She trembled. She understood that he appealed to the days at Mellor, and her lips quivered.
"No," she exclaimed, almost timidly—"I try to think the best. I see the pressure was great."
"And consider, please," he said proudly, "what the reasons were for that pressure."
She looked at him interrogatively—a sudden softness in her eyes. If at that moment he had confessed himself fully, if he had thrown himself upon her in the frank truth of his mixed character—and he could have done it, with a Rousseau-like completeness—it is difficult to say what the result of this scene might have been. In the midst of shock and repulsion, she was filled with pity; and there were moments when she was more drawn to his defeat and undoing, than she had ever been to his success.
Yet how question him? To do so, would be to assume a right, which in turn would implyhisrights. She thought of that mention of "gambling debts," then of his luxurious habits, and extravagant friends. But she was silent. Only, as she sat there opposite to him, one slim hand propping the brow, her look invited him.
He thought he saw his advantage.
"You must remember," he said, with the same self-assertive bearing, "that I have never been a rich man, that my mother spent my father's savings on a score of public objects, that she and I started a number of experiments on the estate, that my expenses as a member of Parliament are very large, and that I spent thousands on building up theClarion. I have been ruined by theClarion, by the cause theClarionsupported. I got no help from my party—where was it to come from? They are all poor men. I had to do everything myself, and the struggle has been more than flesh and blood could bear! This year, often, I have not known how to move, to breathe, for anxieties of every sort. Then came the crisis—my work, my usefulness, my career, all threatened. The men who hated me saw their opportunity. I was a fool and gave it them. And my enemies have used it—to the bitter end!"
Tone and gesture were equally insistent and strong. What he was saying to himself was that, with a woman of Marcella's type, one must "bear it out." This moment of wreck was also with him the first moment of all-absorbing and desperate desire. To win her—to wrest her from the Cravens' influence—that had been the cry in his mind throughout his dazed drive from the House of Commons. Her hand in his—her strength, her beauty, the romantic reputation that had begun to attach to her, at his command—and he would have taken the first step to recovery, he would see his way to right himself.
Ah! but he had missed his chance! Somehow, every word he had been saying rang false to her. She could have thrown herself as a saving angel on the side of weakness and disaster which had spoken its proper language, and with a reckless and confiding truth had appealed to the largeness of a woman's heart. But this patriot—ruined so nobly—for such disinterested purposes—left her cold! She began to think even—hating herself—of the thousands he was supposed to have made in the gambling over that wretched company—no doubt for the "cause" too!
But before she could say a word he was kneeling beside her.
"MarcellaI give me my answer!—I am in trouble and defeat—be a woman, and come to me!"
He had her hands. She tried to recover them.
"No!" she said, with passionate energy, "thatis impossible. I had written to you before you came, before I had heard a word of this. Please,pleaselet me go!"
"Not till you explain!"—he said, still holding her, and roused to a white heat of emotion—"whyis it impossible? You said to me once, with all your heart, that you thanked me, that I had taught you, helped you. You cannot ignore the bond between us! And you are free. I have a right to say to you—you thirst to save, to do good—come and save a man that cries to you!—he confesses toyou, freely enough, that he has made a hideous mistake—help him to redeem it!"
She rose suddenly with all her strength, freeing herself from him, so that he rose too, and stood glowering and pale.
"When I said that to you," she cried, "I was betraying "—her voice failed her an instant—"we were both false—to the obligation that should have held us—restrained us. No!no!I will never be your wife! We should hurt each other—poison each other!"
Her eyes shone with wild tears. As he stood there before her she was seized with a piteous sense of contrast—of the irreparable—of what might have been.
"What do you mean?" he asked her, roughly.
She was silent.
His passion rose.
"Do you remember," he said, approaching her again, "that you have given me cause to hope? It is those two fanatics that have changed you—possessed your mind."
She looked at him with a pale dignity.
"My letters must have warned you," she said simply. "If you had come to-morrow—in prosperity—you would have got the same answer, at once. To-day—now—I have had weak moments, because—because I did not know how to add pain to pain. But they are gone—I see my way!I do not love you—that is the simple, the whole truth—I could not follow you!"
He stared at her an instant in a bitter silence.
"I have been warned,"—he said slowly, but in truth losing control of himself, "not only by you—and I suppose I understand! You repent last year. Your own letter said as much. You mean to recover, the ground—the place you lost. Ah, well!—most natural!—most fitting! When the time comes—and my bones are less sore—I suppose I shall have my second congratulations ready! Meanwhile—"
She gave a low cry and burst suddenly into a passion of weeping, turning her face from him. But when in pale sudden shame he tried to excuse himself—to appease her—she moved away, with a gesture that overawed him.
"Youhave not confessed yourself"—she said, and his look wavered under the significance of hers—"but you drive me to it. Yes,I repent!"—her breast heaved, she caught her breath. "I have been trying to cheat myself these last few weeks—to run away from grief—and the other night when you asked me—I would have given all I have and am to feel like any happy girl, who says 'Yes' to her lover. I tried to feel so. But even then, though I was miserable and reckless, I knew in my heart—it was impossible! If you suppose—if you like to suppose—that I—I have hopes or plans—as mean as they would be silly—you must—of course. But I have given no one anyrightto think so or say so. Mr. Wharton—"
Gathering all her self-control, she put out her white hand to him. "Please—please say good-bye to me. It has been hideous vanity—and mistake—and wretchedness—our knowing each other—from the beginning. Iamgrateful for all you did, I shall always be grateful. I hope—oh! I hope—that—that you will find a way through this trouble. I don't want to make it worse by a word. If I could do anything! But I can't. You must please go. It is late. I wish to call my friend, Mrs. Hurd."
Their eyes met—hers full of a certain stern yet quivering power, his strained and bloodshot, in his lined young face.
Then, with a violent gesture—as though he swept her out of his path—he caught up his hat, went to the door, and was gone.
She fell on her chair almost fainting, and sat there for long in the summer dark, covering her face. But it was not his voice that haunted her ears.
"You have done me wrong—I pray God you may not do yourself a greater wrong in the future!"
Again and again, amid the whirl of memory, she pressed the sad remembered words upon the inward wound and fever—tasting, cherishing the smart of them. And as her trance of exhaustion and despair gradually left her, it was as though she crept close to some dim beloved form in whom her heart knew henceforward the secret and sole companion of its inmost life.
"You and I—Why care by what meanders we are hereI' the centre of the labyrinth? Men have diedTrying to find this place which we have found."
Ah! how purely, cleanly beautiful was the autumn sunrise! After her long hardening to the stale noisomeness of London streets, the taint of London air, Marcella hung out of her window at Mellor in a thirsty delight, drinking in the scent of dew and earth and trees, watching the ways of the birds, pouring forth a soul of yearning and of memory into the pearly silence of the morning.
High up on the distant hill to the left, beyond the avenue, the pale apricots and golds of the newly-shorn stubbles caught the mounting light. The beeches of the avenue were turning fast, and the chestnuts girdling the church on her right hand were already thin enough to let the tower show through. That was the bell—the old bell given to the church by Hampden's friend, John Boyce—striking half-past five; and close upon it came the call of a pheasant in the avenue. There he was, fine fellow, with his silly, mincing run, redeemed all at once by the sudden whirr of towering flight.
To-day Mary Harden and the Rector would be at work in the church, and to-morrow was to be the Harvest Festival. Was it two years?—or in an hour or two would she be going with her basket from the Cedar Garden, to find that figure in the brown shooting-coat standing with the Hardens on the altar steps?
Alas!—alas!—her head dropped on her hands as she knelt by the open window. How changed were all the aspects of the world! Three weeks before, the bell in that little church had tolled for one who, in the best way and temper of his own generation, had been God's servant and man's friend—who had been Marcella's friend—and had even, in his last days, on a word from Edward Hallin, sent her an old man's kindly farewell.
"Tell her," Lord Maxwell had written with his own hand to Hallin, "she has taken up a noble work, and will make, I pray God, a noble woman. She had, I think, a kindly liking for an old man, and she will not disdain his blessing."
He had died at Geneva, Aldous and Miss Raeburn with him. For instead of coming home in August, he had grown suddenly worse, and Aldous had gone out to him. They had brought him to the Court for burial, and the new Lord Maxwell, leaving his aunt at the Court, had almost immediately returned to town,—because of Edward Hallin's state of health.
Marcella had seen much of Hallin since he and his sister had come back to London in the middle of August. Hallin's apparent improvement had faded within a week or two of his return to his rooms; Aldous was at Geneva; Miss Hallin was in a panic of alarm; and Marcella found herself both nurse and friend. Day after day she would go in after her nursing rounds, share their evening meal, and either write for Hallin, or help the sister—by the slight extra weight of her professional voice—to keep him from writing and thinking.
He would not himself admit that he was ill at all, and his whole energies at the time were devoted to the preparation of a series of three addresses on the subject of Land Reform, which were to be delivered in October to the delegates of a large number of working-men's clubs from all parts of London. So strong was Hallin's position among working-men reformers, and so beloved had been his personality, that as soon as his position towards the new land nationalising movement, now gathering formidable strength among the London working men, had come to be widely understood, a combined challenge had been sent him by some half-dozen of the leading Socialist and Radical clubs, asking him to give three weekly addresses in October to a congress of London delegates, time to be allowed after the lecture for questions and debate.
Hallin had accepted the invitation with eagerness, and was throwing an intensity of labour into the writing of his three lectures which often seemed to his poor sister to be not only utterly beyond his physical strength, but to carry with it a note as of a last effort, a farewell message, such as her devoted affection could ill endure. For all the time he was struggling with cardiac weakness and brain irritability which would have overwhelmed any one less accustomed to make his account with illness, or to balance against feebleness of body a marvellous discipline of soul.
Lord Maxwell was still alive, and Hallin, in the midst of his work, was looking anxiously for the daily reports from Aldous, living in his friend's life almost as much as in his own—handing on the reports, too, day by day to Marcella, with a manner which had somehow slipped into expressing a new and sure confidence in her sympathy—when she one evening found Minta Hurd watching for her at the door with a telegram from her mother: "Your father suddenly worse. Please come at once." She arrived at Mellor late that same night.
On the same day Lord Maxwell died. Less than a week later he was buried in the little Gairsley church. Mr. Boyce was then alarmingly ill, and Marcella sat in his darkened room or in her own all day, thinking from time to time of what was passing three miles away—of the great house in its mourning—of the figures round the grave. Hallin, of course, would be there. It was a dripping September day, and she passed easily from moments of passionate yearning and clairvoyance to worry herself about the damp and the fatigue that Hallin must be facing.
Since then she had heard occasionally from Miss Hallin. Everything was much as it had been, apparently. Edward was still hard at work, still ill, still serene. "Aldous"—Miss Hallin could not yet reconcile herself to the new name—was alone in the Curzon Street house, much occupied and harassed apparently by the legal business of the succession, by the election presently to be held in his own constituency, and by the winding-up of his work at the Home Office. He was to resign his under-secretaryship; but with the new session and a certain rearrangement of offices it was probable that he would be brought back into the Ministry. Meanwhile he was constantly with them; and she thought that his interest in Edward's work and anxiety about his health were perhaps both good for him as helping to throw off something of his own grief and depression.
Whereby it will be noticed that Miss Hallin, like her brother, had by now come to speak intimately and freely to Marcella of her old lover and their friend.
Now for some days, however, she had received no letter from either brother or sister, and she was particularly anxious to hear. For this was the fourth of October, and on the second he was to have delivered the first of his addresses. How had the frail prophet sped? She had her fears. For her weekly "evenings" in Brown's Buildings had shown her a good deal of the passionate strength of feeling developed during the past year in connection with this particular propaganda. She doubted whether the London working man at the present moment was likely to give even Hallin a fair hearing on the point. However, Louis Craven was to be there. And he had promised to write even if Susie Hallin could find no time. Some report ought to reach Mellor by the evening.
Poor Cravens! The young wife, who was expecting a baby, had behaved with great spirit through theClariontrouble; and, selling their bits of furniture to pay their debts, they had gone to lodge near Anthony. Louis had got some odds and ends of designing and artistic work to do through his brother's influence; and was writing where he could, here and there. Marcella had introduced them to the Hallins, and Susie Hallin was taking a motherly interest in the coming child. Anthony, in his gloomy way, was doing all he could for them. But the struggle was likely to be a hard one, and Marcella had recognised of late that in Louis as in Anthony there were dangerous possibilities of melancholy and eccentricity. Her heart was often sore over their trouble and her own impotence.
Meantime for some wounds, at any rate, time had brought swift cautery! Not three days after her final interview with Wharton, while the catastrophe in the Labour party was still in every one's mouth, and the air was full of bitter speeches and recriminations, Hallin one evening laid down his newspaper with a sudden startled gesture, and then pushed it over to Marcella. There, in the columns devoted to personal news of various sorts, appeared the announcement:
"A marriage has been arranged between Mr. H.S. Wharfon, M.P. for West Brookshire, and Lady Selina Farrell, only surviving daughter of Lord Alresford. The ceremony will probably take place somewhere about Easter next. Meanwhile Mr. Wharton, whose health has suffered of late from his exertions in and out of the House, has been ordered to the East for rest by his medical advisers. He and his friend Sir William Ffolliot start for French Cochin China in a few days. Their object is to explore the famous ruined temples of Angkor in Cambodia, and if the season is favourable they may attempt to ascend the Mekong. Mr. Wharton is paired for the remainder of the session."
"Did you know anything of this?" said Hallin, with that careful carelessness in which people dress a dubious question.
"Nothing," she said quietly.
Then an impulse not to be stood against, springing from very mingled depths of feeling, drove her on. She, too, put down the paper, and laying her finger-tips together on her knee she said with an odd slight laugh:
"But I was the last person to know. About a fortnight ago Mr. Wharton proposed to me."
Hallin sprang from his chair, almost with a shout. "And you refused him?"
She nodded, and then was angrily aware that, totally against her will or consent, and for the most foolish and remote reasons, those two eyes of hers had grown moist.
Hallin went straight over to her.
"Do you mind letting me shake hands with you?" he said, half ashamed ofhis outburst, a dancing light of pleasure transforming the thin face."There—I am an idiot! We won't say a word more—except about LadySelina. Have you seen her?"
"Three or four times."
"What is she like?"
Marcella hesitated.
"Is she fat—and forty?" said Hallin, fervently—she beat him?"
"Not at all. She is very thin—thirty-five, elegant, terribly of her own opinion—and makes a great parade of 'papa.'"
She looked round at him, unsteadily, but gaily.
"Oh! I see," said Hallin, with disappointment, "she will only take care he doesn't beat her—which I gather from your manner doesn't matter. And her politics?"
"Lord Alresford was left out of the Ministry," said Marcella slily. "He and Lady Selina thought it a pity."
"Alresford—Alresford? Why, of course! He was Lord Privy Seal in their last Cabinet—a narrow-minded old stick!—did a heap of mischief in the Lords.Well!"—Hallin pondered a moment—"Wharton will go over!"
Marcella was silent. The tremor of that wrestler's hour had not yet passed away. The girl could find no words in which to discuss Wharton himself, this last amazing act, or its future.
As for Hallin, he sat lost in pleasant dreams of a whitewashed Wharton, comfortably settled at last below the gangway on the Conservative side, using all the old catch-words in slightly different connections, and living gaily on his Lady Selina. Fragments from the talk of Nehemiah—Nehemiah the happy and truculent, that new "scourge of God" upon the parasites of Labour—of poor Bennett, of Molloy, and of various others who had found time to drop in upon him since the Labour smash, kept whirling in his mind. The same prediction he had just made to Marcella was to be discerned in several of them. He vowed to himself that he would write to Raeburn that night, congratulate him and the party on the possibility of so eminent a recruit—and hint another item of news by the way. She had trusted her confidence to him without any pledge—an act for which he paid her well thenceforward, in the coin of a friendship far more intimate, expansive, and delightful than anything his sincerity had as yet allowed him to show her.
But these London incidents and memories, near as they were in time, looked many of them strangely remote to Marcella in this morning silence. When she drew back from the window, after darkening the now sun-flooded room in a very thorough business-like way, in order that she might have four or five hours' sleep, there was something symbolic in the act. She gave back her mind, her self, to the cares, the anxieties, the remorses of the past three weeks. During the night she had been sitting up with her father that her mother might rest. Now, as she lay down, she thought with the sore tension which had lately become habitual to her, of her father's state, her mother's strange personality, her own short-comings.
* * * * *
By the middle of the morning she was downstairs again, vigorous and fresh as ever. Mrs. Boyce's maid was for the moment in charge of the patient, who was doing well. Mrs. Boyce was writing some household notes in the drawing-room. Marcella went in search of her.
The bare room, just as it ever was—with its faded antique charm—looked bright and tempting in the sun. But the cheerfulness of it did but sharpen the impression of that thin form writing in the window. Mrs. Boyce looked years older. The figure had shrunk and flattened into that of an old woman; the hair, which two years before had been still young and abundant, was now easily concealed under the close white cap she had adopted very soon after her daughter had left Mellor. The dress was still exquisitely neat; but plainer and coarser. Only the beautiful hands and the delicate stateliness of carriage remained—sole relics of a loveliness which had cost its owner few pangs to part with.
Marcella hovered near her—a little behind her—looking at her from time to time with a yearning compunction—which Mrs. Boyce seemed to be aware of, and to avoid.
"Mamma, can't I do those letters for you? I am quite fresh."
"No, thank you. They are just done."
When they were all finished and stamped, Mrs. Boyce made some careful entries in a very methodical account-book, and then got up, locking the drawers of her little writing-table behind her.
"We can keep the London nurse another week I think," she said.
"There is no need," said Marcella, quickly. "Emma and I could divide the nights now and spare you altogether. You see I can sleep at any time."
"Your father seems to prefer Nurse Wenlock," said Mrs. Boyce.
Marcella took the little blow in silence. No doubt it was her due. During the past two years she had spent two separate months at Mellor; she had gone away in opposition to her father's wish; and had found herself on her return more of a stranger to her parents than ever. Mr. Boyce's illness, involving a steady extension of paralytic weakness, with occasional acute fits of pain and danger, had made steady though very gradual progress all the time. But it was not till some days after her return home that Marcella had realised a tenth part of what her mother had undergone since the disastrous spring of the murder.
She passed now from the subject of the nurse with a half-timid remark about "expense."
"Oh! the expense doesn't matter!" said Mrs. Boyce, as she stood absently before the lately kindled fire, warming her chilled fingers at the blaze.
"Papa is more at ease in those ways?" Marcella ventured. And kneeling down beside her mother she gently chafed one of the cold hands.
"There seems to be enough for what is wanted," said Mrs. Boyce, bearing the charing with patience. "Your father, I believe, has made great progress this year in freeing the estate. Thank you, my dear. I am not cold now."
And she gently withdrew her hand.
Marcella, indeed, had already noticed that there were now no weeds on the garden-paths, that instead of one gardener there were three, that the old library had been decently patched and restored, that there was another servant, that William, grown into a very—tolerable footman, wore a reputable coat, and that a plain but adequate carriage and horse had met her at the station. Her pity even understood that part of her father's bitter resentment of his ever-advancing disablement came from his feeling that here at last—just as death was in sight—he, that squalid failure, Dick Boyce, was making a success of something.
Presently, as she knelt before the fire, a question escaped her, which, when it was spoken, she half regretted.
"Has papa been able to do anything for the cottages yet?"
"I don't think so," said Mrs. Boyce, calmly. After a minute's pause she added, "That will be for your reign, my dear."
Marcella looked up with a sharp thrill of pain.
"Papa is better, mamma, and—and I don't know what you mean. I shall never reign here without you."
Mrs. Boyce began to fidget with the rings on her thin left hand.
"When Mellor ceases to be your father's it will be yours," she said, not without a certain sharp decision; "that was settled long ago. I must be free—and if you are to do anything with this place, you must give your youth and strength to it. And your father is not better—except for the moment. Dr. Clarke exactly foretold the course of his illness to me two years ago, on my urgent request. He may live four months—six, if we can get him to the South. More is impossible."
There was something ghastly in her dry composure. Marcella caught her hand again and leant her trembling young cheek against it.
"I could not live here without you, mamma!"
Mrs. Boyce could not for once repress the inner fever which in general her will controlled so well.
"I hardly think it would matter to you so much, my dear."
Marcella shrank.
"I don't wonder you say that!" she said in a low voice. "Do you think it was all a mistake, mamma, my going away eighteen months ago—a wrong act?"
Mrs. Boyce grew restless.
"I judge nobody, my dear!—unless I am obliged. As you know, I am for liberty—above all"—she spoke with emphasis—"for letting the past alone. But I imagine you must certainly have learnt to do without us. Now I ought to go to your father."
But Marcella held her.
"Do you remember in thePurgatorio, mamma, the lines about the loser in the game: 'When the game of dice breaks up, he who lost lingers sorrowfully behind, going over the throws, andlearning by his grief'? Do you remember?"
Mrs. Boyce looked down upon her, involuntarily a little curious, a little nervous, but assenting. It was one of the inconsistencies of her strange character that she had all her life been a persistent Dante student. The taste for the most strenuous and passionate of poets had developed in her happy youth; it had survived through the loneliness of her middle life. Like everything else personal to herself she never spoke of it; but the little worn books on her table had been familiar to Marcella from a child.
"E tristo impara?" repeated Marcella, her voice wavering. "Mamma "—she laid her face against her mother's dress again—"I have lost more throws than you think in the last two years. Won't you believe I may have learnt a little?"
She raised her eyes to her mother's pinched and mask-like face. Mrs. Boyce's lips moved as though she would have asked a question. But she did not ask it. She drew, instead, the stealthy breath Marcella knew well—the breath of one who has measured precisely her own powers of endurance, and will not risk them for a moment by any digression into alien fields of emotion.
"Well, but one expects persons like you to learn," she said, with a light, cold manner, which made the words mere convention. There was silence an instant; then, probably to release herself, her hand just touched her daughter's hair. "Now, will you come up in half an hour? That was twelve striking, and Emma is never quite punctual with his food."
* * * * *
Marcella went to her father at the hour named. She found him in his wheeled chair, beside a window opened to the sun, and overlooking the Cedar Garden. The room in which he sat was the state bedroom of the old house. It had a marvellous paper of branching trees and parrots and red-robed Chinamen, in the taste of the morning room downstairs, a carved four-post bed, a grate adorned with purplish Dutch tiles, an array of family miniatures over the mantelpiece, and on a neighbouring wall a rack of old swords and rapiers. The needlework hangings of the bed were full of holes; the seats of the Chippendale chairs were frayed or tattered. But, none the less, the inalienable character and dignity of his sleeping-room were a bitter satisfaction to Richard Boyce, even in his sickness. After all said and done, he was king here in his father's and grandfather's place; ruling where they ruled, and—whether they would or no—dying where they died, with the same family faces to bear him witness from the walls, and the same vault awaiting him.
When his daughter entered, he turned his head, and his eyes, deep and black still as ever, but sunk in a yellow relic of a face, showed a certain agitation. She was disagreeably aware that his thoughts were much occupied with her; that he was full of grievance towards her, and would probably before long bring the pathos of his situation as well as the weight of his dying authority to bear upon her, for purposes she already suspected with alarm.
"Are you a little easier, papa?" she said, as she came up to him.
"I should think as a nurse you ought to know better, my dear, than to ask," he said testily. "When a person is in my condition, enquiries of that sort are a mockery!"
"But one may be in less or more pain," she said gently. "I hoped Dr.Clarke's treatment yesterday might have given you some relief."
He did not vouchsafe an answer. She took some work and sat down by him. Mrs. Boyce, who had been tidying a table of food and medicine, came and asked him if he would be wheeled into another room across the gallery, which had been arranged as a sitting-room. He shook his head irritably.
"I am not fit for it. Can't you see? And I want to speak to Marcella."
Mrs. Boyce went away. Marcella waited, not without a tremor. She was sitting in the sun, her head bent over the muslin strings she was hemming for her nurse's bonnet. The window was wide open; outside, the leaves under a warm breeze were gently drifting down into the Cedar Garden, amid a tangled mass of flowers, mostly yellow or purple. To one side rose the dark layers of the cedars; to the other, the grey front of the library wing.
Mr. Boyce looked at her with the frown which had now become habitual to him, moved his lips once or twice without speaking; and at last made his effort.
"I should think, Marcella, you must often regret by now the step you took eighteen months ago!"
She grew pale.
"How regret it, papa?" she said, without looking up.
"Why, good God!" he said angrily; "I should think the reasons for regret are plain enough. You threw over a man who was devoted to you, and could have given you the finest position in the county, for the most nonsensical reasons in the world—reasons that by now, I am certain, you are ashamed of."
He saw her wince, and enjoyed his prerogative of weakness. In his normal health he would never have dared so to speak to her. But of late, during long fits of feverish brooding—intensified by her return home—he had vowed to himself to speak his mind.
"Aren't you ashamed of them?" he repeated, as she was silent.
She looked up.
"I am not ashamed of anything I did to save Hurd, if that is what you mean, papa."
Mr. Boyce's anger grew.
"Of course you know what everybody said?"
She stooped over her work again, and did not reply.
"It's no good being sullen over it," he said in exasperation; "I'm your father, and I'm dying. I have a right to question you. It's my duty to see something settled, if I can, before I go. Is ittruethat all the time you were attacking Raeburn about politics and the reprieve, and what not, you were really behaving as you never ought to have behaved, with Harry Wharton?"
He gave out the words with sharp emphasis, and, bending towards her, he laid an emaciated hand upon her arm.
"What use is there, papa, in going back to these things?" she said, driven to bay, her colour going and coming. "I may have been wrong in a hundred ways, but you never understood that the real reason for it all was that—that—I never was in love with Mr. Raeburn."
"Then why did you accept him?" He fell back against his pillows with a jerk.
"As to that, I will confess my sins readily enough," she said, while her lip trembled, and he saw the tears spring into her eyes. "I accepted him for what you just now called his position in the county, though not quite in that way either."
He was silent a little, then he began again in a voice which gradually became unsteady from self-pity.
"Well, now look here! I have been thinking about this matter a great deal—and God knows I've time to think and cause to think, considering the state I'm in—and I see no reason whatever why I should not try—before I die—to put this thingstraight. That man was head over ears in love with you,madlyin love with you. I used to watch him, and I know. Of course you offended and distressed him greatly. He could never have expected such conduct from you or any one else. Buthe'snot the man to change round easily, or to take up with any one else. Now, if you regret what you did or the way in which you did it, why shouldn't I—a dying man may be allowed a little licence I should think!—give him a hint?"
"Papa!" cried Marcella, dropping her work, and looking at him with a pale, indignant passion, which a year ago would have quelled him utterly. But he held up his hand.
"Now just let me finish. It would be no good my doing a thing of this kind without saying something to you first, because you'd find it out, and your pride would be the ruin of it. You always had a demoniacal pride, Marcella, even when you were a tiny child; but if you make up your mind now to let me tell him you regret what you did—just that—you'll make him happy, and yourself, for you know very well he's a man of the highest character—and your poor father, who never didyoumuch harm anyway!" His voice faltered. "I'd manage it so that there should be nothing humiliating to you in it whatever. As if there could be anything humiliating in confessing such a mistake as that; besides, what is there to be ashamed of? You're no pauper. I've pulled Mellor out of the mud for you, though you and your mother do give me credit for so precious little!"
He lay back, trembling with fatigue, yet still staring at her with glittering eyes, while his hand on the invalid table fixed to the side of his chair shook piteously. Marcella dreaded the effect the whole scene might have upon him; but, now they were in the midst of it, both feeling for herself and prudence for him drove her into the strongest speech she could devise.
"Papa, ifanythingof that sort were done, I should take care Mr. Raeburn knew I had had nothing to do with it—in such a way that it would beimpossiblefor him to carry it further. Dear papa, don't think of such a thing any more. Because I treated Mr. Raeburn unjustly last year, are we now to harass and persecute him? I would sooner disappear from everybody I know—from you and mamma, from England—and never be heard of again."
She stopped a moment—struggling for composure—that she might not excite him too much.
"Besides, it would be absurd! You forget I have seen a good deal of Mr. Raeburn lately—while I have been with the Winterbournes. He has entirely given up all thought of me. Even my vanity could see that plainly enough. His best friends expect him to marry a bright, fascinating little creature of whom I saw a good deal in James Street—a Miss Macdonald."
"Miss how—much?" he asked roughly.
She repeated the name, and then dwelt, with a certain amount of confusion and repetition, upon the probabilities of the matter—half conscious all the time that she was playing a part, persuading herself and him of something she was not at all clear about in her own inner mind—but miserably, passionately determined to go through with it all the same.
He bore with what she said to him, half disappointed and depressed, yet also half incredulous. He had always been obstinate, and the approach of death had emphasised his few salient qualities, as decay had emphasised the bodily frame. He said to himself stubbornly that he would find some way yet of testing the matter in spite of her. He would think it out.
Meanwhile, step by step, she brought the conversation to less dangerous things, and she was finally gliding into some chat about the Winterbournes when he interrupted her abruptly—
"And that other fellow—Wharton. Your mother tells me you have seen him in London. Has he been making love to you?"
"Suppose I won't be catechised!" she said gaily, determined to allow no more tragedy of any kind. "Besides, papa, you can't read your gossip as good people should. Mr. Wharton's engagement to a certain Lady Selina Farrell—a distant cousin of the Winterbournes—was announced, in several papers with great plainness three weeks ago."
At that moment her mother came in, looking anxiously at them both, and half resentfully at Marcella. Marcella, sore and bruised in every moral fibre, got up to go.
Something in the involuntary droop of her beautiful head as she left the room drew her father's eyes after her, and for the time his feeling towards her softened curiously. Well,shehad not made very much of her life so far! That old strange jealousy of her ability, her beauty, and her social place, he had once felt so hotly, died away. He wished her, indeed, to be Lady Maxwell. Yet for the moment there was a certain balm in the idea that she too—her mother's daughter—with her Merritt blood—could be unlucky.
Marcella went about all day under a vague sense of impending trouble—the result, no doubt, of that intolerable threat of her father's, against which she was, after all, so defenceless.
But whatever it was, it made her all the more nervous and sensitive about the Hallins; about her one true friend, to whom she was slowly revealing herself, even without speech; whose spiritual strength had been guiding and training her; whose physical weakness had drawn to him the maternal, thespendinginstincts which her nursing life had so richly developed.
She strolled down the drive to meet the post. But there were no letters from London, and she came in, inclined to be angry indeed with Louis Craven for deserting her, but saying to herself at the same time that she must have heard if anything had gone wrong.
An hour or so later, just as the October evening was closing in, she was sitting dreaming over a dim wood-fire in the drawing-room. Her father, as might have been expected, had been very tired and comatose all day. Her mother was with him; the London nurse was to sit up, and Marcella felt herself forlorn and superfluous.
Suddenly, in the silence of the house, she heard the front-door bell ring. There was a step in the hall—she sprang up—the door opened, and William, with fluttered emphasis, announced—
"Lord Maxwell!"
In the dusk she could just see his tall form—the short pause as he perceived her—then her hand was in his, and the paralysing astonishment of that first instant had disappeared under the grave emotion of his look.
"Will you excuse me," he said, "for coming at this hour? But I am afraid you have heard nothing yet of our bad news—and Hallin himself was anxious I should come and tell you. Miss Hallin could not write, and Mr. Craven, I was to tell you, had been ill for a week with a chill. You haven't then seen any account of the lecture in the papers?"
"No; I have looked yesterday and to-day in our paper, but there was nothing—"
"Some of the Radical papers reported it. I hoped you might have seen it. But when we got down here this afternoon, and there was nothing from you, both Miss Hallin and Edward felt sure you had not heard—and I walked over. It was a most painful, distressing scene, and he—is very ill."
"But you have brought him to the Court?" she said trembling, lost in the thought of Hallin, her quick breath coming and going. "He was able to bear the journey? Will you tell me?—will you sit down?"
He thanked her hurriedly, and took a seat opposite to her, within the circle of the firelight, so that she saw his deep mourning and the look of repressed suffering.
"The whole thing was extraordinary—I can hardly now describe it," he said, holding his hat in his hands and staring into the fire. "It began excellently. There was a very full room. Bennett was in the chair—and Edward seemed much as usual. He had been looking desperately ill, but he declared that he was sleeping better, and that his sister and I coddled him. Then,—directly he was well started!—I felt somehow that the audience was very hostile. Andheevidently felt it more and more. There was a good deal of interruption and hardly any cheers—and I saw after a little—I was sitting not far behind him—that he was discouraged—that he had lost touch. It was presently clear, indeed, that the real interest of the meeting lay not in the least in what he had to say, but in the debate that was to follow. They meant to let him have his hour—but not a minute more. I watched the men about me, and I could see them following the clock—thirsting for their turn. Nothing that he said seemed to penetrate them in the smallest degree. He was there merely as a ninepin to be knocked over. I never saw a meeting sopossessedwith a madness of fanatical conviction—it was amazing!"
He paused, looking sadly before him. She made a little movement, and he roused himself instantly.
"It was just a few minutes before he was to sit down—I was thankful!—when suddenly—I heard his voice change. I do not know now what happened—but I believe he completely lost consciousness of the scene before him—the sense of strain, of exhaustion, of making no way, must have snapped something. He began a sort of confession—a reverie in public—about himself, his life, his thoughts, his prayers, his hopes—mostly his religious hopes—for the working man, for England—Ineverheard anything of the kind from him before—you know his reserve. It was so intimate—so painful—oh! so painful!"—he drew himself together with an involuntary shudder—"before this crowd, this eager hostile crowd which was only pining for him to sit down—to get out of their way. The men near me began to look at each other and titter. They wondered what he meant by maundering on like that—'damned canting stuff'—I heard one man near me call it. I tore off a bit of paper, and passed a line to Bennett asking him to get hold of Edward, to stop it. But I think Bennett had rather lost his presence of mind, and I saw him look back at me and shake his head. Then time was up, and they began to shout him down."
Marcella made an exclamation of horror. He turned to her.
"I think it was the most tragic scene I ever saw," he said with a feeling as simple as it was intense. "This crowd so angry and excited—without a particle of understanding or sympathy—laughing, and shouting at him—and he in the midst—white as death—talking this strange nonsense—his voice floating in a high key, quite unlike itself. At last just as I was getting up to go to him, I saw Bennett rise. But we were both too late. He fell at our feet!"
Marcella gave an involuntary sob! "What a horror!" she said, "what a martyrdom!"
"It was just that," he answered in a low voice—"It was a martyrdom. And when one thinks of the way in which for years past he has held these big meetings in the hollow of his hand, and now, because he crosses their passion, their whim,—no kindness!—no patience—nothing but a blind hostile fury! Yettheythought him a traitor, no doubt. Oh! it was all a tragedy!"
There was silence an instant. Then he resumed:
"We got him into the back room. Luckily there was a doctor on the platform. It was heart failure, of course, with brain prostration. We managed to get him home, and Susie Hallin and I sat up. He was delirious all night; but yesterday he rallied, and last night he begged us to move him out of London if we could. So we got two doctors and an invalid carriage, and by three this afternoon we were all at the Court. My aunt was ready for him—his sister is there—and a nurse. Clarke was there to meet him. He thinks he cannot possibly live more than a few weeks—possibly even a few days. The shock and strain have been irreparable."
Marcella lay back in her chair, struggling with her grief, her head and face turned away from him, her eyes hidden by her handkerchief. Then in some mysterious way she was suddenly conscious that Aldous was no longer thinking of Hallin, but of her.
"He wants very much to see you," he said, bending towards her; "but I know that you have yourself serious illness to nurse. Forgive me for not having enquired after Mr. Boyce. I trust he is better?"
She sat up, red-eyed, but mistress of herself. The tone had been all gentleness, but to her quivering sense some slight indefinable change—coldness—had passed into it.
"Heisbetter, thank you—for the present. And my mother does not let me do very much. We have a nurse too. When shall I come?"
He rose.
"Could you—come to-morrow afternoon? There is to be a consultation of doctors in the morning, which will tire him. About six?—that was what he said. He is very weak, but in the day quite conscious and rational. My aunt begged me to say how glad she would be—"
He paused. An invincible awkwardness took possession of both of them. She longed to speak to him of his grandfather but could not find the courage.
When he was gone, she, standing alone in the firelight, gave one passionate thought to the fact that so—in this tragic way—they had met again in this room where he had spoken to her his last words as a lover; and then, steadily, she put everything out of her mind but her friend—and death.
Mrs. Boyce received Marcella's news with more sympathy than her daughter had dared to hope for, and she made no remark upon Aldous himself and his visit, for which Marcella was grateful to her.
As they left the dining-room, after their short evening meal, to go up to Mr. Boyce, Marcella detained her mother an instant.
"Mamma, will you please not tell papa that—that Lord Maxwell came here this afternoon? And will you explain to him why I am going there to-morrow?"
Mrs. Boyce's fair cheek flushed. Marcella saw that she understood.
"If I were you, I should not let your father talk to you any more about those things," she said with a certain proud impatience.
"If I can help it!" exclaimed Marcella. "Will you tell him, mamma,—about Mr. Hallin?—and how good he has been to me?"
Then her voice failed her, and, hurriedly leaving her mother at the top of the stairs, she went away by herself to struggle with a grief and smart almost unbearable.
That night passed quietly at the Court. Hallin was at intervals slightly delirious, but less so than the night before; and in the early morning the young doctor, who had sat up with him, reported him to Aldous as calmer and a little stronger. But the heart mischief was hopeless, and might bring the bruised life to an end at any moment.
He could not, however, be kept in bed, owing to restlessness and difficulty of breathing, and by midday he was in Aldous's sitting-room, drawn close to the window, that he might delight his eyes with the wide range of wood and plain that it commanded. After a very wet September, the October days were now following each other in a settled and sunny peace. The great woods of the Chilterns, just yellowing towards that full golden moment—short, like all perfection,—which only beeches know, rolled down the hill-slopes to the plain, their curving lines cut here and there by straight fir stems, drawn clear and dark on the pale background of sky and lowland. In the park, immediately below the window, groups of wild cherry and of a slender-leaved maple made spots of "flame and amethyst" on the smooth falling lawns; the deer wandered and fed, and the squirrels were playing and feasting among the beech nuts.
Since Aldous and his poor sister had brought him home from the Bethnal Green hall in which the Land Reform Conference had been held, Hallin had spoken little, except in delirium, and that little had been marked by deep and painful depression. But this morning, when Aldous was summoned by the nurse, and found him propped up by the window, in front of the great view, he saw gracious signs of change. Death, indeed, already in possession, looked from the blue eyes so plainly that Aldous, on his first entrance, had need of all his own strength of will to keep his composure. But with the certainty of that great release, and with the abandonment of all physical and mental struggle—the struggle of a lifetime—Hallin seemed to-day to have recovered something of his characteristic serenity and blitheness—the temper which had made him the leader of his Oxford contemporaries, and the dear comrade of his friend's life.
When Aldous came in, Hallin smiled and lifted a feeble hand towards the park and the woods.
"Could it have greeted me more kindly," he said, in his whispering voice, "for the end?"
Aldous sat down beside him, pressing his hand, and there was silence till Hallin spoke again.
"You will keep this sitting-room, Aldous?"
"Always."
"I am glad. I have known you in it so long. What good talks we have had here in the old hot days! I was hot, at least, and you bore with me. Land Reform—Church Reform—Wages Reform—we have threshed them all out in this room. Do you remember that night I kept you up till it was too late to go to bed, talking over my Church plans? How full I was of it!—the Church that was to be the people—reflecting their life, their differences—governed by them—growing with them. You wouldn't join it, Aldous—our poor little Association!"
Aldous's strong lip quivered.
"Let me think of something Ididjoin in," he said.
Hallin's look shone on him with a wonderful affection.
"Was there anything else you didn't help in? I don't remember it. I've dragged you into most things. You never minded failure. And I have not had so much of it—not till this last. This has been failure—absolute and complete."
But there was no darkening of expression. He sat quietly smiling.
"Do you suppose anybody who could look beyond the moment would dream of calling it failure?" said Aldous, with difficulty.
Hallin shook his head gently, and was silent for a little time, gathering strength and breath again.
"I ought to suffer"—he said, presently. "Last week I dreaded my own feeling if I should fail or break down—more than the failure itself. But since yesterday—last night—I have no more regrets. I see that my power is gone—that if I were to live I could no longer carry on the battle—or my old life. I am out of touch. Those whom I love and would serve, put me aside. Those who invite me, I do not care to join. So I drop—into the gulf—and the pageant rushes on. But the curious thing is now—I have no suffering. And as to the future—do you remember Jowett in the Introduction to the Phaedo—"
He feebly pointed to a book beside him, which Aldous took up. Hallin guided him and he read—
"Most persons when the last hour comes are resigned to the order of nature and the will of God. They are not thinking of Dante's 'Inferno' or 'Paradiso,' or of the 'Pilgrim's Progress.' Heaven and Hell are not realities to them, but words or ideas—the outward symbols of some great mystery, they hardly know what."
"It is so with me," said Hallin, smiling, as, at his gesture, Aldous laid the book aside; "yet not quite. To mymind, that mystery indeed is all unknown and dark—but to the heart it seems unveiled—with the heart, I see."
A little later Aldous was startled to hear him say, very clearly and quickly:
"Do you remember that this is the fifth of October?"
Aldous drew his chair closer, that he might not raise his voice.
"Yes, Ned."
"Two years, wasn't it, to-day? Will you forgive me if I speak of her?"
"You shall say anything you will."
"Did you notice that piece of news I sent you, in my last letter toGeneva? But of course you did. Did it please you?"
"Yes, I was glad of it," said Aldous, after a pause, "extremely glad. I thought she had escaped a great danger."
Hallin studied his face closely.
"She is free, Aldous—and she is a noble creature—she has learnt from life—and from death—this last two years. And—you still love her. Is it right to make no more effort?"
Aldous saw the perspiration standing on the wasted brow—would have given the world to be able to content or cheer him—yet would not, for the world, at such a moment be false to his own feeling or deceive his questioner.
"I think it is right," he said deliberately, "—for a good many reasons, Edward. In the first place I have not the smallest cause—not the fraction of a cause—to suppose that I could occupy with her now any other ground than that I occupied two years ago. She has been kind and friendly to me—on the whole—since we met in London. She has even expressed regret for last year—meaning, of course, as I understood, for the pain and trouble that may be said to have come from her not knowing her own mind. She wished that we should be friends. And"—he turned his head away—"no doubt I could be, in time…. But, you see—in all that, there is nothing whatever to bring me forward again. My fatal mistake last year, I think now, lay in my accepting what she gave me—accepting it so readily, so graspingly even. That was my fault, my blindness, and—it was as unjust to her—as it was hopeless for myself. For hers is a nature"—his eyes came back to his friend; his voice took a new force and energy—"which, in love at any rate, will give all or nothing—and will never be happy itself, or bring happiness, till it gives all. That is what last year taught me. So that even if she—out of kindness or remorse for giving pain—were willing to renew the old tie—I should be her worst enemy and my own if I took a single step towards it. Marriage on such terms as I was thankful for last year, would be humiliation to me, and bring no gain to her. It will never serve a man with her"—his voice broke into emotion—"that he should make no claims! Let him claim the uttermost far-thing—her whole self. If she gives it,thenhe may know what love means!"
Hallin had listened intently. At Aldous's last words his expression showed pain and perplexity. His mind was full of vague impressions, memories, which seemed to argue with and dispute one of the chief things Aldous had been saying. But they were not definite enough to be put forward. His sensitive chivalrous sense, even in this extreme weakness, remembered the tragic weight that attaches inevitably to dying words. Let him not do more harm than good.
He rested a little. They brought him food; and Aldous sat beside him making pretence to read, so that he might be encouraged to rest. His sister came and went; so did the doctor. But when they were once more alone, Hallin put out his hand and touched his companion.
"What is it, dear Ned?"
"Only one thing more, before we leave it. Is thatallthat stands between you now—the whole? You spoke to me once in the summer of feelingangry, more angry than you could have believed. Of course, I felt the same. But just now you spoke of its all being your fault. Is there anything changed in your mind?"
Aldous hesitated. It was extraordinarily painful to him to speak of the past, and it troubled him that at such a moment it should trouble Hallin.
"There is nothing changed, Ned, except that perhaps time makessomedifference always. I don't want now"—he tried to smile—"as I did then, to make anybody else suffer for my suffering. But perhaps I marvel even more than I did at first, that—that—she could have allowed some things to happen as she did!"
The tone was firm and vibrating; and, in speaking, the whole face had developed a strong animation most passionate and human.
Hallin sighed.
"I often think," he said, "that she was extraordinarily immature—much more immature than most girls of that age—as to feeling. It was really the brain that was alive."
Aldous silently assented; so much so that Hallin repented himself.
"But not now," he said, in his eager dying whisper; "not now. The plant is growing full and tall, into the richest life."
Aldous took the wasted hand tenderly in his own. There was something inexpressibly touching in this last wrestle of Hallin's affection with another's grief. But it filled Aldous with a kind of remorse, and with the longing to free him from that, as from every other burden, in these last precious hours of life. And at last he succeeded, as he thought, in drawing his mind away from it. They passed to other things. Hallin, indeed, talked very little more during the day. He was very restless and weak, but not in much positive suffering. Aldous read to him at intervals, from Isaiah or Plato, the bright sleepless eyes following every word.
At last the light began to sink. The sunset flooded in from the Berkshire uplands and the far Oxford plain, and lay in gold and purple on the falling woods and the green stretches of the park. The distant edges of hill were extraordinarily luminous and clear, and Aldous, looking into the west with the eye of one to whom every spot and line were familiar landmarks, could almost fancy he saw beyond the invisible river, the hill, the "lovely tree against the western sky," which keep for ever the memory of one with whose destiny it had often seemed to him that Hallin's had something in common. To him, as to Thyrsis, the same early joy, the same "happy quest," the same "fugitive and gracious light" for guide and beacon, that—
does not come with houses or with gold, With place, with honour and a flattering crew;
and to him, too, the same tasked pipe and tired throat, the same struggle with the "life of men unblest," the same impatient tryst with death.
The lovely lines ran dirge-like in his head, as he sat, sunk in grief, beside his friend. Hallin did not speak; but his eye took note of every change of light, of every darkening tone, as the quiet English scene with its villages, churches, and woods, withdrew itself plane by plane into the evening haze. His soul followed the quiet deer, the homing birds, loosening itself gently the while from pain and from desire, saying farewell to country, to the poor, to the work left undone, and the hopes unrealised—to everything except to love.
It had just struck six when he bent forward to the window beneath which ran the wide front terrace.
"That was her step!" he said, while his face lit up, "will you bring her here?"
* * * * *
Marcella rang the bell at the Court with a fast beating heart. The old butler who came gave what her shrinking sense thought a forbidding answer to her shy greeting of him, and led her first into the drawing-room. A small figure in deep black rose from a distant chair and came forward stiffly. Marcella found herself shaking hands with Miss Raeburn.
"Will you sit and rest a little before you go upstairs?" said that lady with careful politeness, "or shall I send word at once? He is hardly worse—but as ill as he can be."
"I am not the least tired," said Marcella, and Miss Raeburn rang.
"Tell his lordship, please, that Miss Boyce is here."
The title jarred and hurt Marcella's ear. But she had scarcely time to catch it before Aldous entered, a little bent, as it seemed to her, from his tall erectness, and speaking with an extreme quietness, even monotony of manner.
"He is waiting for you—will you come at once?"
He led her up the central staircase and along the familiar passages, walking silently a little in front of her. They passed the long line of Caroline and Jacobean portraits in the upper gallery, till just outside his own door Aldous paused.
"He ought not to talk long," he said, hesitating, "but you will know—of course—better than any of us."
"I will watch him," she said, almost inaudibly, and he gently opened the door and let her pass, shutting it behind her.
The nurse, who was sitting beside her patient, got up as Marcella entered, and pointed her to a low chair on his further side. Susie Hallin rose too, and kissed the new-comer hurriedly, absently, without a word, lest she should sob. Then she and the nurse disappeared through an inner door. The evening light was still freely admitted; and there were some candles. By the help of both she could only see him indistinctly. But in her own mind, as she sat down, she determined that he had not even days to live.
Yet as she bent over him she saw a playful gleam on the cavernous face.
"You won't scold me?" said the changed voice—"you did warn me—you andSusie—but—I was obstinate. It was best so!"
She pressed her lips to his hand and was answered by a faint pressure from the cold fingers.
"If I could have been there!" she murmured.
"No—I am thankful you were not. And I must not think of it—or of any trouble. Aldous is very bitter—but he will take comfort by and by—he will see it—and them—more justly. They meant me no unkindness. They were full of an idea, as I was. When I came back to myself—first—all was despair. I was in a blank horror of myself and life. Now it has gone—I don't know how. It is not of my own will—some hand has lifted a weight. I seem to float—without pain."
He closed his eyes, gathering strength again in the interval, by a strong effort of will—calling up in the dimming brain what he had to say. She meanwhile, spoke to him in a low voice, mainly to prevent his talking, telling him of her father, of her mother's strain of nursing—of herself—she hardly knew what. Hew grotesque to be giving him these little bits of news about strangers—to him, this hovering, consecrated soul, on the brink of the great secret!
In the intervals, while he was still silent, she could not sometimes prevent the pulse of her own life from stirring. Her eye wandered round the room—Aldous's familiar room. There, on the writing-table with its load of letters and books, stood the photograph of Hallin; another, her own, used to stand beside it; it was solitary now.
Otherwise, all was just as it had been—flowers, books, newspapers—the signs of familiar occupation, the hundred small details of character and personality which in estrangement take to themselves such a smarting significance for the sad and craving heart. The date—the anniversary—echoed in her mind.
Then, with a rush of remorseful pain, her thoughts came back to the present and to Hallin. At the same moment she saw that his eyes were open, and fixed upon her with a certain anxiety and expectancy. He made a movement as though to draw her towards him; and she stooped to him.
"I feel," he said, "as though my strength were leaving me fast. Let me ask you one question—because of my love for you—andhim. I have fancied—of late—things were changed. Can you tell me—will you?—or is it unfair?"—the words had all their bright, natural intonation—"Is your heart—still where it was?—or, could you ever—undo the past—"
He held her fast, grasping the hand she had given him with unconscious force. She had looked up startled, her lip trembling like a child's. Then she dropped her head against the arm of her chair, as though she could not speak.
He moved restlessly, and sighed.
"I should not," he said to himself; "I should not—it was wrong. The dying are tyrannous."
He even began a word of sweet apology. But she shook her head.
"Don't!" she said, struggling with herself; "don't say that! It would do me good to speak—to you—"
An exquisite smile dawned on Hallin's face.
"Then!"—he said—"confess!"
* * * * *
A few minutes later they were still sitting together. She strongly wished to go; but he would not yet allow it. His face was full of a mystical joy—a living faith, which must somehow communicate itself in one last sacramental effort.
"How strange that you—and I—and he—should have been so mixed together in this queer life. Now I seem to regret nothing—Ihopeeverything. One more little testimony let me bear!—the last. We disappear one by one—into the dark—but each may throw his comrades—a token—before he goes. You have been in much trouble of mind and spirit—I have seen it. Take my poor witness. There is one clue, one only—goodness—the surrendered will. Everything is there—all faith—all religion—all hope for rich or poor.—Whether we feel our way through consciously to the Will—that asks our will—matters little. Aldous and I have differed much on this—in words—never at heart! I could use words, symbols he cannot—and they have given me peace. But half my best life I owe to him."
At this he made a long pause—but, still, through that weak grasp, refusing to let her go—till all was said. Day was almost gone; the stars had come out over the purple dusk of the park.
"That Will—we reach—through duty and pain," he whispered at last, so faintly she could hardly hear him, "is the root, the source. It leads us in living—it—carries us in death. But our weakness and vagueness—want help—want the human life and voice—to lean on—to drink from. We Christians—are orphans—without Christ! There again—what does it matter what we think—abouthim—if only we think—ofhim. Inonesuch life are all mysteries, and all knowledge—and our fathers have chosen for us—"