Some weeks afterwards Field went to England. He did not take Mamie with him, for he intended to remain only a few days, nor had she been at all desirous of accompanying him. She had begun, indeed, to see that she did not know what she did desire. Her life in Paris oppressed her; the notion of Duluth was horrible; and the thought of living with Lucas in London, where she might meet an acquaintance of Heriot's at any turn, was repugnant in an almost equal degree.
Field was unexpectedly detained in London. The business that had been responsible for his journey constantly evaded completion, and after he had been gone about a month a letter came, in which he mentioned incidentally that he had a touch of influenza. After this letter a fortnight went by without her hearing from him; and, rendered anxious at last, she wrote to inquire if his silence was attributable to his indisposition—if the latter was of a serious nature.
Her mind did not instantaneously grasp the significance of the telegram that she tore open a few hours later. It ran:
"My nephew dangerously ill. If you desire to see him, better come.—Porteous."
She stood gazing at it. Who had telegraphed? Who—— Then she understood that it was Lucas who was meant. Lucas was "dangerously ill"! She must go to him. She must go at once! She was so staggered by the suddenness of the intelligence that she was momentarily incapable of recollecting when the trains left, or how she should act in order to ascertain. All she realised was that this was Paris, and Lucas lay "dangerously ill" in London, and that she had to reach him. Her head swam, and the little French that she knew seemed to desert her; the undertaking looked enormous—beset with difficulties that were almost insuperable.
The stupidity of thebonne, for whom she pealed the bell, served to sharpen her faculties a trifle, but she made her preparations as in a dream. When she found herself in the train, it appeared to her unreal that she could be there. The interval had left no salient impressions on her brain, nothing but a confused sense of delay. It was only now that she felt able to reflect.
The telegram was crumpled in her pocket, and she took it out and re-read it agitatedly. How did this relative come to be at the hotel? Lucas had scarcely spoken of his relations. "If you desire to see him"! The import of those words was frightful—he could not be expected to recover. Her stupefaction rolled away, and was succeeded by a fever of suspense. The restriction of the compartment was maddening, and she looked at her watch a dozen times, only to find that not ten minutes had passed since she consulted it last.
It seemed to her that she had been travelling for at least two days, when she stood outside a bedroom in a little hotel off Bond Street and tapped at the door with her heart in her throat.
The door was opened by a woman whose dress proclaimed her to be an institution nurse. Field slept, and Mamie sank into a chair, and waited for his wakening.
"How is he?" she asked in a low tone.
The nurse shook her head.
"He's not doing as well as we could wish, ma'am."
"Is Mr. Porteous here?"
"Mrs.Porteous. She'll be coming presently. She lives close by."
So it was a woman who had telegraphed! Somehow she had assumed unquestioningly that it was a man. "If you desire to see him——" Ah, yes, she might have known it! An aunt, who would be frigid and contemptuous, of course. Well, she deserved that, she would have no right to complain; nor was it to be expected that Lucas's family should show her much consideration, though she could not perceive that she had done them any injury.
Two hours passed before she had an interview with the lady. Mamie was in the room that she had engaged in the meanwhile. She had bathed her face, and was making ready to return to the sick-room, when she was told that Mrs. Porteous was inquiring for her.
"Won't you come in?" she asked. "Our voices won't disturb him here."
Mrs. Porteous entered gingerly. She was a massive woman, of middle age, fashionably dressed. Her expression suggested no grief, only a vague fear of contamination. She had telegraphed to Paris because she felt that it was her duty to do so; but she had not telegraphed until it was almost certain that the patient would not rally sufficiently to make a will.
"You are—er—Mrs. Heriot?" she said, regarding her curiously. "The doctor thought that Mr. Field's condition ought to be made known to you; so I wired."
"Thank you; it was very kind."
"The doctor advised it," said Mrs. Porteous again, significantly.
"Is he—is there no hope?"
"We fear not; my nephew is sinking fast—it's as well you should understand it. If you think it necessary to remain—— I see you have taken a room? As—as 'Mrs. Field,' I presume?"
"I should have been 'Mrs. Field,' if Lucas——"
His aunt shivered.
"There are things we need not discuss. Of course I'm aware that you are living under my nephew's name. I was about to say that if you think it necessary to remain till the end, I have no opposition to offer; but the end is very near now. My telegram must have prepared you? I should not have wired unless——"
"I understood," answered Mamie, "yes. I am glad that your nephew had a relative near him, though your name was quite strange to me. He never mentioned it."
"Really! Lucas called to see us at once. Our house is in the neighbourhood."
"He wrote me," said Mamie, "that he had a touch of influenza. It seems extraordinary that influenza should prove so serious? He was strong, he was in good health——"
The other's air implied that she did not find it necessary to discuss this either.
"People die of influenza, or the results of it, every year," she said. "The doctor will give you any information you may desire, no doubt. You must excuse me—I may be wanted."
While Field lingered she never left his side, after Mamie's arrival. Men committed preposterous actions on their death-beds, and though he was not expected to recover consciousness, there was the possibility that he might do so. If an opportunity occurred, his mistress would doubtless produce a solicitor and a provision for herself with the rapidity of a conjuring trick. As it was, Mrs. Porteous had small misgivings but what he would die intestate. There might not be much, but at any rate, what he had should not swell the coffers of guilty wives!
Events proved that her summons had not been precipitate, however. Field spoke at the last a few coherent words, and took Mamie's hand. But that was all. Then he never spoke any more. Even as she stood gazing at the unfamiliar face on the pillow, the swiftness of the catastrophe made it difficult for the girl to realise that all was over. The calamity had fallen on her like a thunderbolt—it seemed strange, inexplicable, untrue. The last time but one that he had talked to her he had been full of vigour, packing a portmanteau, humming a tune, alluding to fees, some details of the theatre, the prospect of a smooth crossing. And now he was dead. There had been little or no transition; he was well—he was dead! The curtain had tumbled in the middle of the play—and it would never go up any more.
It was not till after the funeral that she was capable of meditating on the change that Lucas Field's death had wrought in her life. She did not ask herself whether he had left her anything, or not. The idea that he might have done so never occurred to her, nor would she have felt that she could accept his bequest if he had made one. She perceived that she had nobody to turn to but her father, and to him she cabled.
Cheriton replied by two questions: What was Field's will? And would she like to return to Duluth? To the second she made a definite answer. "Impossible; pray don't ask me." And then there was an interval of correspondence.
While Mrs. Porteous rejoiced to find that her confidence was justified and that her nephew had died intestate, Mamie was contemplating the choice of swallowing her repugnance to going back to America, or of living with Mrs. Baines. Cheriton had written to them both, and that one course or the other should be adopted he was insistent. Mamie need not live in Lavender Street; Mrs. Baines might make her home in another neighbourhood, where they would be strangers. But that the girl should remain alone in England was out of the question. Which line of conduct did she prefer?
She could not decide immediately. Both proposals distressed her. On the whole, perhaps, the lesser evil was to resign herself to her Aunt Lydia if, as her father declared, her aunt was willing to receive her. Mrs. Baines, at any rate, was but one, while in Duluth half the population would be acquainted with her story.
Butwasher Aunt Lydia willing?—was she expected to write to her and inquire? She was not entitled to possess dignity, of course; but it was not easy to eat dust because the right to self-respect was forfeited.
She had removed to a lodging in Bernard Street, Bloomsbury, and in the fusty sitting-room she sat all day, lonely and miserable, reviewing the blunder of her life. She neither wrote nor read—her writing was an idea she hated now; she merely thought—wishing she could recall the past, wondering how she could bear the future. One afternoon when she sat there, pale and heavy-eyed, the maid-of-all-work announced a visitor, and Mrs. Baines came in.
Mamie rose nervously, and the other advanced. She had rehearsed an interview which should be a compromise between the instructions that had been given her by her brother, and the attitude of righteous rebuke that she felt to be a permissible luxury, but the forlornness of the figure before her drove her opening sentence from her head. All she could utter was the girl's name; and then there was a pause in which they looked at each other.
"It is kind of you to come," Mamie murmured.
"I hope you're well?" said Mrs. Baines.
"Not very. I——Won't you sit down?"
"I never thought I should see you like this, Mamie!" said the widow half involuntarily, shaking her head.
The girl made no answer in words. She caught her breath, and stood passive. If the lash fell she would suffer silently.
"We always see sin punished, though." She believed we always did; she retained such startling optimism. "It's not for me to reproach you."
"Thank you. I'm not too happy, Aunt Lydia."
"I daresay, my dear. I haven't come to make it worse for you."
She scrutinised her again. She would have been horrified to hear the suggestion, but her niece's presence was not without a guilty fascination, a pleasurable excitement, to her as she remembered that here was one who had broken the Seventh Commandment. She was sitting opposite a girl who had lived in Paris with a lover; and she was sitting opposite her in circumstances which redounded to her own credit!
"I have heard from your father," she went on; "I suppose you know?"
"Yes," said Mamie; "he has written me."
"And do you wish to make your home with me again? I'm quite ready to take you if you like."
"I could never live in Lavender Street any more, Aunt Lydia. You must understand that—that it would be awful to me."
"Your father hinted at my moving. It will be a great trouble, but I shan't shirk my duty, dear Mamie. If it will make your burden any easier to bear, we will live together somewhere else. I say, if I can make your burden any easier for you, I will live somewhere else."
"I am not ungrateful. I.... Yes, if you will have me, I should like to come to you."
Mrs. Baines sighed, and smoothed her skirt tremulously.
"To Balham?" she inquired.
"You are moving to Balham?"
"I was thinking about it. I was over there the other day to get some stuff for a bodice. It's nice and healthy, and the shopping is cheap."
"It's all the same to me where we go," said Mamie, "so long as the people don't know me."
"I hear you were living with—withhimin Paris? Operas, and drives, and all manner of things to soothe your conscience he gave you, no doubt?" said Mrs. Baines, in an awestruck invitation to communicativeness. "After that terrible life in Paris, Balham will seem quiet to you, I daresay; but perhaps you won't mind that?'
"No place can be too quiet for me. The quieter it is, the better I shall like it."
"That's as it should be! Though, I suppose, withhimyou were out among gaieties every night?" She waited for a few particulars again. As none were forthcoming: "Then I'll try to let the house, and we'll go over together and look at some in Balham as soon as you like, my dear," she continued. "Your father will see that I'm not put to any expense. In the meantime you'll stay where you are, eh? You know—you know I saw Mr. Heriot after you'd gone, don't you?"
"No," stammered the girl, lifting eager eyes. "You went to him?"
"The very next day, my dear, so it seemed! I thought I'd drop in and have a cup of tea with you, not having seen you for so long; and through missing a train, and having such a time to wait at the station, I was an hour and more late when I got to Kensington. He was at home. Of course I had no idea there was anything wrong; I shall never forget it—never! You might have knocked me down with a feather when I heard you'd gone."
"What," muttered Mamie, "what did he say?"
"It was like this. I said to him, 'Dear Mamie's away, the servant tells me?' For naturally I thought you were visiting friends; 'as likely as not, she's with his family,' I thought to myself. 'Oh, yes,' he said, 'you must prepare yourself for a shock, Mrs. Baines—my wife has left me.' 'Left you?' I said. 'Yes,' said he, so cool that it turned me a mask of blood to hear him, 'she's gone away with a lover.' 'Mr. Heriot!' I exclaimed—'MisterHeriot!' 'She left a note,' he said, 'so it's quite true. Do you think we need talk about it much? I don't know that a worthless woman is any loss,' he said."
"He said that?"
"Those were his very words, my dear. And that cool! I stared at him. I'd no mind to make excuses for you, Gawd knows; but, for all that, one's own flesh and blood wasn't going to be talked about like niggers inmyhearing. When I got my wits together, I said, 'It seems to me I'd be sorrier for you, Mr. Heriot, if you took it different.' 'Oh,' said he in his superior way, 'would you? We needn't discuss my feelings, madam. Perhaps you'll stay and dine?' I was so angry that I couldn't be civil to him. 'I thank you,' I said, 'I will not stay and dine. And I take the opportunity, Mr. Heriot, of telling you you're a brute!' With that I came away; but there was much more in between that I've forgotten. About the divorce it was. He said he had 'a duty to himself,' and that the man could marry you when you were divorced; which I suppose hewouldhave done if he had lived? though whether your sin would have been any less, my dear, if an archbishop had performed the ceremony is a question that I couldn't undertake to decide. You must begin your life afresh, now that it's all 'absolute'—which I learn is the proper term—and you'll never be in a newspaper any more. Pray to Heaven for aid, and take heart of grace! And if it will relieve you to speak sometimes of those sinful months with—with the other one in Paris, why, you shall talk about them to me, my dear, and I won't reproach you."
Mamie was no longer listening. An emotion that she did not seek to define was roused in her as she wondered if Heriot could indeed have taken the blow so stoically as her aunt declared. She scarcely knew whether she wished to put faith in his demeanour or not, but the subject was one that filled her thoughts long after Mrs. Baines's departure. It was one to which she constantly recurred.
With less delay than might have been anticipated, the widow found a house in Balham to fulfil her requirements, and the removal was effected several months before No. 20, Lavender Street was sub-let.
The houses of this class differ from one another but slightly. Excepting that the one in Balham was numbered "44," and that the street was called "Rosalie Road," Mamie could have found it easy to believe that she was re-installed in Wandsworth. It seemed to her sometimes as if the van that had removed the furniture had also brought the ground-floor parlour, with the miniature bay window overlooking the shrubs and the plot of mould. The back yard with the clothes prop, and the neighbours' yards with the continuous clatter, they too might have been transferred from Lavender Street; and so abiding was the clatter that even if she felt sleepy at nine o'clock, it was useless to go to bed before eleven. In view of this unintermittent necessity for back yards, she wondered how the inmates of more expensive houses for which back yards were not provided managed to support the deficiency. The women that she viewed, from the bedroom, among the clothes lines, or across the plot of mould, as they went forth with string bags, might have been the Lavender Street tenants. And were they not the Lavender Street children, these who on week-days swung, unkempt, on the little creaking gates along the road, and on Sundays walked abroad in colours so grotesquely unsuited to them?
Such houses are, for the most part, happily, the crown of lives too limited to realise their limitations—too unsuccessful to be aware that they have failed. To Rosalie Road, Balham, with her Aunt Lydia for companion, the divorced woman at the age of twenty-six retired to remember that she had once hoped to be an artist, and had had the opportunity of being happy.
To-day she hoped for nothing. There was no scope for hope. If she could have awakened to find herself famous, her existence would have been coloured a little—though she knew that fame could not satisfy her now as it would once have done—but the ability to labour for distinction was gone. She was apathetic, she had no interest in anything. When six months had passed, she regarded death as the only event to which she could still look forward; when she had been here a year, a glimmer of relief entered into her depression—the doctor who had attended her, and sounded her lungs, told her that she "must take care of herself."
Sometimes a neighbour looked in, and spoke of dilapidations and the indifference of the landlord; of the reductions at a High Road linendraper's, and the whooping-cough. Sometimes a curate called to sell tickets for a concert more elementary than his sermons. In the afternoon she walked to Tooting Bec and stared at the bushes; in the evening she betook herself to the "circulating library," whereLady Audley's SecretandThe Wide, Wide Worldwere displayed and the proprietor said he hadn't heard of Meredith—"perhaps she had made a mistake in the name?" God help her! She was guilty and she had left a husband desolate; but the music that she had dreamed of was the opera on Wagner nights; the books that she had expected were copies containing signatures that were the envy of the autograph-collector; the circle that had been her aim was the world of literature and art. She lived at Balham; she saw the curate, and she heard about the dilapidations in the neighbour's roof. One year merged into another; and if she lived for forty more, the neighbour and the curate would be her All.
When five years had passed after the divorce, the Liberal Party came into power again, and George Heriot, Q.C., M.P., was appointed Solicitor-General. His work and ambitions had not sufficed to mend the gap in his life; but it had been in work and ambition that he endeavoured to find assuagement of the wound. Perhaps eagerness had never been so keen in him after his wife went as while he was contesting the borough that he represented now; perhaps he had never realised the inadequacy of success so fully as he did to-day when one of the richest prizes of his profession was obtained. Conscious that the anticipated flavour was lacking, the steps to which he might look forward still lost much of their allurement. Were he promoted to the post of Attorney-General, and raised to the Bench, he foresaw that it would elate him no more than it elated him now, as Sir George Heriot, and a very wealthy man, to recall the period when, as a struggling Junior, he had sat up half the night to earn a guinea.
The five years had left their mark upon him; the hours of misery which no one suspected had left their mark upon him. The lines about his eyes and mouth had deepened; his hair was greyer, his figure less erect. Men who, in their turn, sat up half the night to earn a guinea, envied him, cited his career as an example of brilliant luck—the success of others is always "luck"—and, though they assumed that a fellow was "generally cut up a bit when his wife went wrong," found it difficult to conceive that Sir George had permitted domestic trouble to alloy his triumphs to any great extent. Nobody imagined that there were still nights when he suffered scarcely less acutely than on the one when he returned to discover that Mamie had gone; nobody guessed that there were evenings when his loneliness was almost unbearable to the dry, self-contained man—that moments came when he took from a drawer the likeness that had once stood on his desk and yearned over it in despair. That was his secret; pride forbade that he should share it with another. He contemned himself that he did suffer still. A worthless woman should not be mourned. Out of his life should be out of his memory; such weakness shamed him!
In August, a week or so after the vacation began, he went to stay at Sandhills. His object in going to Sandhills was not wholly to see his brother, and still less was it to see his sister-in-law. He was solitary, he was wretched, and he was only forty-seven years of age. He had been questioning for some time whether the wisest thing he could do would not be to marry again; he sought no resumption of rapture, but he wanted a home. An estimable wife, perhaps a son, would supply new interests; and the vague question that had entered his mind had latterly been emphasised by his introduction to Miss Pierways, who, he was aware, was now the guest of Lady Heriot.
Miss Pierways was the daughter of a lady who had been the Hon. Mrs. Pierways, and whose straitened circumstances had debarred her from the suite in Hampton Court that she might otherwise have had at the period of her husband's death. The widow and the girl had retired to obscure lodgings; the only break in the monotony of the latter's existence being an occasional visit to some connections, or friends, at whose places it was hoped she might form a desirable alliance. The most stringent economies had to be practised in order to procure passable frocks for these visits, but the opportunities had led to no result, though she had beauty. And then an extraordinary event occurred. When the girl was twenty-eight, the widow who, for once, had reluctantly accepted an invitation to accompany her, received an offer of marriage herself, and became the wife of an American who was known to be several times over a millionaire.
For one door that had been ajar to the daughter of the Hon. Mrs. Pierways, with nothing but her birth and her appearance to recommend her, a hundred doors flew open to the step-daughter of Henry Van Buren; and it was shortly after the startling metamorphosis in the fortunes of the pair that Heriot had first met them.
The dowry that Agnes Pierways might bring to her husband weighed with him very little, for he was in a position to disregard such considerations. But Miss Pierways' personality appeared to him suggestive of all the qualifications that he sought in the lady whom he should marry. Without her manner being impulsive or girlish, she was sufficiently young to be attractive. She was handsome, and in a slightly statuesque fashion that bore promise of the serenity which he told himself was now his aim. Certainly if he did re-marry—and he was contemplating the step very seriously—it would be difficult to secure a partner to fulfil his requirements more admirably than Miss Pierways. Whether he fulfilled hers, he could ascertain when he had fully made up his mind. It was with the intention of making up his mind, in proximity to the lady, that he had gone to Sandhills; and one evening, when he was alone in the smoking-room with his brother, the latter blundered curiously enough on to the bull's-eye of his meditations.
"I wonder," said Sir Francis, "that you've never thought of re-marrying, George?"
"My experience of matrimony was not fortunate," answered Heriot, smoking slowly, but with inward perturbation.
"Your experience of matrimony was a colossal folly. All things considered, the consequences might easily have been a good deal worse."
"I don't follow you."
"Between ourselves, the end never seemed to me so regrettable as you think it."
"My wife left me."
"And you divorced her! And you have no children."
"If I had had children," said Heriot musingly, "it is a fact that the consequences would have been worse."
"But in any case," said the Baronet, "it was a huge mistake. Really one may be frank, in the circumstances! You married madly. The probability is that if your wife had been—if you were living together still, you would be a miserable man to-day. It was a very lamentable affair, of course, when it happened, but regarding it coolly—in looking back on it—don't you fancy that perhaps things are just as well as they are?"
"I was very fond of my wife," replied Heriot, engrossed by his cigar.
"To an extent," said Sir Francis indulgently, "no doubt you had an affection for her. But, my dear fellow, what companionship had you? Was she a companion?"
"I don't know."
"Was she interested in your career? Could she understand your ways of thought? Was she used to your world? One doesn't ask a great deal of women, but had you any single thing in common?"
"I don't know," said Heriot again.
Sir Francis shrugged his shoulders.
"Take my word for it that, with such a girl as you married, your divorce wasn't an unmixed evil. It wasn't the release one would have chosen, but at least it was better for you than being tied to her for life. Damn it, George! what's the use of blinking the matter now? She was absolutely unsuited to you in every way; you must admit it!"
"I suppose she was. At the same time I was happy with her."
"How long would the infatuation have lasted?"
"It lasted more than three years."
"Would it have lasted another five?"
"Speaking honestly, I believe it would."
"Though you had nothing in common?"
"I don't explain," said Heriot. "I tell you, I was happy with her, that's all. Viewing it dispassionately, I suppose shewasunsuited to me—I don't know that we did have anything in common; I don't see any justification for the fool's paradise I lived in. But for all that, if I married again, I should never care for the woman as—as I cared forher. In fact, I should merely marry to——" He was about to say "to try to forget her"—"to make a home for myself," he said, instead.
"Have you considered such a step?" asked Sir Francis.
"Sometimes, yes."
"The best thing you could do—a very proper thing for you to do.... Anybody in particular?"
"It's rather premature——"
"You're not in chambers, old fellow!"
"What do you think of Miss Pierways?" inquired Heriot after a scarcely perceptible pause.
"A very excellent choice! I should congratulate you heartily. We had not noticed the—— And Catherine is very acute in these matters——"
"There has been nothing to notice; probably she would refuse me point-blank. But in the event of my determining to marry again, I've wondered whether Miss Pierways wouldn't be the lady I proposed to."
"I don't think you could do better."
"Really? You don't think I'm too old for her?"
"On my honour! 'Too old for her'? Not a bit, a very sensible marriage! I'm not surprised that you should be attracted by her."
"'Attracted by her,'" said Heriot, "suggests rather more than the actual facts. I appreciate her qualities, but I can't say I'm sensible of any attachment. I'm sorry that I'm not. I appreciate her so fully that I am anxious to be drawn towards her a little more. I'm somewhat past the age for ardent devotion, but I couldn't take a wife as I might buy a horse. Of course, I've not been very much in her society. Er—down here, I daresay, when I come to know her better—— Have you met Van Buren?"
"In town, before he sailed. He is in New York, you know. I like them all. We were very pleased to have the mother and the girl come to us.... Well, make your hay while the sun shines!"
"It isn't shining," said Heriot; "I'm just looking east, waiting for it to rise. But I'm glad to have talked to you; as soon as the first ray comes I think I'll take your advice. Ioughtto marry, Francis; I know you're right."
The more he reflected, the more he was convinced of it; in marriage lay his chance of contentment. And during the ensuing fortnight his approval of Miss Pierways deepened. The house would not fill until the following month, and the smallness of the party there at present was favourable to the development of acquaintance.
Excepting that she was a trifle cold, there was really no scope for adverse criticism upon Miss Pierways. She was unusually well read, took an intelligent interest in matters on which women of her age were rarely informed, and was accomplished to the extent that she played the piano after dinner with brilliant execution and admirable hands and wrists. Her coldness, theoretically, was no drawback to him, and Heriot was a little puzzled by his own attitude. Her air was neither so formal as to intimate that his advances would be unwelcome, nor so self-conscious as to repel him by the warmth of its encouragement; yet, in spite of his admiration, the idea of proposing to her dismayed him when he forced himself to approach the brink.
His vacillation was especially irritating since he had learned that the ladies were at the point of joining Van Buren in New York. The opportunity of which he was failing to take advantage would speedily be past, and he dreaded that if he suffered it to escape him, he would recall the matter with regret. He perceived as well, however, that if he were precipitate, he might regret that too, and he was sorry that they were not remaining in Europe longer.
One evening, when their departure was being discussed, the mother expressed surprise that he had never visited America, though she had had no curiosity about it, herself, until she married an American; and in answer Heriot declared that he had frequently thought of "running across during the long vacation."
"If you ever do," she said, "I hope you will choose a year when we are there."
"To tell you the truth, I was thinking of it this year."
"We may see you in New York, Sir George?" said Miss Pierways. "Really? How strange that will seem! I've been eager to go to New York all my life; but now that I'm going, I'm rather afraid. The idea of a great city where I haven't any friends——"
"But you will have many friends, Agnes."
"By-and-by," answered Miss Pierways. "Yes, I suppose so. But it's very fatiguingmakingfriends, don't you think so? And I tremble at the voyage."
"How delightful it would be," remarked Mrs. Van Buren, "if we were going by the same steamer, Sir George!"
Heriot laughed.
"It would be very delightful to me to make the voyage in your company. But I might bore you frightfully; a week at sea must be a severe test. I should be afraid of being found out."
"We are promised other passengers," observed Miss Pierways, looking down with a faint smile. Her archness was a shade stiff, but her neck was one of her chief attractions.
"Why don't you go, George?" said Lady Heriot cheerfully. "You'd much better go by Mrs. Van Buren's boat than any other; and you've been talking of making a trip to America 'next year' ever since I've known you!"
This amiable fiction was succeeded by fresh protestations from Mrs. Van Buren that no arrangement could be more charming, and Heriot, half against his will, half with pleasure, found himself agreeing to telegraph in the morning to inquire if he could obtain a berth.
He hardly knew whether he was sorry or glad when he had done so. That the step would result in an engagement might be predicted with a tolerable degree of certainty, and he would have preferred to arrive at an understanding with himself under conditions which savoured less of coercion.
Since a state-room proved to be vacant, however, he could do no less now than engage it; and everybody appeared so much pleased, and Miss Pierways was so very gracious, that the misgivings that disturbed him looked momentarily more unreasonable than ever.
The night before he sailed, in their customary chat over whisky and cigars, Sir Francis said to him:
"'Ask, and it shall be given unto you'!"
"I'm inclined to think you're right," said his brother. "I suppose it will end in it.... She's a trifle like a well-bred machine—doesn't it strike you so?—warranted never to get out of order!" The other's look was significant, and Heriot added, "Very desirable in a wife, of course! Only somehow——"
"'Only somehow' you're eccentric, George—you always were!"
"It's not my reputation," said Heriot drily; "I believe that I'm considered particularly practical."
"Reputations," retorted the Baronet, attempting an epigram, as he sometimes did in the course of his second whisky-and-potash, and failing signally in the endeavour, "are like tombstones—generally false." He realised the reality of tombstones, and became controversial. "I'veknown you from a boy, and I say you were always eccentric. It was nothing but your eccentricity that you had to thank before. Here's a nice girl, a girl who will certainly have a good settlement, a girl who's undeniably handsome, ready to say 'yes' at the asking, and you grumble—I'm hanged if you don't grumble!—because you see she is to be depended on. What the devil do you want?"
"I want to be fond of her," answered Heriot. "I admit all you've said of her; I want to like her more."
"So you ought to; but what does it matter if you don't? All women are alike to the men who've married them after a year or two. She'll make an admirable mother, and that's the main thing, I suppose?"
Was it?
Heriot recalled the criticism during his first day on board. Neither of the ladies was visible until Queenstown was reached, and he paced the deck, pursuing his reflections by the aid of tobacco. She would "make an admirable mother, and that was the main thing"! Of the second half of the opinion he was not so sure. To marry a woman simply because one believed she would shine in a maternal capacity was somewhat too altruistic, he thought. However, he was fully aware that Miss Pierways had other recommendations.
She appeared with her mother at the head of the companion-way while he was wishing that he hadn't come, and he found their chairs for them, and arranged their rugs, and subsequently gave their letters to the steward to be posted.
After leaving Queenstown, Mrs. Van Buren's sufferings increased, and the girl, who, saving for a brief interval, was well and cheerful, was practically in his charge. It was Heriot who accompanied her from the saloon after breakfast, and strolled up and down with her till she was tired. When the chair and the rug—the salient features of a voyage are the woman, the chair, and the rug—were satisfactorily arranged, it was he who sat beside her, talking. Flying visits she made below, while her mother kept her cabin; but for the most part she was on deck—or in the saloon, or in the reading-room—and for the most part Heriot was the person to whom she looked for conversation. If he had been a decade or two younger, he would probably have proposed to her long before they sighted Sandy Hook, and it surprised him that he did not succumb to the situation as it was. A woman is nowhere so dangerous, and nowhere is a man so susceptible, as at sea. The interminable days demand flirtation, if one is not to perish of boredom. Moonlight and water are notoriously potent, even when viewed for only half an hour; and at sea, the man and the girl look at the moonlight on the water together regularly every evening. And it is very becoming to the girl. Miss Pierways' face was always a disappointment to Heriot at breakfast. The remembrance of its factitious softness the previous night made its hardness in the sunshine look harder. He wondered if it was the remembrance of its hardness at breakfast that kept him from proposing to her when they loitered in the moonlight. He was certainly doing his best to fall in love with her, and everything conspired to assist him; but the days went on, and the momentous question remained unuttered.
"We shall soon be there," she said one evening as they strolled about the deck after dinner. "I'm beginning to be keen. Have you noticed how everybody is saying, 'New York' now? At first no one alluded to it—we mightn't have been due for a year—and since yesterday nobody's talking of anything else!"
"Nearly everyone I've spoken to seems to have made the trip half a dozen times," said Heriot. "I feel dreadfully untravelled in the smoking-room. When are you going to Niagara? Niagara is one of the things I'm determined not to miss."
"I was talking to some girls who have lived in New York all their lives—when they weren't in Europe—and they haven't been there yet. They told me they had been to the panorama in Westminster!"
"I have met a Londoner who had never been to the Temple."
"No? How perfectly appalling!" she exclaimed, none the less fervently because she hadn't been to it herself. "Oh yes, I know I shall adore Niagara! I want to see a great deal of America while I'm there."
"I wishIhad time to see more; I should like to go to California."
"I wouldn't see California for any consideration upon earth!" she declared. "California, to me, is Bret Harte—I should be so afraid of being disillusioned. When we went to Ireland once, do you know, Sir George, it was a most painful shock to me! My ideas of Ireland were founded on Dion Boucicault's plays—I expected to see all the peasants in fascinating costumes, with their hair down their backs, just as one sees them on the stage. The reality was terrible. I shudder when I recall the disappointment."
"I sympathise."
"Of course you're laughing at me! I shall have my revenge, if you don't like New York. But, I don't know—I may feel guilty. You mustn't blame us if you don't like New York, Sir George. Fortunately you won't have time to be very bored, though; will you?"
"'Fortunately'?"
"Fortunately if it doesn't amuse you, I mean. When does the—how do you say it? When does your holiday end?"
"I must be back in London on the twenty-fourth of next month; I'm almost American myself. I shall have such a fleeting glimpse of the country, that I must really think of writing a book about it."
"You have something better to do than write vapid books. To me your profession seems the most fascinating one there is. If I were a man, I'd rather be called to the Bar than anything. You'd be astonished if you knew how many biographies of eminent lawyers I've read—they enthralled me as a child. I don't know any career that suggests such power to me as the Bar. Don't smile: sometimes, when we're talking and I remember the tremendous influence you wield, I tremble."
She lifted her eyes to him, deprecating her enthusiasm, which was too palpably a pose, and again Heriot was conscious that the opportunity was with him, if he could but grasp it. They had paused by the taffrail, and he stood looking at her, trying to speak the words that would translate their relations to a definite footing. He no longer had any doubt as to her answer; he could foresee her reply—at least the manner of her reply—with disturbing clearness. He knew that she would hesitate an instant, and droop her head, and ultimately murmur correct phrases that would exhilarate him not at all. In imagination he already heard her tones, as she promised to be his wife. He supposed, as they were screened from observation, that he might take her hand. How passionless, how mechanical and flat it would all be! He replied with a commonplace, and after a few moments they continued their stroll. When he turned in, however, he reproached himself more forcibly than he had done yet, and his vacillation was by no means at an end. He was at war, not with his judgment, but with his instinct, and it was the perception of this fact that always increased his perturbation.
They landed the following day, and, after being introduced to Mr. Van Buren in the custom-house, Heriot drove to an hotel. The hotel he found excellent; New York he found wonderful, but a city different from what he had expected. He had vaguely pictured New York as a Paris where everybody talked English. This was before the introduction of the automobile had changed the face of Paris, and the face of the Parisian—before it incidentally reduced the number of half-fed horses barbarously used in that city, which is the negro's paradise, and the "horse's hell"—and the Boulevard was even more unlike Broadway then than now. Broadway, broad in name only till it spread into the brightness of Union Square, suggested London more than Paris—London in an unprecedented burst of energy. The tireless vigour of the throng, the ubiquitous rush of the Elevated Railway confused him. Though he paid homage to the cuisine of America, which proved as much as much superior to that of England as the worst transatlantic train was to our best of that period, he told himself that he was disappointed. The truth was that, not wishing to take the Van Burens' invitations too literally, and having no other acquaintances here, he was dull.
American hospitality, however, is the most charming in the world, and he spent several very agreeable hours inside the big brownstone house. Nothing could have exceeded the geniality of Van Buren's manner, nor was this due solely to the position of his visitor and a hope of their becoming connected. The average American business man will show more kindness to a stranger, who intrudes into his office, than most Englishmen display to one who comes to them with a letter of introduction from a friend, and Van Buren's welcome was as sincere as it was attractive.
Heriot stayed in New York a week, and then fulfilled his desire to visit Niagara. On his return he called in Fifth Avenue again. He was already beginning to refer to his homeward voyage, and he was still undetermined whether he would propose to Miss Pierways or not. The days slipped by without his arriving at a conclusion; and then one morning he told himself he had gone too far to retreat now—that the step, which was doubtless the most judicious he could take, should be made without delay.
He called at the house the same afternoon—for on the next day but one theEtruriasailed—and he found the ladies at home. He sat down, wondering if he would be left alone with Miss Pierways and take his departure engaged to her. But for half an hour there seemed no likelihood of a tête-à-tête. Presently there were more callers and they were shown into another room. Mrs. Van Buren begged him to excuse her. He rose to leave, but was pressed to remain.
"I want to talk to you when they've gone," she said; "I haven't half exhausted my list of messages to London."
Heriot resumed his seat, and Miss Pierways smiled.
"Poor mamma wishes she were going herself, if she told the truth! Now that we're here, it is I who like New York, not she."
"We're creatures of custom," he said; "your mother has lived in London too long to accustom herself to America very easily... Of course you'll be over next season?"
"Oh yes. Shall you ever come to America again, Sir George?"
"I—I hardly know," he answered. "I certainly hope to."
"Oh, then, you will! You're your own master."
"Is anybody his own master?"
"To the extent of travelling to America, many people, I should think!"
He remembered with sudden gratification that he had never said a word to her that might not have been spoken before a crowd of listeners. What was there to prevent him withholding the proposal if he liked!
"I've no doubt I shall come," he said abstractedly.
She looked slightly downcast. It was not the reply that she had hoped to hear.
"I shall always owe a debt of gratitude to you and to Mr. and Mrs. Van Buren for making my visit so pleasant to me," he found himself saying next. "My trip has been a delightful experience."
She murmured a conventional response, but chagrin began to creep about her heart.
Heriot diverged into allusions which advanced the position not at all. They spoke of New York, of England, of the voyage—she perfunctorily, and he with ever-increasing relief. And now he felt that he had been on the verge of the precipice for the last time. He had escaped—and by the intensity of his gratitude he realised how ill-judged had been his action in playing around it.
When Mrs. Van Buren reappeared, followed by her husband, her daughter's face told her that the climax had not been reached; and bold in thanksgiving, Heriot excused himself when he was asked to dine with them that evening. Had he been offered the alternative of the next evening, he could not without rudeness have found a pretext for refusing; but on the morrow, as luck would have it, the Van Burens were dining out.
The footman opened the big door, and Heriot descended the steps with a sensation that was foreign to him, and not wholly agreeable. He knew that he did not want to marry Miss Pierways, and that he had behaved like a fool in trying to acquire the desire, but he was a little ashamed of himself. His conduct had not been irreproachable; and he was conscious that when the steamer sailed and the chapter was closed for good and all, he would be glad to have done with it. He had blundered badly. Nevertheless he would have blundered worse, and been a still greater fool, if the affair had terminated in an engagement. Of course his brother would say distasteful things when they met, and Lady Heriot would convey her extreme disapproval of him without saying anything. That he must put up with! Of two evils, he had at any rate chosen the lesser.
He repeated the assurance with still more conviction on Saturday morning during the quarter of an hour in which the cab rattled him to the boat. The experience had been a lesson to him, and he was resolved that henceforward he would dismiss the idea of marriage from his mind. He saw his portmanteau deposited in his cabin, and he returned to the deck as the steamer began to move. The decks were in the confusion that obtains at first. Passengers still hung at the taffrail, taking a farewell gaze at friends on the landing-stage. The chairs were huddled in a heap, and stewards bustled among stacks of luggage, importuned at every second step with instructions and inquiries.
The deep pulsations sounded more regular; the long line of sheds receded; and the figures of the friends were as little dark toys, waving specks of white. Even the most constant among the departing began to turn away now. The hastening stewards were importuned more frequently than before. Everybody was in a hurry, and all the women in the crowd that flocked below seemed to be uttering the words "baggage" and "state-room" at the same time.
A few men were temporarily in possession of the deck, striding to and fro behind pipes or cigars. The regulation as to "No smoking abaft this" was not in force yet, or was, at least, disobeyed at present. Heriot sauntered along the length of deck until it began to fill again. The pile of chairs received attention—they were set out in a row under the awning. The deck took a dryness and a whiteness, and a few passengers sat down, and questioned inwardly if they would find one another companionable. He bent his steps to the smoking-room. But it was empty and uninviting thus early, and he forsook it after a few minutes. As the door slammed behind him, he came face to face with the woman who had been his wife.
She approached—their gaze met—he had bowed, and passed her. Perhaps it had lasted a second, the mental convulsion in which he looked in her eyes; he did not know. He found a seat and sank into it, staring at the sky and sea, acutely conscious of nothing but her nearness. He could not tell whether it was despair or rejoicing that beat in him; he knew nothing but that the world had swayed, that life was in an instant palpitating and vivid—that he had seen her!
Then he knew that, in the intensity of emotion that shook him body and brain, there was a thrill of joy, inexplicable but insistent. But when he rose at last, he dreaded that he might see her again.
He did not see her till the evening—when he drew back at the door of the saloon as she came out. His features were imperturbable now and betrayed nothing, though her own, before her head drooped, were piteous in appeal.
He noted that she looked pale and ill, and that she wore a black dress with crape on it. He wondered whether she had lost her father, or her aunt. Next morning he understood that it was her father, for he saw her sitting beside Mrs. Baines. So Dick Cheriton was dead. He had once been fond of Dick Cheriton.... The stranger in the black frock had once slept in his arms, and borne his name.... The sadness of a lifetime weighed on his soul.
He perceived that she shunned him by every means in her power. But they were bound to meet; and then across her face would flash the same look that he had seen at the foot of the companion-way; its supplication and abasement wrung him. Horrible as the continual meetings grew, in the reading-room, on deck, or below, their lines crossed a dozen times between breakfast and eleven o'clock at night. It became as torturous to Heriot as to her. He felt as if he had struck her, as he saw her whiten and shrink as he passed her by. Soon he hated himself for being here to cause her this intolerable pain.
It was on the evening of the third day that her endurance broke down and she made her petition. With a pang he recognised the voice of her messenger before he turned.
"Mrs. Baines!"
"You're surprised I should address you, Mr. Heriot," she said. "I shouldn't have, butshewants me to beg you to speak to her, if it's only for five minutes. She implores you humbly to let her speak to you. She made me ask you; I couldn't say 'no.'"
His pulses throbbed madly, and momentarily he couldn't reply.
"What purpose would it serve?" he said in tones he struggled to make firm.
"She can't bear it, Mr. Heriot—SirHeriot, I should say; I was forgetting, I'm sure I beg your pardon! She 'implores you humbly to let her speak to you'; I was to use those words. Won't you consent? She is ill, she's dying."
"Dying?" whispered Heriot by a physical effort.
She nodded slowly. "The doctor has told her. She won't be here long, poor girl. But whether she's to be pitied for it or not, it's hard to say; I don't think she'll be sorry to go.... My brother is gone, Sir Heriot."
His answer was inarticulate.
"We got there just at the end. If we had been too late, she——She has been ailing a long while, but we didn't know it was so serious. When she saw you, it was awful for her. I—— Oh, what am I to tell her? She's waiting now!"
"Where?" said Heriot, hoarsely.
"Will you come with me?"
"Show me," he said; "show me where she is."
He still heard the knell of it—"Dying!" He heard it as the lonely figure in the darkness rose:
"Thank you, I am grateful."
The familiar voice knocked at his heart.
"Mrs. Baines has told me you are ill. I am grieved to learn how ill you are."
"It doesn't matter. It was good of you to come; I thought you would. I—I have prayed to speak to you again!"
"It wasn't much to ask," he said; "I—am human."
He could see that she trembled painfully. He indicated the chair that she had left, and drew one closer for himself. Then for a minute there was silence.
"Do you hate me?" she said.
He shook his head. "Should I have come to tell you so?"
"But you can never forgive me?"
"Why distress yourself? If for a moment I hesitated to come, it was because Iknewit would be distressing for you. Perhaps a refusal would have been kinder after all."
"No, no; I was sure you wouldn't refuse. She doubted; butIwas sure. I said you'd come when you heard about me."
"Is it so serious? What is it? Tell me; I know nothing."
"It's my lungs: they were never very strong, you remember. The doctor told me in Duluth: 'Perhaps a year,' if I am 'very careful.' I'mnotvery careful—it'll soon be all over. Don't look like that! Why should you care?Idon't care—I don't want to live a bit. Only——Do you think, if—if there's anything afterwards, that a woman who's gone wrong like me will be punished?"
"For God's sake," he said, "don't talk so!"
"Butdoyou? It makes one think of these things when one knows one has only a very little time to live.Youcan't forgive me—you said so."
"I do," he said; "I forgive you freely. If I could undo your wretchedness by giving my life for you, I'd give it. You don't know how I loved you—what it meant to me to find you gone! Ah, Mamie, how could you do it?"
The tears stood in her eyes, as she lifted her white face to him.
"I'm ashamed!" she moaned. "What can I say?"
"Why?" said Heriot, at the end of a tense pause. "Why? Did you care for him so much? If he had lived and married you, would you be happy?"
"Happy!" she echoed, with something between a laugh and a sob.
"Tell me. I hoped you'd be happy. That's true. I never wanted you to suffer for what you'd done. I suffered enough for both."
"I don't think I should have married him. I don't know; I don't think so. I knew I'd made a mistake before—oh, in the first month! Ifyouhaven't hated me, I have hated myself."
"And since? You've been withher?"
"Ever since. My poor father wanted me to go home. I wish I had! You know I've lost him—she told you that? He wanted me to go home, but I couldn't—where everybody knew! You understand? And then she moved to Balham, and we never left it till two months ago, when the cable came. We were in time to see him die. My poor father!"
He touched her hand, and her fingers closed on it.
"You oughtn't to be up here at night," he said huskily, looking at her with blinded eyes. "Didn't the man tell you that the night air was bad? And that flimsy wrap—it's no use so! Draw it across your mouth."
"What's the difference?—there, then! Shall you—will you speak to me again after this evening, or is this the last talk we shall have? I had so much to say to you, but I don't seem able to find it now you're here.... If you believe that I ask your pardon on my knees, I suppose, after all, that that's everything. If ever a man deserved a good wife it was you; I realise it more clearly than I did while we were together—though I think I knew it then.... You never married again?"
"No," he answered; "no, I haven't married."
"But you will, perhaps? Why haven't you?"
"I'm too old, and—I cared too much foryou."
The tears were running down her face now; she loosed his hand to wipe them away.
"Don't say I've ruined your life," she pleaded; "don't say that! My own—yes; my own—it served me right! but I've tried so hard to believe thatyouhad got over it. When I read of your election, and then that you were made Solicitor-General, I was glad, ever so glad. I thought, 'He's successful; he has his career.' I've always wanted to believe that your work was enough—that you had forgotten. It wasn't so?"
"No, it wasn't so. I did my best to forget you, but I couldn't."
"Aunt Lydia said you weren't cut up at all when she saw you. You deceived her very well. 'A worthless woman,' you called me; I 'wasn't any loss'! It was quite true; but I knew you couldn't feel like that—not so soon. 'Worthless'! I've heard it every day since she told me.... I meant to do my duty when I married you, George; if I could have foreseen——" She broke off, coughing. "If I could have foreseen what the end would be, I'd have killed myself rather than become your wife. I was always grateful to you; you were always good to me—and I only brought you shame."
"Not 'only,'" he said; "you gave me happiness first, Mamie—the greatest happiness I've known. I loved you, and you came to me. You never understood how much I did love you—I think that was the trouble."
"'There's a word that says it all: I worship you'! do you remember saying that? You said it in the train when you first proposed to me. I refused you then—why did I ever give way!... How different everything would be now! You 'worshipped' me, and I——"
Her voice trailed off, and once more only the pounding of the engine broke the stillness on the deck. The ocean swelled darkly under a starless sky, and he sat beside her staring into space. In the steerage someone played "Robin Adair" on a fiddle. A drizzle began to fall, to blow in upon them. Heriot became conscious of it with a start.
"You must go below," he said; "it's raining."
She rose obediently, shivering a little, and drawing the white scarf more closely about her neck.
"Good-night," she said, standing there with wide eyes.
He put out his hand, and her clasp ran through his blood again.
"Good-night," he repeated gently. "Sleep well."
Was it real? Was he awake? He looked after her as she turned away—looked long after she had disappeared. The fiddle in the steerage was still scraping "Robin Adair"; the black stretch of deck was desolate. A violent impulse seized him to overtake her, to snatch her back, to hold her in his arms for once, with words and caresses of consolation. "Dying"! He wondered if Davos, Algiers, the Cape, anything and everything procurable by money, could prolong her life. Then he remembered that she did not wish to live. But that was horrible! She should consult a specialist in town, and follow his advice; he would make her promise it. With the gradual defervescence of his mood, he wondered if she was properly provided for, and he resolved to question Mrs. Baines on the point. He would elicit the information the following day, and something could be arranged, if necessary—if not with Mamie's knowledge, then without it.
The morning was bright, and Mamie was in her chair when he came up from the saloon after breakfast. As he approached, she watched him expectantly, and it was impossible to pass without a greeting. It was impossible, when the greeting had been exchanged, not to remain with her for a few minutes.
"How are you feeling?" he asked; "any better?"
"I never feel very bad; I'm just the same to-day as yesterday, thank you." The "thank you" was something more than a formula, and he felt it. It hurt him to hear the gratitude in her tone, natural as it might be.
"I want you to go to a good physician when you arrive," he said, "say, to Drummond; and to do just as he tells you. Youmustdo that; it is a duty you owe to yourself."
She shrugged her shoulders. "What for? That I may last two years, perhaps, instead of one? It is kind of you to care, but I'm quite satisfied as things are. Don't bother about me."
"You will have to go!" he insisted. "Before we land I shall speak to your aunt about it."
He had paused by her seat with the intention of resuming his saunter as soon as civility permitted, but her presence was subversive of the intention. He sat down beside her as he had done the previous evening. But now it was inevitable that they should speak of other subjects than infidelity and death. The sky was blue, and the white deck glistened in the sunshine. The sea before them tumbled cheerfully, and to right and left were groups of passengers laughing, flirting, doing fancy-work, or reading novels.
"You haven't told me how it was you came to the States?" she said presently; "were you in New York all the time?"
Heriot did not answer, and she waited with surprise.
"I'll tell you, if you wish," he said hastily. "I came out half meaning to marry."
"Oh!" she said, as if he had struck her.
"I thought I might be happier married. The lady and her mother were going to New York, and I travelled with them. I—I was mistaken in myself."
They were not looking at each other any longer, and her voice trembled a little as she replied:
"You weren't fond enough of her?"
"No," he said. "I shall never marry again; I told you so last night."
After a long pause, she said:
"Was she pretty?... Prettier thanIused to be?"
"She was handsome, I think. Not like you at all. Why talk about it?... I'm glad I came, though, or I shouldn't have seen you. I shall always be glad to have seen you again. Remember that, after we part. For me, at least, it will never be so bitter since we've met and I've heard you say you're sorry."
"God bless you," she murmured almost inaudibly.
He left her after half an hour, but drifted towards her again in the afternoon. Insensibly they lost by degrees much of their constraint in talking together. She told him of her father's illness, of her own life in Balham; Heriot gave her some details of his appointment, explaining that it was the duty of an Attorney-General and Solicitor-General to reply to questions of law in the House, to advise the Government, and conduct its cases, and the rest of it. By Wednesday night it was difficult to him to realise that their first interview had occurred only forty-eight hours ago. It had become his habit on deck to turn his steps towards her, to sip tea by her side in the saloon, to saunter with her after dinner in the starlight. Even at last he felt no embarrassment as he moved towards her; even at last she came to smile up at him as he drew near. Moments there could not fail to be when such a state of things seemed marvellous and unnatural—when conversation ceased, and they paused oppressed and tongue-tied by a consciousness of the anomaly of their relations. Nevertheless such moments were but hitches in an intercourse which grew daily more indispensable to them both.
How indispensable it had become to herself the woman perceived as the end of the voyage approached; and now she would have asked no better than for them to sail on until she died. When she undressed at night, she sighed, "Another day over"; when she woke in the morning, eagerness quickened her pulses. On Saturday they would arrive; and when Friday dawned, the reunion held less of strangeness than the reflection that she and Heriot would separate again directly. To think that, as a matter of course, they would say good-bye to each other, and resume their opposite sides of an impassable gulf, looked more unnatural to her than the renewed familiarity.
Their pauses were longer than usual on Friday evening. Both were remembering that it was the last. Heriot had ascertained that Cheriton had been able to leave her but little; and the notion of providing her with the means to winter in some favourable climate was hot in his mind.
"It is understood," he said abruptly, "that you go to Drummond and do exactly as he orders? You'll not be so mad as to refuse at the last moment?"
"All right!" she answered apathetically, "I'll go. Shall I—will you care to hear what he says?"
"Your aunt has promised to write to me. By the way, there's something I want to say to-night. If what he advises is expensive, you must let me make it possible for you. I claim that as my right. I intended arranging it with Mrs. Baines, but she tells me you—you'd be bound to know where the money came from. He'll probably tell you to live abroad."
"Thank you," she said after a slight start, "I could not take your money. It is very good of you, but I would rather you didn't speak of it. If you talked forever, I wouldn't consent."
"Mamie——"
"The very offer turns me cold. Please don't!"
"You're cruel," he said. "You're refusing to let me prolong your life. Have I deserved that from you?"
"Oh!" she cried, in a tortured voice, "for God's sake, don't press me! Leave me something—I won't say 'self-respect,' but a vestige, a grain of proper pride. Think what my feelings would be, living on money from you—it wouldn't prolong my life, George; it would kill me sooner. You've been generous and merciful to me; be merciful to me still and talk of something else."
"You are asking me to stand by and see you die.Ihave feelings, too, Mamie. I can't do it!"
"I'm dying," she said; "if it happens a little sooner, or a little later, does it matter very much? If you want to be very kind to me, to—to brighten the time that remains as much as you can, tell me that if I send to you when—when it's a question of days, you'll come to the place and see me again. I'd bless you for that! I've been afraid to ask you till now; but it would mean more to me than anything else you could do. Would you, if I sent?"
"Why," said Heriot labouredly, after another pause, "why would it mean so much?"
They were leaning over the taffrail; and suddenly her head was bent, and she broke into convulsive sobs that tore his breast.
"Mamie!" he exclaimed. "Mamie, tell me!" He glanced round and laid a trembling touch on her hands. "Tell me, dear!" he repeated hoarsely. "Do you love me, then?"
Her figure was shaken by the shuddering sobs. His touch tightened to a clasp; he drew the hands down from the distorted face, drew the shaken figure closer, till his own met it—till her bosom was heaving against his heart.
"Do you love me, Mamie?"
"Yes!" she gasped. And then for an instant only their eyes spoke, and in the intensity of their eyes each gave to the other body and soul.
"Yes, I love you," she panted; "it's my punishment, I suppose, to love you too late. I shall never see you after to-morrow, till I am dying—if then—but I love you. Remember it! It's no good to you, you won't care, but remember it, because it's my punishment. You can say, 'When it was too late, she knew! She died detesting herself, shrinking at her own body, her own loathsome body that she gave to another man!' Oh!"—she beat her hands hysterically against his chest—"I hate him, I hate him! God forgive me, he's in his grave, but I hate him when I think what's been. And it wasn't his fault; it was mine, mine—my own degraded, beastly self. Curse me, throw me from you! I'm not fit to be standing here; I'm lower than the lowest woman in the streets!"
The violence of her emotion maddened him. He knew thathelovedher;the truth was stripped of the disguise in which he had sought for years to wrap it—he knew that he had never ceased to love her; and a temptation to make her his wife again, to cherish and possess her so long as life should linger in her veins, flooded his reason. Their gaze grew wider, deeper still; he could feel her quivering from head to foot. Another moment, and he would have offered his honour to her keeping afresh. Some men left the smoking-room; there was the sharp interruption of laughter—the slam of the door. They both regained some semblance of self-possession as they moved apart.
"I must go down," she said. And he did not beg her to remain.
It was their real farewell, for on the morrow they could merely exchange a few words amid the bustle of arrival. Liverpool was reached early in the morning, and when he saw her, she wore a hat and veil and was already prepared to go ashore. In the glare of the sunshine the veil could not conceal that her eyes were red with weeping, however, and he divined that she had passed a sleepless night. To Mrs. Baines he privately repeated his injunctions with regard to the physician, for he was determined to have his way; and the widow assured him that she would write to Morson Drummond for an appointment without loss of time. The delays and shouts came to an end while he was speaking to her; and the gangway was lowered, and Mamie moved forward to her side. He saw them again in the custom-house, but for a minute only, and from a distance. Evidently they got through without trouble, for when he looked across again, they had gone.
As he saw that they had gone, a sensation of blankness fell upon Heriot's mood, where he stood waiting among the scattered luggage. His life felt newly empty and the day all at once seemed cold and dark.