gripped tightly together, alone betrayed her. "Surely his colleagues cheered him? It was the least they could do.""There's not a man amongst the lot," said Lady Wereminster. "They were all deadly nervous. Each waited to see what his neighbour was going to do before he dared act on his own initiative. One or two nodded to Farquharson, that was all. There was only one course open to him, and he took it.""He resigned, then?" said Evelyn."He explained very clearly at the beginning of his speech that it was the only course open to him under the circumstances. The whole affair being without precedence, I understand that he was practically given a free hand in his way of dealing with it. He said that he had from the first courted the fullest inquiry; he had immediately put matters into the hands of Scotland Yard. Everything that could be done had been done to compel the Power which had bought the information to admit from what source it was obtained. Up to the present moment its refusal was absolute. He accounted briefly for his actions on the day in question; even reading a letter from Von Kirsch, which, in my view, entirely cleared him. He said he knew that as yet he stood in the position of a man who had not legally proved his innocence, but that up till now he had not thought it possible that his fellow-members should seriously suspect him. In the face of public opinion, which he supposed was echoed by the House, he would resign his office until he was once more asked by his colleagues to take a seat in that great assembly. The whole speech was on these lines—direct, concise and manly. But he ended as he had begun, in silence.""Silence!"In the street below a man and woman were singing the refrain of a popular music-hall melody. The windows of the little flat opened on to the street, so in the pause that followed the words echoed distinctly, accompanied by the giggling murmur of the crowd, and the strumming of three primary chords on the piano-organ."Don't you wish 'e might get it, Bill?Oh, ain't he a powerful man!""Good-bye, I'm going now," said Lady Wereminster brokenly. "The street boys will be here soon, calling the extra specials. Well, you're prepared for them now, thank God. Go to bed soon. You're looking absolutely dead beat." She took the girl's face in her hands and turned it towards the light of the little lamp which stood upon the three-cornered table by the mantelpiece. "Your heart's been bad again, hasn't it? Your face has got its old grey look—the look that always frightens me.""Oh, I'm all right," said Evelyn tonelessly.At the door Lady Wereminster turned suddenly back and put her arms round Evelyn again, as tenderly as a mother."Hold on," she said; "you are one of those who must hold on, because we expect you to. So far you've been brave, Evelyn; don't give in now."Usually a quiet sleeper, Lady Wereminster found that night that her thoughts were as clear, her mind as capable of action, as in the day. She had a pleasant little boudoir attached to her bedroom; at about two o'clock in the morning she rose from her bed and flung herself down upon the couch, a most unusual proceeding.To be able to see from only one point of view is indescribably consoling. Unluckily for her, Lady Wereminster could put herself in other people's places, could judge the result of her own work as critically as she judged the work of others. When she had, more or less, compelled Farquharson to marry, she had acted emotionally; her one idea had been to save Evelyn from threatened scandals. She had not reckoned, for one moment, on Farquharson's temperament. She had practically bid him seek a wife—any wife. What was the result? She forgot that she was dealing with a reckless and adventurous man—the type upon which one can never count with certainty. There had always been a spark of dare-devilry in Farquharson's nature. She had expected him to weigh the various advantages of the various charming ladies who tripped across his social stage as possible candidates for marriage. Instead of doing this, he had flung himself headlong into the first abyss which gaped before him. It would have been worth another man's while perhaps to marry Dora; but Farquharson could get on without Beadon's influence. And Dora's character was, as any woman of discernment would observe, one which must inevitably repel and alienate him. Such women are like cancerous growths; they eat away a man's vitality, robbing him in time of strength and force of will.And she was responsible for this outrageous marriage—she, Mary Wereminster. She who had always prided herself upon her judgment and balance. Lives are, after all, very dangerous chemicals to play with. Mix the wrong two together, and disaster follows.With the best intentions in the world, what had Lady Wereminster compassed after all? She had not really saved Evelyn; there are times when even a surgeon decides that a disease is inoperative. She had taken Farquharson from a life of comparative peace and thrown him into one of petty annoyance and difficulties—jars which strain such a man's endurance to the utmost. Lady Wereminster did not for one moment believe that Farquharson had committed the act of which he had been accused; but she thought that he might possibly have been careless, and, if it were so, his failure was due to the consequence of that mad marriage into which she had pitilessly flung him. So the tragedy, the betrayal, the very position that her nation stood in at the moment, was due to her own folly, her own ruthless activity.Impulsively spoken words, letters written under misapprehensions, can never be withdrawn. If as a child one makes a mistake in a sum, one can erase the figures and add them up afresh. But in life a mistake once made is irremediable, as Lady Wereminster knew.CHAPTER XI"To all men there comes the last battle."—GEORGE STEVENS.The door closed with a bang. How final it sounded! Almost as if Lady Wereminster were going out of her life, Evelyn thought. She put her hands to her head. Momentarily she was overpowered by the strange, sudden faintness which had come upon her so often lately.It passed, and she went back to the sitting-room, waiting with a set purpose. Sooner or later he would come. She looked for no merely human message. Between two hearts that beat absolutely as one there is no need for such communications in moments of great crisis. The one calls to the other, and the other obeys.At about eleven o'clock, the echo of boys' voices calling the news rang through the open windows. Evelyn, still strangely idle, listened unmoved. She heard front doors being hurriedly opened, the shuffling of many feet up and down the kitchen steps; now and again voices from bedroom windows calling to the men below to wait for a moment until some hastily-awakened servant had time to get down and unlatch the door. Even in West Kensington such news had its interest. Evelyn pictured the thousand and one faces which, in London, were at that moment bending over "late specials," reading the lines which crushed a man's career, temporarily at least, and broke his heart.The noise lulled. With ears extraordinarily quickened, Evelyn had heard the sound die away in the direction of Hammersmith and Fulham. The words echoed in her brain, like a discordant piece of music, recurring again and again—"RESIGNATION OF THE SECRETARY OFSTATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS!""MR. FARQUHARSON'S RESIGNATION."Then new sounds came to distract her; the bustle of feet as the last Tubes disgorged late occupants returning from the theatre; the whir of an occasional taxi-cab; the hurrying wheels of hansoms; the almost inevitable discussion as to fares.Silence again. Then a new chorus of sounds—altered in character. This was the hour when belated clients were turned out from public-houses. They were uncertain, stumbling footsteps that passed now, confused voices, readily roused to mirth or anger. She heard a jumble of conflicting notes, annoyance, irritation, cajolery, laughter, broken at last by a policeman's voice and a sharp order to move on.Then silence again. Nothing, now, but the bark and growl and eventual whimper of a stray fox-terrier shut out from the house opposite, and the never-ending wailing of cats, which sounds so exactly like the cry of a frightened child.Two o'clock—three o'clock. He was late. Evelyn, hearing the clock strike, tried to move, and found herself held in the grip of almost intolerable physical pain. For hours she must have sat in one position, leaning forward in her chair, with hands lightly crossed upon her knee; every limb was cramped. She crossed to the window, and pulled aside the blind for a moment. In the daytime the windows were alight with a thousand eyes; now they were blank and sightless. The street was deserted; the reflection from the lamp showed a long expanse of deserted pavement.Then from afar she heard the sounds of approaching footsteps, firm, determined; belonging to one she knew. Her thought had drawn him as she wished. She let the blind fall, and going to the hall door awaited his coming.We read, mostly in books by spinsters, a great many unnecessary details of what in their view is a scene of passion. But when a man is overwhelmed and broken it is the mother-love of the woman he cares for most to which he looks for peace and security. There are no sweeter or more tender services than those which a woman can offer her lover under such conditions, and nothing draws them nearer than his temporary dependence.Farquharson came in blindly, like a dazed man, gripping her arm with a strength he did not realize. She knew there was some new pain behind his stricken eyes; when the hospitable gods give you a bitter cup to drink they are very careful to fill it full. He sat in absolute silence for a while, and she knelt beside him. It struck her afterwards as a wonderful proof of the tie between them that he did not question her when she met him at the threshold, that he took her waiting, her expectation, her very silence for granted.It was a long time before he turned. Then he looked her full in the face, with eyes from which all the light and youth had gone.He caught his breath."You have heard the news?" he said. "I thought so. The streets were alive with people last night. I was pressed to buy papers over and over again on my way here. The result had barely been announced in the House when a message reached me from home"—Evelyn winced—"from the nurse, to tell me thatmy wife"—he laid stress on the word—-"was ill, and wanted me. As I was leaving the House, at the very door, I was stopped by another messenger, it was an important cable in reference to a big Russian question; it required special knowledge. The man who is taking over my work had to deal with it then and there, and couldn't without help. I stayed. That meant ten minutes' delay, but it had to be. It took me another eight minutes to get home. Two minutes before my son had died in agony, left by the nurses in order that they might attend to Dora, who was in violent hysterics because she thought they were neglecting her to look after my child."He pushed Evelyn's hand away and walked to the mantelpiece. The light of the little electric lamp defined every line, every feature, with all the havoc that the night had wrought."My dear! my dear!" said Evelyn brokenly. There was a fierce battle in her heart, but she stood silently beside him, and dawn filtered slowly through the half-drawn blinds."I could not have left him but for you," Farquharson said, after a pause. "He's lying there now in my dressing-room, on a little bed of flowers; there were flowers enough in her room and to spare; I took them. Have you ever seen a dead baby, Eve? He's like marble now, the little mouth all set and cold—you would never think it, but he smiled at me only yesterday. He knew me, you know. I know they say it's absurd that a baby of a week old should, but I'm sure he did. He used to clutch my finger—you would never have believed how strong he was!—and snuggle in here in the bend of my arm, where I'm holding you now. I had to be everything to him, you see; his mother had never even had him in the room from the first." He stopped abruptly. "When I went in to tell her he was dead, she said, 'Well, I'm afraid that's the end of your hopes of an heir, Richard. I shall never go through this again, I assure you.'""Don't, don't," said Evelyn; "I can't bear it!" She caught him in her arms and held him close, with strength that seemed to have been given her for that one purpose.But presently she spoke; clearly, concisely."You asked me once to go away with you, Richard, and I refused. You had your life before you then, and you could do without me. Now you have nothing. Do you know how I suffer with you in every ache that's tearing your heart-strings at this moment? I had my dream-child too, dear—its loss was bitter enough, but yours was worse. You've got the touch of little, living fingers to remember, the light of dear wee smiles that were your very own from the beginning. If you want me still I'll come to you anywhere, anyhow, so long as I can be with you and comfort you. When you could do without me, religion was strong enough to keep us apart, but now it isn't. Things are too hard for us, and I've given in.""Eve——!"He looked at her, stupefied; hardly understanding what she said.She pulled the blind back."See, there is the dawn. Our dawn, Richard. There shall be no grief or repining if you take me, dear. I'll make you as happy as I can, and give you all I have and all I am—your absolute possession, bought by pain."The light from the east came in upon the man and woman, standing close together, more in the position of two persons who had been one for many years than that of lovers whose lips had met only for the second time. They watched it touch the commonplace houses of the dreary street with its transfiguring light. As Evelyn looked, a sense of peace came over her. After all, it was the conflict which had been so infinitely bitter, the civil war between soul and body, reason and heart."You needn't speak," she said; "I know what you've decided. Let me know in a few days when you want me to come, what you want me to do. You'll have to say good-bye to your little son, you see; you'll let me come and say it too, won't you? Good-bye till then.""When I want you—God!""Now you must go!" She faltered; all that the man had suffered showed in his last words.He kissed her and went out. The sun rose, flooding her with light as she stood on the doorstep watching him. He thought of her many times afterwards as he saw her at that moment, tall, pale, yet radiant, unashamed, with eyes mystic and sad, and features a little drawn but spiritualized by the night's waiting and suffering. She looked as though peace encompassed her, stilling the turbulent forces which had enfolded her so long. Had she been summoned before God just then she would have used the very selfsame words in which she spoke to Farquharson: "Things were too hard for us—I have given in."PART VVICTORY"Love ... when weary, is not tired; when straitened, is not constrained; when frightened, is not disturbed, but like the lively flame of a torch all on fire, mounts upwards and securely passes through all. He that loves most willingly embraces all that is hard and bitter."... If the works of God were such as might be easily comprehended, they could not be called wonderful and unspeakable."—THOMAS À KEMPIS."It were not hard to suffer by His Hand,If thou couldst see His Face;—but in the dark!That is the one last trial:—be it so.Christ was forsaken, so must thou be too:How couldst thou suffer but in seeming, else?Thou wilt not see the face nor feel the hand,Only the cruel crushing of the feet,When through the bitter night the Lord comes downTo tread the wine-press—Not by sight, but faith....Endure, endure—be faithful to the end."—MRS. HAMILTON KING.CHAPTER I"'Tis not the grapes of Canaan that repay,But the high faith that failed not on the way."Lines written upon a photograph.At the same hour as Evelyn and Farquharson parted, Hare, wrapped round with all the paraphernalia of illness, sitting beside his window at an hotel in Biarritz which faced the Plage, braced himself by force of will to write a letter which he felt impelled to send."By the time this reaches you, dear Evelyn, I shall be dead. I shall leave instructions with the solicitor to whom I telegraphed six hours ago, that this letter shall be held back until the end. I have always been fond of you, as you know; it is not often given to childless men to meet with their ideal daughter; but in my heart I have always regarded you as that. I have been powerless to save you from the consequences of your actions, to spare you one lash of the whip with which the malicious sprites which govern this world's happenings have seen fit to scourge you. Throughout the vicissitudes through which you have passed, I have stood detached, a critical spectator. You might have resented my explanation in life; you are amongst those who forgive with exquisite tenderness the past impertinences of the dead."I suppose instinct led me to read you aright throughout. I saw you, as a child, battling against the inevitable; you are waging the same war to-day. You may, or you may not know, a phrase which is bandied about by 'common people' in Hindoo bazars—'Likka hai'—'It is written.' From the first, you have had to brave the most cruel enemies that can beset a woman—enemies of the household—secret enemies; enemies far more powerful, of faith and doubt."People will tell you that at the end, our thoughts are usually concentrated upon self—that the scenes of a man's mimic life pass each in turn before him in succession. I have not found that to be true. I am thinking of you now, your doubts, your difficulties, the problems that you are grappling with, which you have never told me, but which I have never mentioned until now."I am not a pious man, as you know. I pay no attention to the ordinary claims of religion. I take precisely the same pleasure in the Tenebrae of the Catholic Church, as I do in the Burial Service of the Church of England. In both you are swept from your ordinary course of placidity on the waves of the eternal. In the first, you have the dull rhythm of sound, with breaks, and curious changes of key and tune—if tune it may be called which is so Gregorian in its methods. Working up, step by step, with the disciples in their vigil with the Lord, you have the putting out of candle upon candle, the pause, the heart-stirring silence, culminating in complete darkness symbolical of dissolution. That is dramatic and intense. In the second, you have the direct voice of God. St. Paul never spoke with so clear a note as in his wonderful description of the triumph of things spiritual over things temporal. 'We shall not sleep, but we shall all be changed.... There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars: for one star differeth from another in glory. So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption: it is sown in dishonour; it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power.... As is the earthy, such are they that are earthy; and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly.... The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law.' We can never find words to match these either for concentration or for power."Catholicism is, as you know, not so abhorrent to me as it is to some Anglicans. To begin with, I am an historian; that in itself is a strong point in favour of a creed which personally I dislike. I think myself that it was a good thing for England when she threw off the yoke under which she had bled for so many centuries; my greatest contention against the Catholic power is her interference in the politics of nations, and her attacks on men's independence. On the other hand, I admit that one of the first charges we bring against her exponents is a paradox; we call them too worldly and too mystic; complaining that their eyes are fixed so steadily on the vision of Heaven, that they fail to recognize ordinary precautions which men of business, dealing with men of business, should observe. There are a million paradoxes in the Church; you can explain them only by admitting her claim, acknowledging her, like Christ Himself, to be the possessor of two different entities, Divine and human."I have known many Catholics in my day; I have never known one like you. You weigh all questions fairly, without prejudice, but shed on the solution of great problems the light of an undying faith. You know I obey no active claims of religion; yet I have never willingly abjured God in my heart. Mine is a negative quality, not aggressive. I am as sure that, were your faith called into question, you would go to the rack to uphold its most trivial point as I believe in God myself. There are many who trust you in this way; I am one of the number. If you failed, their faith would shatter; it would be as the foundation of a house sinking suddenly."Many things have been denied you in life, those things even which you most ardently wished, and for which from our human point of view you were most fitted for. But this is yours: The power to point the way by example; to uplift, as a living witness of its purity, the creed to which you have subscribed, and against which here in England so many barriers are raised of scorn and contumely and indifference."Here, on the very brink of the unknown, having gone through life as best I might, faultily. no doubt, but as, I hope, a gentleman to the last, I look to you with failing eyes and raise my hat in farewell. And perhaps I see you more clearly now than I ever did. You have been led away by emotion in your day; the devil seldom errs in aim; in your case, he has lodged his shaft in your most sensitive spot. Other women fall through egotism or ambition; you would fall through pity. But you are eminently logical. Should the time come when you are face to face with a great crisis, I beg you to remember my words and to pause and inquire. You would sacrifice yourself to one; yes, but would you sacrifice others? And there are many others who look to you as I do now, as the living witness of the purity of a faith which has kept its pre-eminence in spite of scorn and mockery and scourging—a faith which will, I think, always endure."The sea has lashed itself into absurd frenzy as I write. The sea can be very cruel. It longs to destroy, to tear and rend, like any human being. Three or four nights ago, as you doubtless read in the papers, it broke up a big ship like matchwood; it met and battered the men who tried to fight it beyond recognition, from mere wickedness. The sea and life are very alike in their methods. Life mars and mutilates the body. But if the soul has been true to itself, it looks upon those human wounds as outlets through which it may creep hour by hour, filtering through earthly channels to be one at last—bleeding but satisfied—in the image of its Creator."You have the ordinary human struggles against poverty to confront, amongst others. I have neither kith nor kin of my own. I have left you what I die possessed of, absolutely, with the exception of a few small legacies which I desire you should give as soon as possible to the members of my own household, my servants and personal attendants. Money has its value—at times it may even remove you out of the way of a disaster which you could not otherwise escape. And I know that in the past you have suffered many small inconveniences through being unable to give in charity as much as you wished. Now you are my almoner—chosen because of my explicit trust, both in your guardianship, and in the beacon of light to which you look, which guides so many faltering footsteps in the eternal way."
Evelyn, instead of having been paralyzed by the shock, found it had quickened every instinct. She felt as if she were charged with a new and strange force, a kind of super-consciousness which made her the recipient of a thousand telepathic messages, along which communications carried with the speed and safety of a telegram. It took her away from ordinary surroundings and left her indifferent even to all Brand said and did—although he naturally spared her nothing. There is an inner chamber to every heart, a place of refuge and concealment of which at times one may mercifully turn the key. Evelyn withdrew there now when he attacked her; safe within its four walls, she listened to his criticism of Farquharson as one listens to the ravings of a madman. He could touch her no longer; he could hurt her no more. That is the comfort of receiving a mortal wound. The thrust of spear and bayonet may tear and lacerate to an unendurable pitch of torture, but a blow at the heart kills.
"As we have seen nothing of Mrs. Farquharson," said Lady Wereminster, "we will charitably suppose that for once she has been of use to her husband. There are women who fail in every minor office who can yet rise to occasions. And a man in trouble must have sympathy, no matter from what source. Dora Farquharson has got the opportunity of her life if she did but know. Never expect me to pity a woman who can't keep her husband. She's a fool, and I hate fools. Men are naturally more domestic animals than women. The ties of daily intimacy make enduring claims upon them. A man may be consumed by the fire of undying passion for one woman, but he's dependent on the one he lives with, if she will only minister to his daily needs, and never let his supply of whisky or cigarettes run short, and be ready with a new dish or a soothing medicine as each is required."
"If Dora fails her husband now——" said Evelyn. She stopped.
"Oh, if it were but the ideal marriage," said Lady Wereminster. "With the right woman he would have braved all this and carried it through triumphantly. They have been married long enough now to have begun to form the deeper ties of union and of confidence. It partly amuses, partly hurts me when people talk of the early days of marriage as though all the sweetness and ardour and passion and tenderness of life were concentrated in them. When two people really love each other those things not only endure and strengthen, but take exquisite sanctity as years go by. The plant strengthens. Its blooms are finer. As the years go, its colour and texture are fit to grow in the Garden of God. Something of the Eternal Love has filtered directly through from some crevice of heaven and shone upon them; their scent isn't of this world, but eternity."
"And you think that might apply to Mr. Farquharson and his wife?" said Evelyn. She stood quite silently, looking away from Lady Wereminster.
"Never," said Lady Wereminster; "but men are human. They're like dogs who are hurt. They cringe away into corners where, for a while, they miss accustomed voices, and presently creep out, ready to lick the hand of even the hardest master so long as he is master. When men are hurt they slink off, in much the same way; but daily routine tells. They are creatures of habit, who miss even the harshest voice if they have once got used to it. Dora Farquharson is on the spot, and there's the other tie.... How far that will tell one doesn't know. Fatherhood affects different men differently, but I have an idea it will constitute a strong claim on Mr. Farquharson."
There was a knock at Evelyn's bedroom door; her maid entered with a letter.
"The man is waiting for an answer, ma'am."
"Excuse me," said Evelyn. The letter was from Mrs. Farquharson, so hurried, so incoherent that she did not at first grasp the meaning of the few excited words.
"Please come at once, no matter what you're doing. I must have you; I must speak to you. I am almost out of my mind with agony and horror; you mustn't fail me. Richard doesn't know I'm writing. I don't know what to do. For God's sake, come at once."
"She's failed him again," said Evelyn slowly. Lady Wereminster snatched the letter from her.
"It isn't that at all. Here, get on your things, I'll take you on in the car. That it should come to-day of all days—poor Mr. Farquharson!"
Dawn—cold, grey, chilling. The stir and bustle of servants' steps; low voices. The household at Chester Street had been hurrying to and fro sending telegrams and dispatches and messages ever since Evelyn had arrived at twelve o'clock on the previous day. While the Leader of the Opposition was preparing his vote of censure on the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and such members as were in the country were hurriedly returning to town in order to be present at one of the most dramatic debates of the century, the fate of Farquharson's child hung in the balance between life and death.
Lady Wereminster was right; when Evelyn entered the house she saw at once how matters stood and sent for the doctor. She had found Dora in a state bordering on frenzy, bitter, reproachful, incoherent. The torrent of words with which she was met dazed Evelyn so that she could scarcely take in their full force; Farquharson, very still and pale, was standing upright by the fire-place in the dining-room, listening with a face that might have been carved in marble, so still was it, so utterly expressionless. But Evelyn, entering, saw the deep lines cut obliquely from nostril to lip; saw the furrows in the brow, cut as if by a chisel—those lines of ineradicable pain which the years deepen instead of smoothing.
She swept across the room, and, catching Dora's trembling figure in her arms, put her hand above the girl's mouth and checked the hideous torrent of words.
"You must come up-stairs at once to your room," she said sharply. "You've sent for the nurse, of course, Mr. Farquharson? Then please do so at once. Come up with me, Dora—or, better still, let your husband carry you. No, I'm not going to listen to a word now; you're better for the moment, and this sort of scene does you no good at all. You may think I'm speaking harshly, but I'm not. Send for Felice, Mr. Farquharson, will you? Or, if she's hysterical, the head housemaid, please; she's a sensible woman."
"It's awful, it's ghastly," said Dora, fighting them both, as they tried to carry her up-stairs, between spasms of pain. "It's unendurable, and I won't bear it. Doctors are beasts; I know this man won't give me chloroform until the very end. I won't bear it till the end, do you hear? Why should I be tortured so for a man I loathe? I won't have it, I tell you; I won't have it!" Her voice rose to a shriek. "Make the doctor come, Evelyn; make him give me something. I won't stand it, I tell you; I won't stand—oh, God——"
This was the prelude of hours of revolt and rebellion. It seemed to Evelyn that for a lifetime she had listened to Dora's ravings. She tried to excuse them on the score of delirium, and failed. In some ways Dora was a typical modern woman, eager to take all that life offered her and pay no penalty; rebellious at the gift of a new responsibility which compelled her to take life from another point of view.
Nurse and doctor both came presently, and then another nurse was sent for, Mrs. Farquharson was too unmanageable for one alone.
Evelyn, sitting in the room beyond, was called for ceaselessly. No one could do anything so well as Evelyn. No one else fanned Dora in the right way, or knew when she wanted her pillows moved. Now she must have her head laved; now she wanted special scent on her handkerchief. The pillows were wrong again now.... No, Evelyn could not have anything to eat at this moment. How could she when Dora was in such pain? She could go down-stairs and have something presently, when the nurse had finished her meal.
But the "presently" never came. Hour after hour Evelyn sat, waging perhaps the hardest battle of her life, as Dora's rebellion gave way to hatred, and hatred to passion so intense that the very room seemed charged with it. Evelyn had seen Farquharson come to the door; from her bed his wife had recognized him, and poured out such a torrent of contempt that Evelyn ran to her and put her hand upon the quivering mouth.
She dragged her tired limbs now to the head of the stairs, but Farquharson had gone. She wondered which would be the hardest ordeal, the facing of that stern tribunal before which he would presently stand at bay, or the one through which he had just passed.
Of late Evelyn's prayers had been merely mechanical. To-night they concentrated; let him have this at least, dear God—one thing in the world which might comfort and cheer him.... But where it became a question of the child's life or Dora's there was, in Dora's mind, no choice. She had never wanted the child from the first, she loved her own life.
At midnight Evelyn heard Farquharson return. She knew by the sound of his footsteps that the vote had gone against him. She tried to disengage her hand from Dora's, but failed. By the time she was free, he had gone to his own room; she heard him move heavily across it.
Physically spent herself after hours of struggle with a woman whose strength in intervals of pain was almost incredible, Evelyn watched day dawn, with a face that was haggard and worn. Dora's shrinking at pain she would have borne so gladly shattered her. In moments of physical anguish souls are revealed, and she had never seen Dora in so pitiful, so low, so unworthy a light as she did now. Wearied out at last, she moved mechanically, like one in a dream, going to and from the sick-room as she was bidden. Dora had got her way; the doctor had administered chloroform long before he would have given it in the case of a courageous patient. Sitting alone in the little anteroom, Evelyn watched grey shadows come and go, frightened servants stepping on tiptoe, the doctor and the nurse, even Farquharson, whose ravaged face put him beyond the reach even of her spoken sympathy. In the house it was presently rumoured that the real struggle with death had begun; the piteous struggle of the child to whom Dora had denied any chance of vitality which might have given her one added pain.
The end came in the morning as light trembled into being. As if in a dream, Evelyn heard a cry that pierced her heart; a cry that seemed to sound the death-knell of her own dream-child, that put Farquharson further away from her. Some smell of chloroform or ether—she was no longer able to distinguish between the two—was penetrating into the inner room. When presently her name was called, it seemed to make a definite atmosphere through which she feebly groped her way to Dora's bedroom. One of the nurses met her there with a tiny bundle in her arms. Evelyn took it; it was pitifully light.
"He may not live," the nurse said; "the doctor thought his father would like to see him. I must go back to the room, Mrs. Farquharson is so dreadfully nervous and hysterical; we are both quite worn out. Just hark at her now! Would you kindly take the baby down, Mrs. Brand."
The gods have an unlimited belief in one's powers of endurance. Slowly, with breaking heart, her eyes drowned partly for self-pity, partly for fear lest the flickering little life she held might breathe its last before the end of her journey, she went downstairs and entered the sitting-room where Farquharson stood waiting. She saw his face as he greeted her, its pallor, its anxiety transfigured suddenly by the light which comes but once in a lifetime to a man, and that only when he looks upon his firstborn son. Without a word he held out his arms; without a word Evelyn handed him her dear burden. Then the room rocked, she put out her hands blindly, swaying. So bitter, so cruel, so overwhelming was the moment's agony, that it was as though a chord had snapped in her heart, and left her struggling for breath. But Farquharson neither saw nor heard. She closed the door gently—how she did not know—and left him alone with his son.
CHAPTER X
"The cord breaks at the last by the weakest pull."—Old Spanish Proverb.
At one point in pain, all sense of value dies. Nothing is left but the overwhelming realization that, throb by throb, it will increase until it reaches the climax, when a woman bites her pillow to stifle her shrieks, and a man in all probability blows out his brains—the shortest way of escape. To the woman there succeeds what may be called reaction, a temporary lull, in which body, mind and soul are alike so bruised and stricken that, possibly from sheer weariness, sleep may come for a brief hour. But next day the pain begins again and concentrates again, and so on and on from day to day and week to week, the only change being that soul and mind and body become daily a little more bruised, a little more stricken.
This is worse than a mere period of spiritual dryness; it is an active wrestling with the powers of hell. It is in such moments that religion fails, and the faith to which one was born seems to spell restriction. One would prefer to fling it away altogether, to deny its truth, to escape to a world where the light of the heart might give out its full radiance, even if the soul shrank in gloom.
Doubts creep in in such moments of peril. Catholics do not mince matters. They do not expect to cheat God in their lives and the devil in their deaths by tardy repentance. If they sin, they risk eternal damnation, and know it.
The description of a picture she had once seen had often been in Evelyn's thoughts lately. God sat in judgment on His throne. Before Him was ranged a tribe of kneeling figures—kings laying down their sceptres, soldiers their swords, queens their jewels, men their symbols of ambition, women their guerdons of beauty. Some hung back as though unwilling to give up so soon all that was pleasant. In the foreground of the picture knelt a young girl's shrinking form. Her eyes, mystical and reverent, were looking at the throne; she held one hand bravely outstretched, but the other was concealed within the drapery of her gown. In the hand that pointed direct to God there was the half of a little human heart, her own, all that she had to give, for the other half was withheld. Amongst so vast a crowd of worshippers she thought that perhaps God might not see the gift she offered was divided.
Torn with conflict, every energy, every force concentrated on one prevailing thought, the daily routine of her life temporarily suspended, what had Evelyn now to give God? Little pitiful utterings of prayer, the mechanical moving of lips to the rhythm of habitual words—that was all. Yet, after all, what proof had she that what she had been taught in childhood was true?—Think of the bitterness that would come, if at the end of life, when the secrets of all are revealed, we were to find that we had given up love, in bitterness and agony, for the sake of a phantom God and a phantom creed....
The thought passed. Belief held her still. But in the conflict between self and soul lay her real torment.
It was the sight of Farquharson's child that had broken her, a child born in rebellion and anger, wresting its life from the God of Being in spite of its mother's cowardice. She felt as if her own child had been stolen from her. Wounded and weeping tears of blood, she must stand by and watch it in another woman's arms.
The inscrutable laws of human destiny! Call them rather those of blind chance, since some of us seem born only to be first tossed to and fro on the waves of disaster, and then thrown, helpless and mangled beyond recognition, upon the shore with other refuse.
It was in such a mood as this that Evelyn awaited Lady Wereminster's arrival a week after the vote of censure. Farquharson had allowed himself this specified time in which to battle with public opinion. If at the end it still went against him he would hand in his resignation. It is only when a man is called upon to defend his honour that he knows which are his friends and which his foes.
All through the week Evelyn had hoped against hope; had worked and striven on his behalf as much as she dared, only to meet an icy wall of indifference. The world had given its verdict. Temporarily the Farquharsons were to be ostracized. When your acquaintances in high places are openly accused of bribery and corruption by the foreign Press, it is high time to revise your visiting-list. Obviously Mr. Farquharson had to resign. That he should continue to hold such an important post would make matters very uncomfortable for all who knew him. Eventually things might blow over; but in the meantime society shrugged its shoulders, and shook its discreet skirts free from the least trace of contamination.
"The time is up. We shall know Mr. Farquharson's decision to-night," Lady Wereminster said. "I must save you from hearing the news shouted in the open street. I shall come on to see you directly his announcement is made, if it is made to-night."
The moments crept by, and hours, while Evelyn waited. Mercifully she was alone. Brand had been called to the country on some mysterious business, and she had sent her servant away for the night. West Kensington is not usually a neighbourhood where there is much traffic during the social hours of the evening; its inmates are more inclined to go by foot or rail to their engagements than by carriage or motor. But it seemed to Evelyn that night that the streets were full of noise and movement. Time after time she heard the approaching hoot of a motor, and went to the door to find that the sound existed only in imagination.
But Lady Wereminster came at last, slowly, with head bent and lagging steps. Her news was written on her face. Evelyn drew her into the inner room without a word.
"He has resigned," Lady Wereminster whispered. "And he looks as if it were his death-blow."
"I must try to tell you consecutively," she went on presently. She stretched her hand out trembling towards the liqueur glass of brandy which Evelyn had poured out for her, and drank it off at a gulp. "I'm unnerved, I suppose. It was one of the most awful things I've ever witnessed. The scene in the House the other night was nothing to it; men were beside themselves then with the sudden shock, the very noise and tumult helped to carry one through. But to-night there was a frozen silence, a great icy wall of horror and contempt and deadly purpose, that turned the very blood in one's veins. When Mr. Farquharson entered, I thought of a time in Egypt when I had seen the people shrink from a man who was stricken with leprosy. One looked to right and left and asked, 'Where are his friends? Where are the people who have canonized him and idolized him, fawned at his feet, and cringed before him?'"
There were tears in her eyes; she stopped abruptly. Evelyn, quite tearless, listened.
"And then?" she said.
"It was as though when he spoke they were stripping him threadbare," said Lady Wereminster, her mouth rigid. "To my mind, he dealt with charge upon charge with absolute sincerity and conviction. His hearers listened with the air of spectators at a play, a play whose chief actor lacked what the French callvraisemblance. There's nothing so impossible to grip as an audience that has wrapped itself in the cloak of indifference. I suppose at heart there isn't a man in the House but covets Farquharson's position; not a man but thinks he could fill it as adequately were he called upon to do so. And jealousy, as you know, has been at the root of every betrayal, of every libel, since the world began."
"Were there no cheers, no interruptions?" asked Evelyn. Her hands, gripped tightly together, alone betrayed her. "Surely his colleagues cheered him? It was the least they could do."
"There's not a man amongst the lot," said Lady Wereminster. "They were all deadly nervous. Each waited to see what his neighbour was going to do before he dared act on his own initiative. One or two nodded to Farquharson, that was all. There was only one course open to him, and he took it."
"He resigned, then?" said Evelyn.
"He explained very clearly at the beginning of his speech that it was the only course open to him under the circumstances. The whole affair being without precedence, I understand that he was practically given a free hand in his way of dealing with it. He said that he had from the first courted the fullest inquiry; he had immediately put matters into the hands of Scotland Yard. Everything that could be done had been done to compel the Power which had bought the information to admit from what source it was obtained. Up to the present moment its refusal was absolute. He accounted briefly for his actions on the day in question; even reading a letter from Von Kirsch, which, in my view, entirely cleared him. He said he knew that as yet he stood in the position of a man who had not legally proved his innocence, but that up till now he had not thought it possible that his fellow-members should seriously suspect him. In the face of public opinion, which he supposed was echoed by the House, he would resign his office until he was once more asked by his colleagues to take a seat in that great assembly. The whole speech was on these lines—direct, concise and manly. But he ended as he had begun, in silence."
"Silence!"
In the street below a man and woman were singing the refrain of a popular music-hall melody. The windows of the little flat opened on to the street, so in the pause that followed the words echoed distinctly, accompanied by the giggling murmur of the crowd, and the strumming of three primary chords on the piano-organ.
"Don't you wish 'e might get it, Bill?Oh, ain't he a powerful man!"
"Don't you wish 'e might get it, Bill?Oh, ain't he a powerful man!"
"Don't you wish 'e might get it, Bill?
Oh, ain't he a powerful man!"
"Good-bye, I'm going now," said Lady Wereminster brokenly. "The street boys will be here soon, calling the extra specials. Well, you're prepared for them now, thank God. Go to bed soon. You're looking absolutely dead beat." She took the girl's face in her hands and turned it towards the light of the little lamp which stood upon the three-cornered table by the mantelpiece. "Your heart's been bad again, hasn't it? Your face has got its old grey look—the look that always frightens me."
"Oh, I'm all right," said Evelyn tonelessly.
At the door Lady Wereminster turned suddenly back and put her arms round Evelyn again, as tenderly as a mother.
"Hold on," she said; "you are one of those who must hold on, because we expect you to. So far you've been brave, Evelyn; don't give in now."
Usually a quiet sleeper, Lady Wereminster found that night that her thoughts were as clear, her mind as capable of action, as in the day. She had a pleasant little boudoir attached to her bedroom; at about two o'clock in the morning she rose from her bed and flung herself down upon the couch, a most unusual proceeding.
To be able to see from only one point of view is indescribably consoling. Unluckily for her, Lady Wereminster could put herself in other people's places, could judge the result of her own work as critically as she judged the work of others. When she had, more or less, compelled Farquharson to marry, she had acted emotionally; her one idea had been to save Evelyn from threatened scandals. She had not reckoned, for one moment, on Farquharson's temperament. She had practically bid him seek a wife—any wife. What was the result? She forgot that she was dealing with a reckless and adventurous man—the type upon which one can never count with certainty. There had always been a spark of dare-devilry in Farquharson's nature. She had expected him to weigh the various advantages of the various charming ladies who tripped across his social stage as possible candidates for marriage. Instead of doing this, he had flung himself headlong into the first abyss which gaped before him. It would have been worth another man's while perhaps to marry Dora; but Farquharson could get on without Beadon's influence. And Dora's character was, as any woman of discernment would observe, one which must inevitably repel and alienate him. Such women are like cancerous growths; they eat away a man's vitality, robbing him in time of strength and force of will.
And she was responsible for this outrageous marriage—she, Mary Wereminster. She who had always prided herself upon her judgment and balance. Lives are, after all, very dangerous chemicals to play with. Mix the wrong two together, and disaster follows.
With the best intentions in the world, what had Lady Wereminster compassed after all? She had not really saved Evelyn; there are times when even a surgeon decides that a disease is inoperative. She had taken Farquharson from a life of comparative peace and thrown him into one of petty annoyance and difficulties—jars which strain such a man's endurance to the utmost. Lady Wereminster did not for one moment believe that Farquharson had committed the act of which he had been accused; but she thought that he might possibly have been careless, and, if it were so, his failure was due to the consequence of that mad marriage into which she had pitilessly flung him. So the tragedy, the betrayal, the very position that her nation stood in at the moment, was due to her own folly, her own ruthless activity.
Impulsively spoken words, letters written under misapprehensions, can never be withdrawn. If as a child one makes a mistake in a sum, one can erase the figures and add them up afresh. But in life a mistake once made is irremediable, as Lady Wereminster knew.
CHAPTER XI
"To all men there comes the last battle."—GEORGE STEVENS.
The door closed with a bang. How final it sounded! Almost as if Lady Wereminster were going out of her life, Evelyn thought. She put her hands to her head. Momentarily she was overpowered by the strange, sudden faintness which had come upon her so often lately.
It passed, and she went back to the sitting-room, waiting with a set purpose. Sooner or later he would come. She looked for no merely human message. Between two hearts that beat absolutely as one there is no need for such communications in moments of great crisis. The one calls to the other, and the other obeys.
At about eleven o'clock, the echo of boys' voices calling the news rang through the open windows. Evelyn, still strangely idle, listened unmoved. She heard front doors being hurriedly opened, the shuffling of many feet up and down the kitchen steps; now and again voices from bedroom windows calling to the men below to wait for a moment until some hastily-awakened servant had time to get down and unlatch the door. Even in West Kensington such news had its interest. Evelyn pictured the thousand and one faces which, in London, were at that moment bending over "late specials," reading the lines which crushed a man's career, temporarily at least, and broke his heart.
The noise lulled. With ears extraordinarily quickened, Evelyn had heard the sound die away in the direction of Hammersmith and Fulham. The words echoed in her brain, like a discordant piece of music, recurring again and again—
"RESIGNATION OF THE SECRETARY OFSTATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS!"
"MR. FARQUHARSON'S RESIGNATION."
Then new sounds came to distract her; the bustle of feet as the last Tubes disgorged late occupants returning from the theatre; the whir of an occasional taxi-cab; the hurrying wheels of hansoms; the almost inevitable discussion as to fares.
Silence again. Then a new chorus of sounds—altered in character. This was the hour when belated clients were turned out from public-houses. They were uncertain, stumbling footsteps that passed now, confused voices, readily roused to mirth or anger. She heard a jumble of conflicting notes, annoyance, irritation, cajolery, laughter, broken at last by a policeman's voice and a sharp order to move on.
Then silence again. Nothing, now, but the bark and growl and eventual whimper of a stray fox-terrier shut out from the house opposite, and the never-ending wailing of cats, which sounds so exactly like the cry of a frightened child.
Two o'clock—three o'clock. He was late. Evelyn, hearing the clock strike, tried to move, and found herself held in the grip of almost intolerable physical pain. For hours she must have sat in one position, leaning forward in her chair, with hands lightly crossed upon her knee; every limb was cramped. She crossed to the window, and pulled aside the blind for a moment. In the daytime the windows were alight with a thousand eyes; now they were blank and sightless. The street was deserted; the reflection from the lamp showed a long expanse of deserted pavement.
Then from afar she heard the sounds of approaching footsteps, firm, determined; belonging to one she knew. Her thought had drawn him as she wished. She let the blind fall, and going to the hall door awaited his coming.
We read, mostly in books by spinsters, a great many unnecessary details of what in their view is a scene of passion. But when a man is overwhelmed and broken it is the mother-love of the woman he cares for most to which he looks for peace and security. There are no sweeter or more tender services than those which a woman can offer her lover under such conditions, and nothing draws them nearer than his temporary dependence.
Farquharson came in blindly, like a dazed man, gripping her arm with a strength he did not realize. She knew there was some new pain behind his stricken eyes; when the hospitable gods give you a bitter cup to drink they are very careful to fill it full. He sat in absolute silence for a while, and she knelt beside him. It struck her afterwards as a wonderful proof of the tie between them that he did not question her when she met him at the threshold, that he took her waiting, her expectation, her very silence for granted.
It was a long time before he turned. Then he looked her full in the face, with eyes from which all the light and youth had gone.
He caught his breath.
"You have heard the news?" he said. "I thought so. The streets were alive with people last night. I was pressed to buy papers over and over again on my way here. The result had barely been announced in the House when a message reached me from home"—Evelyn winced—"from the nurse, to tell me thatmy wife"—he laid stress on the word—-"was ill, and wanted me. As I was leaving the House, at the very door, I was stopped by another messenger, it was an important cable in reference to a big Russian question; it required special knowledge. The man who is taking over my work had to deal with it then and there, and couldn't without help. I stayed. That meant ten minutes' delay, but it had to be. It took me another eight minutes to get home. Two minutes before my son had died in agony, left by the nurses in order that they might attend to Dora, who was in violent hysterics because she thought they were neglecting her to look after my child."
He pushed Evelyn's hand away and walked to the mantelpiece. The light of the little electric lamp defined every line, every feature, with all the havoc that the night had wrought.
"My dear! my dear!" said Evelyn brokenly. There was a fierce battle in her heart, but she stood silently beside him, and dawn filtered slowly through the half-drawn blinds.
"I could not have left him but for you," Farquharson said, after a pause. "He's lying there now in my dressing-room, on a little bed of flowers; there were flowers enough in her room and to spare; I took them. Have you ever seen a dead baby, Eve? He's like marble now, the little mouth all set and cold—you would never think it, but he smiled at me only yesterday. He knew me, you know. I know they say it's absurd that a baby of a week old should, but I'm sure he did. He used to clutch my finger—you would never have believed how strong he was!—and snuggle in here in the bend of my arm, where I'm holding you now. I had to be everything to him, you see; his mother had never even had him in the room from the first." He stopped abruptly. "When I went in to tell her he was dead, she said, 'Well, I'm afraid that's the end of your hopes of an heir, Richard. I shall never go through this again, I assure you.'"
"Don't, don't," said Evelyn; "I can't bear it!" She caught him in her arms and held him close, with strength that seemed to have been given her for that one purpose.
But presently she spoke; clearly, concisely.
"You asked me once to go away with you, Richard, and I refused. You had your life before you then, and you could do without me. Now you have nothing. Do you know how I suffer with you in every ache that's tearing your heart-strings at this moment? I had my dream-child too, dear—its loss was bitter enough, but yours was worse. You've got the touch of little, living fingers to remember, the light of dear wee smiles that were your very own from the beginning. If you want me still I'll come to you anywhere, anyhow, so long as I can be with you and comfort you. When you could do without me, religion was strong enough to keep us apart, but now it isn't. Things are too hard for us, and I've given in."
"Eve——!"
He looked at her, stupefied; hardly understanding what she said.
She pulled the blind back.
"See, there is the dawn. Our dawn, Richard. There shall be no grief or repining if you take me, dear. I'll make you as happy as I can, and give you all I have and all I am—your absolute possession, bought by pain."
The light from the east came in upon the man and woman, standing close together, more in the position of two persons who had been one for many years than that of lovers whose lips had met only for the second time. They watched it touch the commonplace houses of the dreary street with its transfiguring light. As Evelyn looked, a sense of peace came over her. After all, it was the conflict which had been so infinitely bitter, the civil war between soul and body, reason and heart.
"You needn't speak," she said; "I know what you've decided. Let me know in a few days when you want me to come, what you want me to do. You'll have to say good-bye to your little son, you see; you'll let me come and say it too, won't you? Good-bye till then."
"When I want you—God!"
"Now you must go!" She faltered; all that the man had suffered showed in his last words.
He kissed her and went out. The sun rose, flooding her with light as she stood on the doorstep watching him. He thought of her many times afterwards as he saw her at that moment, tall, pale, yet radiant, unashamed, with eyes mystic and sad, and features a little drawn but spiritualized by the night's waiting and suffering. She looked as though peace encompassed her, stilling the turbulent forces which had enfolded her so long. Had she been summoned before God just then she would have used the very selfsame words in which she spoke to Farquharson: "Things were too hard for us—I have given in."
PART V
VICTORY
"Love ... when weary, is not tired; when straitened, is not constrained; when frightened, is not disturbed, but like the lively flame of a torch all on fire, mounts upwards and securely passes through all. He that loves most willingly embraces all that is hard and bitter.
"... If the works of God were such as might be easily comprehended, they could not be called wonderful and unspeakable."—THOMAS À KEMPIS.
"It were not hard to suffer by His Hand,If thou couldst see His Face;—but in the dark!That is the one last trial:—be it so.Christ was forsaken, so must thou be too:How couldst thou suffer but in seeming, else?Thou wilt not see the face nor feel the hand,Only the cruel crushing of the feet,When through the bitter night the Lord comes downTo tread the wine-press—Not by sight, but faith....Endure, endure—be faithful to the end."—MRS. HAMILTON KING.
"It were not hard to suffer by His Hand,If thou couldst see His Face;—but in the dark!That is the one last trial:—be it so.Christ was forsaken, so must thou be too:How couldst thou suffer but in seeming, else?Thou wilt not see the face nor feel the hand,Only the cruel crushing of the feet,When through the bitter night the Lord comes downTo tread the wine-press—Not by sight, but faith....Endure, endure—be faithful to the end."—MRS. HAMILTON KING.
"It were not hard to suffer by His Hand,
If thou couldst see His Face;—but in the dark!
That is the one last trial:—be it so.
Christ was forsaken, so must thou be too:
How couldst thou suffer but in seeming, else?
Thou wilt not see the face nor feel the hand,
Only the cruel crushing of the feet,
When through the bitter night the Lord comes down
To tread the wine-press—Not by sight, but faith....
Endure, endure—be faithful to the end."—MRS. HAMILTON KING.
CHAPTER I
"'Tis not the grapes of Canaan that repay,But the high faith that failed not on the way."Lines written upon a photograph.
"'Tis not the grapes of Canaan that repay,But the high faith that failed not on the way."Lines written upon a photograph.
"'Tis not the grapes of Canaan that repay,
But the high faith that failed not on the way."
Lines written upon a photograph.
Lines written upon a photograph.
At the same hour as Evelyn and Farquharson parted, Hare, wrapped round with all the paraphernalia of illness, sitting beside his window at an hotel in Biarritz which faced the Plage, braced himself by force of will to write a letter which he felt impelled to send.
"By the time this reaches you, dear Evelyn, I shall be dead. I shall leave instructions with the solicitor to whom I telegraphed six hours ago, that this letter shall be held back until the end. I have always been fond of you, as you know; it is not often given to childless men to meet with their ideal daughter; but in my heart I have always regarded you as that. I have been powerless to save you from the consequences of your actions, to spare you one lash of the whip with which the malicious sprites which govern this world's happenings have seen fit to scourge you. Throughout the vicissitudes through which you have passed, I have stood detached, a critical spectator. You might have resented my explanation in life; you are amongst those who forgive with exquisite tenderness the past impertinences of the dead.
"I suppose instinct led me to read you aright throughout. I saw you, as a child, battling against the inevitable; you are waging the same war to-day. You may, or you may not know, a phrase which is bandied about by 'common people' in Hindoo bazars—'Likka hai'—'It is written.' From the first, you have had to brave the most cruel enemies that can beset a woman—enemies of the household—secret enemies; enemies far more powerful, of faith and doubt.
"People will tell you that at the end, our thoughts are usually concentrated upon self—that the scenes of a man's mimic life pass each in turn before him in succession. I have not found that to be true. I am thinking of you now, your doubts, your difficulties, the problems that you are grappling with, which you have never told me, but which I have never mentioned until now.
"I am not a pious man, as you know. I pay no attention to the ordinary claims of religion. I take precisely the same pleasure in the Tenebrae of the Catholic Church, as I do in the Burial Service of the Church of England. In both you are swept from your ordinary course of placidity on the waves of the eternal. In the first, you have the dull rhythm of sound, with breaks, and curious changes of key and tune—if tune it may be called which is so Gregorian in its methods. Working up, step by step, with the disciples in their vigil with the Lord, you have the putting out of candle upon candle, the pause, the heart-stirring silence, culminating in complete darkness symbolical of dissolution. That is dramatic and intense. In the second, you have the direct voice of God. St. Paul never spoke with so clear a note as in his wonderful description of the triumph of things spiritual over things temporal. 'We shall not sleep, but we shall all be changed.... There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars: for one star differeth from another in glory. So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption: it is sown in dishonour; it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power.... As is the earthy, such are they that are earthy; and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly.... The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law.' We can never find words to match these either for concentration or for power.
"Catholicism is, as you know, not so abhorrent to me as it is to some Anglicans. To begin with, I am an historian; that in itself is a strong point in favour of a creed which personally I dislike. I think myself that it was a good thing for England when she threw off the yoke under which she had bled for so many centuries; my greatest contention against the Catholic power is her interference in the politics of nations, and her attacks on men's independence. On the other hand, I admit that one of the first charges we bring against her exponents is a paradox; we call them too worldly and too mystic; complaining that their eyes are fixed so steadily on the vision of Heaven, that they fail to recognize ordinary precautions which men of business, dealing with men of business, should observe. There are a million paradoxes in the Church; you can explain them only by admitting her claim, acknowledging her, like Christ Himself, to be the possessor of two different entities, Divine and human.
"I have known many Catholics in my day; I have never known one like you. You weigh all questions fairly, without prejudice, but shed on the solution of great problems the light of an undying faith. You know I obey no active claims of religion; yet I have never willingly abjured God in my heart. Mine is a negative quality, not aggressive. I am as sure that, were your faith called into question, you would go to the rack to uphold its most trivial point as I believe in God myself. There are many who trust you in this way; I am one of the number. If you failed, their faith would shatter; it would be as the foundation of a house sinking suddenly.
"Many things have been denied you in life, those things even which you most ardently wished, and for which from our human point of view you were most fitted for. But this is yours: The power to point the way by example; to uplift, as a living witness of its purity, the creed to which you have subscribed, and against which here in England so many barriers are raised of scorn and contumely and indifference.
"Here, on the very brink of the unknown, having gone through life as best I might, faultily. no doubt, but as, I hope, a gentleman to the last, I look to you with failing eyes and raise my hat in farewell. And perhaps I see you more clearly now than I ever did. You have been led away by emotion in your day; the devil seldom errs in aim; in your case, he has lodged his shaft in your most sensitive spot. Other women fall through egotism or ambition; you would fall through pity. But you are eminently logical. Should the time come when you are face to face with a great crisis, I beg you to remember my words and to pause and inquire. You would sacrifice yourself to one; yes, but would you sacrifice others? And there are many others who look to you as I do now, as the living witness of the purity of a faith which has kept its pre-eminence in spite of scorn and mockery and scourging—a faith which will, I think, always endure.
"The sea has lashed itself into absurd frenzy as I write. The sea can be very cruel. It longs to destroy, to tear and rend, like any human being. Three or four nights ago, as you doubtless read in the papers, it broke up a big ship like matchwood; it met and battered the men who tried to fight it beyond recognition, from mere wickedness. The sea and life are very alike in their methods. Life mars and mutilates the body. But if the soul has been true to itself, it looks upon those human wounds as outlets through which it may creep hour by hour, filtering through earthly channels to be one at last—bleeding but satisfied—in the image of its Creator.
"You have the ordinary human struggles against poverty to confront, amongst others. I have neither kith nor kin of my own. I have left you what I die possessed of, absolutely, with the exception of a few small legacies which I desire you should give as soon as possible to the members of my own household, my servants and personal attendants. Money has its value—at times it may even remove you out of the way of a disaster which you could not otherwise escape. And I know that in the past you have suffered many small inconveniences through being unable to give in charity as much as you wished. Now you are my almoner—chosen because of my explicit trust, both in your guardianship, and in the beacon of light to which you look, which guides so many faltering footsteps in the eternal way."