"I burnt nothing," said Janet again, but there was a break in her voice. Her heart began to struggle like some shy woodland animal, which suddenly sees itself surrounded.
Monkey Brand looked again at her. His wife had loved her. Across the material, merciless face of the money-lender a flicker passed of some other feeling besides the business of the moment; as if, almost as if he would not have been averse to help her if she would deal straightforwardly with him.
"You were my wife's friend," he said after a moment's pause. "She often spoke of you with affection. I also regarded you withhigh esteem. A few days before you came to stay with us I was looking over my papers one evening, and I mentioned that your brother's I O U would fall due almost immediately. She said she believed it would ruin him if I called in the money then. I said I should do so, for I had waited once already against my known rules of business. I never wait. I should not be in the position which I occupy to-day if I had ever waited. She said, 'Wait at least till after Janet's wedding. It might tell against her if her brother went smash just before.' I replied that I should foreclose, wedding or none. She came across to me, and, by a sudden movement, took the I O U out of my hand before I could stop her. 'I won't have Janet distressed,' she said. 'I shall keep it myself till after the wedding,' and she locked it up before my eyes in a cabinet I had given her, in which she kept her own papers. I seldom yield to sentiment, but she—she recalled to me my own wedding—and in this instance I did so. It was the last evening we spent at home alone together.She went much to the theatre and into society, and I seldom had time to accompany her."
Monkey Brand stopped a moment. Then he went on:
"My wife saw you alone when she was dying. She was evidently anxious to see you alone. It was like her, even then, to think of others. If you tell me, on your word of honour, that she asked you to go up to the flat and burn that I O U, and that she told you where to find it—No; if she even gave you leave, as you were no doubt anxious on the subject,—if you assure me that she yielded to your entreaties, and that she even gave you leave to destroy it,—I will believe it. I will accept your statement. The last wish of my wife—if you say itwasher wish—is enough for me." Monkey Brand looked out of the window at the still noonday sunshine. "I would abide by it," he said, and his face worked.
"She never spoke to me on the subject of the I O U," said Janet, two large tears rolling down her quivering cheeks. "She nevergave me leave to burn it. I didn't burn it. I burnt nothing."
"Janet," almost shrieked Fred, nearly beside himself. "Janet, don't you see that—that—— Confess. Tell him you did it. We both know you did it. Own the truth."
Janet looked from one to the other.
"I burnt nothing," she said, but her eyes fell. Her word had never been doubted before.
Both men saw she was lying.
Monkey Brand's face changed. It became once again as many poor wretches had seen it, whose hard-wrung money had gone to buy his wife's gowns and diamonds.
He got up. He took his glove out of the crown of his hat, put on his hat in the room, and walked slowly out of the house. In the doorway he looked back at Janet, and she saw, directed at her for the first time, the expression with which she was to grow familiar, that which meets the swindler and the liar.
The brother and sister watched in silencethe rigid little departing figure, as it climbed back wrong leg first into the dog-cart and drove away.
Then Fred burst out.
"Oh! you fool, you fool!" he stammered, shaking from head to foot. "Why didn't you say Mrs Brand told you to burn it? His wife was his soft side. Oh! my God! what a chance, and you didn't take it. That man will ruin us yet. I saw it in his face."
"But she didn't tell me to burn it."
Janet looked like a bewildered, distressed child, who suddenly finds herself in a room full of machinery of which she understands nothing, and whose inadvertent touch, as she tries to creep away, has set great malevolent wheels whirring all round her.
"I daresay she didn't," said Fred fiercely, and he flung out of the room.
He went and stood a long time leaning over the fence into the paddock where his yearlings were.
"It's an awful thing to be a fool," he said to himself.
"Il n'est aucun mal qui ne naisse, en dernière analyse—d'une pensée étroite, ou d'un sentiment mediocre."—Maeterlinck.
"Il n'est aucun mal qui ne naisse, en dernière analyse—d'une pensée étroite, ou d'un sentiment mediocre."
—Maeterlinck.
The storm had fallen on Janet at last. She saw it was a storm, and met it with courage and patience, and without apprehension as to what so fierce a hurricane might ultimately destroy, what foundations its rising floods might sweep away. She suffered dumbly under the knowledge that Monkey Brand and Fred both firmly believed her to be guilty, suffered dumbly the gradual alienation of her brother, who never forgave her her obtuseness when a way of escape had been offered her, and who shivered under an acute anxiety as to what Monkey Brand would do next, together with a gnawing suspense respecting the eldest Miss Ford, who had become the object of marked attentions on the part of a colonial Bishop.
Janet said to herself constantly in thesedays, "Truth will prevail." She did not believe in the principle, but in her version of it. Her belief in the power of truth became severely shaken as the endless July days dragged themselves along, each slower than the last. Truth did not prevail. The storm prevailed instead. Foundations began to crumble.
How it came about it would be difficult to say, but the damning evidence against Janet, the suspicion, the almost certainty of her duplicity, reached Easthope.
Mrs Trefusis seized upon it to urge her son to break with Janet. He resisted with stubbornness his mother's frenzied entreaties. Nevertheless after a time his fixity of purpose was undermined by a sullen, growing suspicion that Janet was guilty. Fred had hinted as much. Fred's evident conviction of Janet's action, and inability to see that it was criminal, his confidential assertion that the money would be repaid, pushed George slowly to the conclusion that Janet had been her brother's catspaw—perhaps not for the first time. George felt with deep if silentindignation, that with him, her future husband if with any one, Janet ought to be open, truthful. But she was not. She repeated her obvious lie even to him when at last he forced himself to speak to her on the subject. His narrow, upright nature abhorred crookedness, and, according to his feeble searchlight, he deemed Janet crooked.
His mother's admonitions began to work in him like leaven. How often she had said to him, "She has lied to others. The day will come when she will lie to you." That day had already come. Perhaps his mother was right after all. He had heard men say the same thing. "What is bred in the bone will come out in the flesh." "Take a bird out of a good nest," etc., etc.
And George who, in other circumstances, would have defended Janet to the last drop of his blood, who would have carried her over burning deserts till he fell dead from thirst—George, who was capable of heroism on her behalf—weakened towards her.
She had fallen in love with him in the beginning, partly because he was "straighter"than the men she associated with. Yet this very rectitude which had attracted her was now alienating her lover from her, as perhaps nothing else could have done. Strange back-blow of Fate, that the cord which had drawn her towards him should tighten to a noose round her neck.
George weakened towards her.
It seems to be the miserable fate of certain upright, closed natures, who take their bearings from without, always to fail when the pinch comes; to disbelieve in those whom they obtusely love when suspicion falls on them, to be alienated from them by their success, to be discouraged by their faults, incredulous of their higher motives, repelled by their enthusiasms.
George would not have failed if the pinch had not come. Like many another man, found faithful because his faith had not been put to the test, he would have made Janet an excellent and loving husband, and they would probably have spent many happy years together—if only the pinch had not come. Anne early divined, from Janet'snot very luminous letters, that George was becoming estranged from her. Anne came down for a Sunday to Easthope early in July, and quickly discovered the cause of this estrangement (which Janet had not mentioned) in the voluble denunciations of Mrs Trefusis, and the sullen unhappiness of her son.
Mrs Trefusis had wormed out all the most damning evidence against Janet, partly from Fred's confidence to George, and partly from Monkey Brand, with whom she had had money dealings, and to whom she applied direct. She showed Anne the money-lender's answer, in its admirable restrained conciseness, with its ordered sequence of inexorable facts. Anne's heart sank as she read it, and she suddenly remembered Janet's words in delirium. "I have burnt them all. Everything. There is nothing left."
The letter fell from her nerveless hand. She looked at it, momentarily stunned.
"And this is the woman," said Mrs Trefusis, scratching the letter towards herwith her stick, and regaining possession of it, "this is the woman whom you pressed me, only a month ago, to receive as my daughter-in-law. Didn't I say she came of a bad stock? Didn't I say that what was bred in the bone would come out in the flesh? George would not listen to me then, but my poor deluded boy is beginning to see now that I was right."
Mrs Trefusis wiped away two small tears with her trembling claw-like hand. Anne could not but see that she was invincibly convinced of Janet's guilt.
"You think I am vindictive, Anne," she said. "You may be right; I know I was at first, and perhaps I am still. I always hated the connection, and I always hated her. But—but it's notonlythat now. It's my boy's happiness. I must think of him. He is my only son, and I can't sit still and see his life wrecked."
"I am certain Janet did not do it," said Anne suddenly, her pale face flaming. "George and you may believe she did, if you like. I don't."
Anne walked over to Ivy Cottage the same afternoon, and Janet saw her in the distance, and fled out to her across the fields and fell upon her neck. But even Anne's tender entreaties and exhortations were of no avail. Janet understood at last that her mechanically-repeated formula was ruining her with her lover. But she had promised Cuckoo to say it, and she stuck to it.
"Why does not George believe in me even if appearances are against me?" said Janet at last. "I would believe in him."
"That is different."
"How different?"
"Because you are made like that, and he isn't. It's a question of temperament. You have a trustful nature. He has not. You must take George's character into consideration. It is foolish to love a person who is easily suspicious, and then allow him to become suspicious. You have no right to perplex him. Just as some people who care for us must have it made easy to them all the time to go on caring for us. If there is any strain or difficulty, or ifthey are put to inconvenience, they will leave us."
Janet was silent.
"As you and George both love each other," continued Anne, "can't you say something to him? Don't you see it would be only right to say a few words to him, which will show him—what I am sure is the truth—that you are concealing something, which has led to this false suspicion falling on you?"
Janet shook her head. "He ought to know it's false," she said.
"Could not you say tohim, even though you cannot say so to your brother or Mr Brand—that you burnt some compromising papers at Mrs Brand's dying request? He might believe that, for it is known that youdidburn papers, dearest, and it is also obvious that you must have burnt a good many. That one I O U does not account for the quantity of ashes."
"I could not say that," said Janet, whitening. "And besides," she added hastily, "I have said so many times" (and indeed shehad) "that I burnt nothing, that George would not know what to believe if I say first one thing and then another."
"He does not know what to believe now. Unless you can say something to reassure his mind, you will lose your George."
"You believe in me?"
"Implicitly."
"Then why doesn't George?" continued Janet, with the feminine talent for reasoning in a circle. "That is the only thing that is necessary. Not that I should say things I can't say, but that he should trust me. I don't care what other people think so long as he believes in me."
She, who had never exacted anything heretofore, whose one object had been to please her George, now made one demand upon him. It was the first and last which she ever made upon her lover. And he could not meet it.
"His belief is shaken."
"Truth will prevail," said Janet stubbornly.
"It will no doubt in the end, but in themeanwhile? And how if the truth is masked by a lie?"
Janet did not answer. Perhaps she did not fully understand. She saw only two things in these days: one, that George ought to believe in her; and the other, that, come what might, she would keep the promise made to Cuckoo on her death-bed. She constantly remembered the rigid dying face, the difficult whisper: "Promise me that whatever happens you will never tell anyone that you have burnt anything."
"I promise."
"You swear it."
"I swear it."
That oath she would keep.
Anne returned to London with a heavy heart. She left no stone unturned. She interviewed De Rivaz and Stephen on the subject, as we have seen. But her efforts were unavailing, as far as George was concerned. The affair of the burning of papers was hushed up, but it had reached the onlyperson who had the power to wreck Janet's happiness.
Some weeks after Anne's visit Janet one day descried the large figure of Stephen stalking slowly up across the fields. Janet tired her eyes daily in scanning the fields in the direction of Easthope, but a certain person came no more by that much frequented way.
The millionaire had a long interview with Janet, but his valuable time was wasted. He could not move her. He told her that he firmly believed the missing I O U would turn up, and that in the meanwhile he had paid Mr Brand, and that she might repay him at her convenience. He could wait. For a moment she was frightened, but a glance at Stephen's austere, quick eyes, bent searchingly upon her, reassured her. She trusted him at once. It was never known what he had said to Monkey Brand, as to his having seen Janet in the burnt flat, but Monkey Brand gained nothing from the discussion of that compromising fact—except his money.
Fred was awed by the visit of Stephen, and by the amazing fact that he had paid Monkey Brand. Fred said repeatedly that it was the action of a perfect gentleman, exactly what he should have done if he had been in Stephen's place. He let George hear of it at the first opportunity. But the information had no effect on George's mind, except that it was vaguely prejudicial to Janet.
Why had she accepted such a large sum from a man of whom she knew next to nothing, whom she had only seen once before for a moment, and that an equivocal one? Women should not accept money from men.And why did he offer it?
He asked these questions of himself. To Fred he only vouchsafed a nod, to show that he had heard what Fred had waylaid him to say.
Some weeks later still, in August, De Rivaz came to Ivy Cottage, hat in hand, stammering, deferential, to ask Janet to allow him to paint her. He would do anything, take rooms in the neighbourhood,make his convenience entirely subservient to hers if she would only sit to him. He saw with a pang that she was not conscious that they had met before. She had forgotten him, and he did not remind her of their first meeting. He knew that hour had brought trouble upon her. Her face showed it. The patient, enduring spirit was beginning to look through the exquisite face. Her beauty overwhelmed him. He trembled before it. He pleaded hard, but she would not listen to him. She said apathetically that she did not wish to be painted. She was evidently quite unaware of the distinction which he was offering her. His name had conveyed nothing to her. He had to take his leave at last, but, as he walked away in the rain, he turned and looked back at the house.
"I will come back," he said, his thin face quivering.
It was a wet August, and the harvest rotted on the ground. No one came to Ivy Cottage along the sodden footpath from Easthope. A slow anger was rising inJanet's heart against her lover, the anger that will invade at last the hearts of humble sincere natures, when they find that love and trust have not gone together.
George never openly broke with Janet, never could be induced to write the note to her which, his mother told him, it was his duty to write. No. He simply stayed away from her, week after week, month after month. When his mother urged him to break off his engagement formally, he said doggedly that Janet could see for herself that all was over between them.
The day came at last when Janet met him suddenly in the streets of Mudbury, on market day. He took off his hat in answer to her timid greeting, and passed on looking straight in front of him.
Perhaps he had his evil hour that night, for Janet was very fair. Seen suddenly, unexpectedly, she seemed more beautiful than ever. And she was to have been his wife.
After that blighting moment, when even Janet perceived that George was determinednot to speak to her; after that Janet began to see that when foundations are undermined that which is built upon them will one day totter and—fall.
"The heart asks pleasure first,And then, excuse from pain;And then, those little anodynesThat deaden suffering;And then, to go to sleep;And then if it should beThe will of its Inquisitor,The liberty to die."—Emily Dickinson.
"The heart asks pleasure first,And then, excuse from pain;And then, those little anodynesThat deaden suffering;And then, to go to sleep;And then if it should beThe will of its Inquisitor,The liberty to die."
"The heart asks pleasure first,And then, excuse from pain;And then, those little anodynesThat deaden suffering;
And then, to go to sleep;And then if it should beThe will of its Inquisitor,The liberty to die."
—Emily Dickinson.
There are long periods in the journey of life when "the road winds uphill all the way." There are also long periods when the dim plain holds us, endless day after day, till the last bivouac fires of our youth are quenched in its rains.
But when we look back across our journey, do we not forget alike the hill and the plain? Do we not rather remember thatone turn, exceeding sharp, of the narrow inevitable way, what time the light failed, and the ground yawned beneath our feet, and we knew fear?
There is a slow descent, awful, step by step, into a growing darkness, which those know who have strength to make it. Only the strong are broken on certain wheels. Only the strong know the dim landscape of Hades, that world which underlies the lives of all of us.
I cannot follow Janet down into it. I can only see her as a shadow, moving among shadows; going down unconsciously with tears in her eyes, taking, poor thing, her brave, loving unselfish heart with her, to meet anguish, desolation, desertion, and at last despair. If we needs must go down that steep stair we go alone, and who shall say how it fared with us? Nature has some appalling beneficent processes, of which it is not well to speak. Life has been taught at the same knee, out of the same book, and when her inexorable disintegrating hand closes over us, the abhorrent darkness, fromwhich we have shrunk with loathing, becomes our only friend.
In the following autumn and winter Janet slowly descended, inch by inch, step by step, that steep stair. She reached at last the death of love. She thought she reached it many times before she actually touched it. She believed she reached it when the news of George's engagement penetrated to her. But she did not in reality. No, she hoped against hope to the last day, to the morning of his wedding. She did not know she hoped. She supposed she had long since given up all thought of a reconciliation between her and her lover. But when the wedding was over, when he was really gone, then something broke within her—the last string of the lyre over which blind Hope leans.
There are those who tell us that we have not suffered till we have known jealousy. Janet's foot reached that lowest step, and was scorched upon it.
Only then she realised that she had never,never believed that he could really leave her. Even on his wedding morning she had looked out across the fields, by which she had so often seen him come, which had been so long empty of that familiar figure. She knew he was far away at the house of the bride, but nevertheless she expected that he would come to her, and hold her to his heart, and say: "But, Janet, I could never marry anyone but you. You know such a thing could never be. What other woman could part you and me, who cannot part?" And then the evil dream would fall from her, and she and George would look gravely at each other, and the endless, endless pain would pass away.
Wrapt close against the anguish of love there is always a word such as this with which human nature sustains its aching heart—poor human nature which believes that, come what come may, Love can never die.
"Some day," the woman says to herself, half knowing that that day can never dawn,"some day I shall tell him of these awful months, full of days like years, and nights like nothing, please God, which shall ever be endured again. Some day—it may be a long time off—but some day I shall say to him: 'Why did you leave me?' And he will tell me his foolish reasons, and we shall lean together in tears. And surely some day I shall say to him: 'I always burnt your letters for fear I might die suddenly and others should read them. But see, here are the envelopes, every one. That envelope is nearly worn out. Do you remember what you said inside it? That one is still new. I only read the letter it had in it once. How could you—could you write it?'"
"Some day," the man says to himself, when the work of the day is done—"some day my hour will come. She thinks me harsh and cold, but some day, when these evil days are past, and she understands, I will wrap her round with a tenderness such as she has never dreamed of. I will showher what a lover can be. She finds the world hard, and its ways a weariness—let her; but some day she shall own to me, to me here in this room, that she did not know what life was, what joy and peace were, until she let my love take her."
Yet he half knows she will never come, that woman whose coming seems inevitable as spring. So the heart comforts itself, telling itself fairy stories until the day dawns when Reality's stern, beneficent figure enters our dwelling, and we know at last that not one word of all we have spoken in imagination will ever be said. What we have suffered we have suffered. The one for whom it was borne will hear no further word from us.
The moth and the rust have corrupted.
The thieves have broken through and stolen.
Then rise up, lay hold of your pilgrim's staff, and take up life with a will.
"My river runs to thee:Blue sea, wilt welcome me?"—Emily Dickinson.
"My river runs to thee:Blue sea, wilt welcome me?"
"My river runs to thee:Blue sea, wilt welcome me?"
—Emily Dickinson.
The winter, that dealt so sternly with Janet, smiled on Anne. She spent Christmas in London, for the Duke was, or at least he said he was, in too delicate a state of health to go to his ancestral halls in the country, where the Duchess had repaired alone, believing herself to be but the herald of the rest of her family; and where she was expending her fearful energy on Christmas trees, magic-lanterns, ventriloquists, entertainments of all kinds for children and adults, tenants, inmates of workhouses, country neighbours, Sunday School teachers, Mothers' Unions, Ladies' Working Guilds, Bands of Hope, etc., etc. She was in her element.
Anne and her father were in theirs. The Duke did not shirk the constant inevitableduties of his position, but by nature he was a recluse, and at Christmas-time he yielded to his natural bias. Anne also lived too much on the highway of life. She knew too many people, her sympathy had drawn towards her too many insolvent natures. She was glad to be for a time out of the pressure of the crowd. She and her father spent a peaceful Christmas and New Year together, only momentarily disturbed by the frantic telegrams of the Duchess, commanding Anne to despatch five hundred presents at one shilling suitable for schoolgirls, or forty ditto at half-a-crown for young catechists.
The New Year came in in snow and fog. But it was none the worse for that. On this particular morning Anne stood a long time at the window of her sitting-room, looking out at the impenetrable blanket of the fog. The newsboys were crying something in the streets, but she could hear nothing distinctive except the word "city."
Presently she took out of her pocket twoletters, and read them slowly. There was no need for her to read them. Not only did she know them by heart, but she knew exactly where each word came on the paper. "Martial law" was on the left-hand corner of the top line of the second sheet. "Dependent on Kaffir labour" was in the middle of the third page. They were dilapidated-looking letters, possibly owing to the fact that they were read last thing every night and first thing every morning, and that they were kept under Anne's pillow at night, so that if she waked she could touch them. It is hardly necessary to add that they were in Stephen's small, cramped, mercantile handwriting.
Stephen had been recalled to South Africa on urgent business early in the autumn. He had been there for nearly three months. During that time, after intense cogitation, he had written twice to Anne. I am under the impression that he was under the impression that those two documents were love letters. At any rate, they were theonly two letters which Stephen ever composed which could possibly be classed under that heading. And their composition cost him much thought. In them he was so good as to inform Anne of the population of the town he wrote from, its principal industries, its present distress under martial law. He also described the climate. His nearest approach to an impulsive outburst was a polite expression of hope that she and her parents were well, and that he expected to be in England again by Christmas. Anne kissed the signature, and then laughed till she cried over the letter. Stephen did, as a matter of fact, indite a third letter, but it was of so bold a nature—it expressed a wish to see her again—that, after reading it over about twenty times, he decided not to risk sending it.
When Anne was an old woman she still remembered the population of two distracted little towns in South Africa, and their respective industries.
Stephen was as good as his word. His large foot was once more planted on English soil a day or two before Christmas. Inspite of an overwhelming pressure of business, he had found time to dine with Anne and her father several times since he arrived. The Duke had met him at a directors' meeting, and quite oblivious of Anne's refusal of him, had pressed him to come back with him to dinner. The Duke asked him constantly to dine after that. The old attraction between the two men renewed its hold.
These quiet evenings round the fire seemed to Stephen to contain the pith of life. The Duke talked well, but on occasion Stephen talked better. Anne listened. The kitchen cat, now alas! grown large and vulgar, with an unmodulated purr, was allowed to make a fourth in these peaceful gatherings, and had coffee out of Anne's saucer, sugared by Stephen, every evening.
Then, for no apparent reason, Stephen ceased to come.
Anne, who had endured so much suspense about him, could surely endure a little more. But it seemed she could not. For a week he did not come. In that one week she aged perceptibly. The old pain took her again,the old anger and resentment at being made to suffer, the old fierceness, "which from tenderness is never far." She had thought that she had conquered these enemies so often, that she had routed them so entirely, that they could never confront her again. But they did. In the ranks of her old foes a new one had enlisted—Hope; and Hope, if he forces his way into the heart where he has been long a stranger, knows how to reopen many a deep and barely healed wound, which will bleed long after he is gone.
And where were Anne's patience, her old steadfastness and fortitude? Could they be worn out?
As she stood by the window, trying to summon her faithless allies to her aid, her father came in, with a newspaper in his hand.
"This is serious," he said, "about Vanbrunt."
She turned upon him like lightning.
The Duke tapped the paper.
"I knew Vanbrunt was in difficulties," hesaid. "A week ago, when he was last here, he advised me sell out certain shares. It seems he would not sell out himself. He said he would see it through, and now the smash has come. I'm afraid he's ruined."
A beautiful colour rose to Anne's face. Her eyes shone. She felt a sudden inrush of life. She became young, strong, alert.
Her father was too much preoccupied to notice her.
"Vanbrunt is a fine man," he said. "He had ample time to get out. But he stuck to the ship, and he has gone down with it. I'm sorry. I liked him."
"Are you sure he is really ruined?"
"The papers say so. They also say he can meet his liabilities." The Duke read aloud a paragraph which Anne did not understand. "That spells ruin even for him," he said.
He took several turns across the room.
"He has been working day and night for the last week," he said, "to avoid this crash. It might have been avoided. He told mea little when he was last here, but in confidence. He is straight, but others weren't. He has not been backed. He has been let in by his partners."
The Duke sighed, and went back to his study on the ground floor.
Anne opened the window with a trembling hand, and peered out into the fog.
Stephen was sitting in his inner room at his office in the City, biting an already sufficiently bitten little finger. His face bore the mark of the incessant toil of the last week. His eyes were fixed absently on the electric light. His mind was concentrated with unabated strength on his affairs, as a magnifying glass may focus its light into flame on a given point. He had fought strenuously, and he had been beaten—not by fair means. He could meet the claims upon him. He could, in his own language, "stand the racket;" but in the eyes of the financial world he was ruined. In his own eyes he was on the verge of ruin. But a man with an iron nerve can find a foothold on precipices where anotherturns giddy and loses his head. Stephen's courage rose to the occasion. He felt equal to it. His strong, acute, alert mind worked indefatigably hour after hour, while he sat apparently idle. He was not perturbed. He saw his way through.
He heard the newsboys in the streets crying out his bankruptcy, and smiled. At last he drew a sheet of paper towards him, and became absorbed in figures.
He was never visible to anyone when he was in this inner chamber. His head clerk knew that he must not on any pretext be disturbed. And those who knew Stephen discovered that he was not to be disturbed with impunity.
He looked up at last, and rose to his feet, shaking himself like a dog.
"I can carry through," he said. "They think I can't, but I can. But if the worst comes to the worst—which it shall not—I doubt if I shall have a shilling left."
He took a turn in the room.
"Wait a bit, you fools," he said half aloud; "if your cowardice does ruin me,wait a bit. I have made money not once, nor twice,—and I can make it again."
A tap came to the door.
He reddened with sudden anger. Did not Jones know that he was not to be interrupted till two, when he must meet, and, if possible, pacify certain half frantic, stampeding shareholders?
The door opened with decision, and Anne came in. For a moment Stephen saw the aghast face of his head clerk behind her. Then Anne shut the door and confronted him.
The image of Anne was so constantly with Stephen, her every little trick of manner, from the way she turned her head, to the way she folded her hands, was all so carefully registered in his memory, had become so entirely a part of himself, that it was no surprise to him to see her. Did he not see her always! Nevertheless, as he looked at her, all power of going forward to meet her, of speaking to her, left him. The blood seemed to ebb slowly from his heart, and his grim face blanched.
"How did you come here?" he stammered at last, his voice sounding harsh and unfamiliar.
"On foot."
"In this fog?"
"Yes."
"Who came with you?"
"I came alone. I wished to speak to you. I hear you are ruined."
"I can meet my liabilities," he said proudly.
"Is it true that you have lost two millions?"
"It is—possibly more."
A moment of terror seemed to pass over Anne. The lovely colour in her cheek faded suddenly. She supported herself against the table, with a shaking gloved hand. Then she drew herself up, and said in a firm voice:
"Do you remember that night in Hamilton Gardens when you asked me to marry you?"
Stephen bowed. He could not speak. Even his great strength was only just enough.
"I refused you because I saw you were convinced that I did not care for you. If I had told you I loved you then you would not have believed it."
Stephen's hand gripped the mantelpiece. He was trembling from head to foot. His eyes never left her.
"But now the money is gone," she said, becoming paler than ever, "perhaps, now the dreadful money is gone, you will believe me if I tell you that I love you."
And so Stephen and Anne came home to each other at last—at last.
"My dear," said the Duke to Anne the following day, "this is a very extraordinary proceeding of yours. You refuse Vanbrunt when he is rich, and accept him when he is tottering on the verge of ruin. It seems a reversal of the usual order of things. What will your mother say?"
"I have already had a letter from her, thanking Heaven that I was not engaged to him. She says a good deal about howthere is a Higher Power which rules things for the best."
"I wish you would allow it freer scope," said the Duke. "All the same, I should be thankful if she were here. It will be my horrid, vulgar duty to ask Vanbrunt what he has got; what small remains there are of his enormous fortune. I hear on good authority that he is almost penniless. One is not a parent for nothing. I wish to goodness your mother were in town. She always did this sort of thing herself with a dreadful relish on previous occasions. You must push him into my study, my dear, after his interview with you. I will endeavour to act the heavy father. That is his bell. I will depart. I have letters to write."
The Duke left the room, and then put his head in again.
"It may interest you to know, Anne," he said, "that I've seen handsomer men, and I've seen better dressed men, and I've even seen men of rather lighter build, but I've not seen any man I like better than your ex-millionaire."
Two hours later, after Stephen's departure, the Duke returned to his daughter's sitting-room, and sank exhausted into a chair.
"Really I can't do this sort of thing twice in a lifetime," he said faintly. "Have you any salts handy? No—you—need not fetch them. I'm not seriously indisposed. How heartlessly blooming you are looking, Anne, while your parent is suffering. Now remember, if ever you want to marry again, don't send your second husband to interview me, for I won't have it."
"Come, come, father. Didn't you tell me to push him into your study? And I thought you looked so impressive and dignified when I brought him in. Quite a model father."
"I took a firm attitude with him," continued the Duke. "I saw he was nervous. That made it easier for me. Vanbrunt is a shy man. I was in the superior position. Hateful thing to ask a man for his daughter. I said, 'Now look here, Vanbrunt, I understand youwish to marry my daughter. I don't wish it myself, but——'"
"Oh! father, you never said that?"
"Well, not exactly. I owned to him that I could put up with him better than with most, but that I could not let you marry to poverty. He asked me what I considered poverty. That rather stumped me. In fact, I did not know what to say. It was not his place to ask questions."
"Father, you did promise me you would let me marry him on eight hundred a year."
"Well, yes, I did. I don't like it, but I did say so. In short, I told him you had worked me up to that point."
"And what did he say?"
"He said he did not think in that case that any real difficulty about money need arise; that at one moment he had stood to lose all he had, and he had lost two millions, but that his affairs had taken an unexpected turn during the last twenty-four hours, and he believed he could count on an odd million or so, certainly onhalf a million. I collapsed, Anne. My attitude fell to pieces. It was Vanbrunt who scored. He had had a perfectly grave face till then. Then he smiled grimly, and we shook hands. He did not say much, but what he did say was to the point. I think, my dear, that while Vanbrunt lasts, his love for you will last. He has got it very firmly screwed into him. But these interviews annihilate me."
The Duke raised the kitchen cat to his knee, and rubbed it behind the ears.
"I made the match, Anne," he said; "you owe it all to me. I asked him to dinner when I met him at that first directors' meeting a fortnight ago. I had it in my mind then."
"Father! Youknowyou had not."
"Well, no. I had not. I did not think of it! I can't say I did. But still, I was a sort of bulwark to the whole thing. You had my moral support. I shall tell your mother so."
"So passes, all confusedlyAs lights that hurry, shapes that fleeAbout some brink we dimly see,The trivial, great,Squalid, majestic tragedyOf human fate."—William Watson
"So passes, all confusedlyAs lights that hurry, shapes that fleeAbout some brink we dimly see,The trivial, great,Squalid, majestic tragedyOf human fate."
"So passes, all confusedlyAs lights that hurry, shapes that fleeAbout some brink we dimly see,The trivial, great,Squalid, majestic tragedyOf human fate."
—William Watson
I wish life were more like the stories one reads, the beautiful stories, which, whether they are grave or gay, still have picturesque endings. The hero marries the heroine, after insuperable difficulties, which in real life he would never have overcome: or the heroine creeps down into a romantic grave, watered by our scalding tears. At any rate, the story is gracefully wound up. There is an ornamental conclusion to it. But life, for some inexplicable reason, does not lend itself with docility to the requirements of the lending libraries, and only too frequently fails to grasp the dramatic moment for an impressive close. None of us reach middle age without having watched several violent melodramas, whose main interest lies further apart from their moral than we were led, in our tender youth, to anticipate. We have seen better plays off the stage than even Shakespeare ever put on. But Shakespeare finished his, and pulled down the curtain on them; while, with those we watch in life, we have time to grow grey between the acts; and we only know the end has come, when at last it does come, because the lights have been going out all the time, one by one, and we find ourselves at last alone in the dark.
Janet's sweet melancholy face rises up before me as I think of these things, and I could almost feel impatient with her, when I remember how the one dramatic incident in her uneventful life never seemed to get itself wound up. The consequences went on, and on, and on, till all novelty and interest dropped inevitably from them and from her.
Some of us come to turning-points inlife, and don't turn. We become warped instead. It was so with Janet.
Is there any turning-point in life like our first real encounter with anguish, loneliness, despair?
I do not pity those who meet open-eyed these stern angels of God, and wrestle with them through the night, until the day breaks, extorting from them the blessings that they waylaid us to bestow. But is it possible to withhold awed compassion for those who, like Janet, go down blind into Hades, and struggle impotently with God's angels as with enemies? Janet endured with dumb, uncomplaining dignity she knew not what, she knew not why; and came up out of her agony, as she had gone down into it—with clenched empty hands. The greater hope, the deeper love, the wider faith, the tenderer sympathy—these she brought not back with her. She returned gradually to her normal life with her conventional ideas crystallised, her small crude beliefs in love and her fellow-creatures withered.
That was all George did for her.
The virtues of narrow natures such as George's seem of no use to anyone except possibly to their owner. They are as great a stumbling-block to their weaker brethren, they cause as much pain, they choke the spiritual life as mercilessly, they engender as much scepticism in unreasoning minds, as certain gross vices. If we are unjust, it matters little to our victim what makes us so, or whether we have prayed to see aright, if for long years we have closed our eyes to unpalatable truths.
George's disbelief in Janet's rectitude, which grew out of a deep sense of rectitude, had the same effect on her mind as if he had deliberately seduced and deserted her. The executioner reached the gallows of his victim by a clean path. That was the only difference. So much the better for him. The running noose for her was the same. Unreasoning belief in love and her fellow-creatures was followed by an equally unreasoning disbelief in both.
Janet kept her promise. She held firm.Amid all the promises of the world, made only to be broken, kept only till the temptation to break them punctually arrived, amid all that débris one foolish promise remained intact, Janet's promise to Cuckoo.
George married. Then, shortly afterwards, Fred married the eldest Miss Ford, and found great happiness. His bliss was at first painfully streaked with total abstinence, but he gradually eradicated this depressing element from his new home life. And in time his slight insolvent nature reached a kind of stability, through the love of the virtuous female prig, the "perfect lady," to whom he was all in all. Fred changed greatly for the better after his marriage, and in the end he actually repaid Stephen part of the money the latter had advanced to Monkey Brand, for Janet's sake.
Janet lived with the young couple at first, but Mrs Fred did not like her. She knew vaguely, as did half the neighbourhood, that Janet had been mixed up in something discreditable, and that her engagement had been broken off on that account. MrsFred was, as we know, a person of the highest principles; and high principles naturally shrink from contact with any less exalted. Several months after the situation between the two women had become untenable, Janet decided to leave home. She had nowhere to go, and no money; so, like thousands of other women in a similar predicament, she decided to support herself by education. She had received no education herself, but that was not in her mind any bar to imparting it. Anne, who had kept in touch with her, interfered peremptorily at this point, and when Janet did finally leave home, it was to go to Anne's house in London, till "something turned up."
It was a sunny day in June when Janet arrived in London, for the first time since her ill-fated visit there a year ago. She looked up at Lowndes Mansions, as her four-wheeler plodded past them, towards Anne's house in Park Lane. Even now, a year after the great fire, scaffoldings were still pricking up against the central tower of the larger block of building. The damagecaused by the fire was not even yet quite repaired. Perhaps some of it would never be repaired.
Mrs Trefusis was sitting with Anne on this particular afternoon, confiding to her some discomfortable characteristics of her new daughter-in-law, the wife whom she had herself chosen for her son.
"I am an old woman," said Mrs Trefusis, "and of course I don't march with the times, the world is for the young, I know that very well; but I must own, Anne, I had imagined that affection still counted for something in marriage."
"I wonder what makes you think that."
"Well, not the marriages I see around me, my dear, that is just what I say, though what has made you so cynical all at once, I don't know. But I ask you—look at Gertrude. She does not know what the word 'love' means."
"I'm not so sure of that."
"I am. She has been married to George three months, and it might be thirty years by the way they behave. And she seemedsuch a particularly nice girl, and exceedingly sensible, and well brought up. I should have thought she would at any ratetryto make my boy happy, after all the sorrow he has gone through. But they don't seem to have any real link to each other. It isn't that they don't get on. They do in a way. She is sharp enough for that. She does her duty by him. She is nice to him, but all her interests, and she has interests, seem to lie apart from anything to do with him."
"Does he mind?"
"I never really know what George minds or doesn't mind," said Mrs Trefusis. "It has been the heaviest cross of the many crosses I have had to bear in life, that he never confides in me. George has always been extremely reticent. Thoughtful natures often are. He will sit for hours without saying a word, looking——"
"Glumis the word she wants," said Anne to herself, as Mrs Trefusis hesitated.
"Reserved," said Mrs Trefusis. "He does not seem to care to be with Gertrude. And yet you know Gertrude is very taking,and there is no doubt she is good-looking. And she sings charmingly. Unfortunately George does not care for music."
"She is really musical."
"They make a very handsome couple," said Mrs Trefusis plaintively. "When I saw them come down the aisle together I felt happier about him than I had done for years. It seemed as if I had been rewarded at last. And I never saw a bride smile and look as bright as she did. But somehow it all seems to have fallen flat. She didn't even care to see the photographs of George when he was a child, when I got them out the other day. She said she would like to see them, and then forgot to look at them."
Anne was silent.
"Well," said Mrs Trefusis, rising slowly, "I suppose the truth is that in these days young people don't fall in love as they did in my time. I must own Gertrude has disappointed me."
"I daresay she will make him a good wife."
"Oh! my dear, she does. She is an extremely practical woman, but one wants more for one's son than a person who will make him a good wife. If she were a less good wife, and cared a little more about him, I should feel less miserable about the whole affair."
Mrs Trefusis sighed heavily.
"I must go," she said, in the voice of one who might be persuaded to remain.
But Anne did not try to detain her, for she was expecting Janet every moment, though she did not warn Mrs Trefusis of the fact, for the name of Janet was never mentioned between Anne and Mrs Trefusis. Mrs Trefusis had once diffidently endeavoured to reopen the subject with Anne, but found it instantly and decisively closed. If Janet had existed in a novel, she would certainly have been coming up Anne's wide white staircase at the exact moment that Mrs Trefusis was going down them, but, as a matter of fact, Mrs Trefusis was packed into her carriage, and drove away, quite half a minute before Janet's four-wheeler came round the corner.
Anne's heart ached for Janet when she appeared in the doorway. She almost wished that Mrs Trefusis had been confronted with the worn white face of the only woman who had loved her son.
Janet and Anne kissed each other.
Then Janet looked at the wedding ring on Anne's finger, and smiled at her in silence.
Anne looked down tremulously, for fear lest the joy in her eyes should make Janet's heart ache, as her own heart had ached one little year ago, when she had seen Janet and George together in the rose garden.
"I am so glad," said Janet. "I did so wish that time at Easthope—do you remember?—that you could be happy too. It's just a year ago."
"Just a year," said Anne.
"I suppose you cared for him then," said Janet. "But I expect it was in a more sensible way than I did. You were always so much wiser than me. One lives and learns."
"I cared for him then," said Anne, busying herself making tea for her friend. When she had made it she went to a side table, and took from it a splendid satin tea cosy, which she placed over the teapot. It had been Janet's wedding present to her.
Janet's eyes lighted on it with pleasure.
"I am glad you use it every day," she said. "I was so afraid you would only use it when you had company."
Anne stroked it with her slender white hand. There was a kind of tender radiance about her which Janet had never observed in her before.
"It makes me happy that you are happy," said Janet. "I only hope it will last. I felt last year that you were in trouble. Since then it has been my turn."
"I wish happiness could have come to both of us," said Anne.
"Do you remember our talk together," said Janet, spreading out a clean pocket-handkerchief on her knee, and stirring her tea, "and how sentimental I was? Idaresay you thought at the time how silly I was about George. I see now what a fool I was."
Anne did not answer. She was looking earnestly at Janet, and there was no need for her now to veil the still gladness in her eyes. They held only pained love and surprise.
"And do you remember how the clergyman preached about not laying up our treasure on earth?"
"I remember everything."
"I've often thought of that since," said Janet, with a quiver in her voice, which brought back once more to Anne the childlike innocent creature of a year ago, whom she now almost failed to recognise, in her new ill-fitting array of cheap cynicism.
"I did lay up my treasure upon earth," continued Janet, drawn momentarily back into her old simplicity by the presence of Anne. "I didn't seem able to help it. George was my treasure. I mustn't think of him any more because he's married. But I cared too much. That was where I was wrong."
"One cannot love too much," said Anne, her fingers closing over her wedding ring.
"Perhaps not," said Janet, "but then the other person must love too. George did not love me enough to carry through. When the other person cares, but doesn't care strong enough, I think that's the worst. It's like what the Bible says. The moth and rust corrupting. George did care, but not enough. Men are like that."
"Some one else cares," said Anne diffidently—"poor Mr de Rivaz. He cares enough."
"Yes," said Janet apathetically. "I daresay he does. We've all got to fall in love some time or other. But I don't care for him. I told him so months ago. I don't mean to care for any one again. I've thought a great deal about things this winter, Anne. It's all very well for you to believe in love. I did once, but I don't now."
Janet got up, and, as she turned, her eyes fixed suddenly.
"Why, that's the cabinet," she said below her breath. "Cuckoo's cabinet!" Her facequivered. She saw again the scorched room, the pile of smoking papers on the hearth, the flame which had burnt up her happiness with them.
Anne did not understand.
"Stephen gave me that cabinet a few days ago," she said.
"It was Cuckoo's. It used to stand under her picture."
"Don't you think it may be a replica?"
"No, it is the same," said Janet, passing her hand over the mermaid and her whale. "There is the little chip out of the dolphin's tail."
Then she shrank suddenly away from it, as if its touch scorched her.
"Where did you get the Italian cabinet?" said Anne to Stephen that evening, as he and De Rivaz joined her and Janet after dinner in her sitting-room.
"At Brand's sale. He sold some of his things when he gave up his flat in Lowndes Mansions. He has gone to South Africa for his boy's health."
Stephen opened it. Janet drew near.
"I had to have a new key made for it," he said, letting the front fall forward on his careful hand. "Look, Anne! how beautifully the drawers are inlaid."
He pulled out one or two of them.
Janet slowly put out her hand, and pulled out the lowest drawer on the left-hand side. It stuck, and then came out. It was empty like all the rest.
Stephen closed it, and then drew it forward again.
"Why does it stick?" he said.
He got the drawer entirely out, and looked into the aperture. Then he put in his hand, and pulled out something wedged against the slip of wood which supported the upper drawer, without reaching quite to the back of the cabinet. It was a crumpled, dirty sheet of paper. He tore it as he forced it out.
"It must have been in the lowest drawer but one," he said, "and fallen between the drawer and its support."
Janet was the first to see her brother'ssignature, and she pointed to it with a cry.
It was the missing I O U.
"I always said it would turn up," said Stephen gently.
"But it's too late," said Janet hoarsely, "too late! too late! Oh! why didn't George believe in me!"
"He will believe now."
"It doesn't matter what he believes now. Why didn't heknowI had not burnt it?"
"I believed in you," said De Rivaz, his voice shaking. "I knew you had not burnt it, though I saw you burning papers. Though I saw you with my own eyes, I did not believe."
There was a moment's pause. Her three faithful friends looked at Janet.
"I burnt nothing," she said.
Janet married De Rivaz at last, but not until she had nearly worn him out. It was after their marriage that he painted his marvellous portrait of her, a picture that was the outcome of a deep love, wed with genius.
She made him a good wife, as wives go, and bore him beautiful children, but she never cared for him as she had done for George. Later on her daughters carried their love affairs, not to their mother, but—to Anne.