O Yanna, Adrianna,They buried me awayIn the blue fathoms of the deep,Beyond the outer bay.But in the Yule, O Yanna,Up from the round dim seaAnd reeling dungeons of the fogI am come back to thee!—Bliss Carman.
O Yanna, Adrianna,They buried me awayIn the blue fathoms of the deep,Beyond the outer bay.But in the Yule, O Yanna,Up from the round dim seaAnd reeling dungeons of the fogI am come back to thee!
O Yanna, Adrianna,They buried me awayIn the blue fathoms of the deep,Beyond the outer bay.But in the Yule, O Yanna,Up from the round dim seaAnd reeling dungeons of the fogI am come back to thee!
O Yanna, Adrianna,They buried me awayIn the blue fathoms of the deep,Beyond the outer bay.
But in the Yule, O Yanna,Up from the round dim seaAnd reeling dungeons of the fogI am come back to thee!
—Bliss Carman.
Wentworth stood at the open window of the library watching Michael.
Michael was lying on a deck chair on the terrace playing with a puppy. His face was losing a certain grey drawn look which it had worn since he had left prison. He looked more like himself since his hair had time to grow. Wentworth felt that he ought to be reassured about him, but a vague anxiety harassed him.
Suddenly, without a moment's warning, the puppy fell asleep. Michael made a movement to reach it, but it was just beyond his grasp.
In an instant Wentworth was beside him, lifting the sleeping mass of sleek fat on to Michael's knee. Michael's long hands made a little crib for it.
"He will sleep now for a bit," he said contentedly.
"Doyousleep better?" said Wentworth. He hadnot forgotten those first nights at Venice when Michael's feeble step had dragged itself to and fro in the next room half the night.
"I sleep like a top. I'm asleep half the time."
"You are much better the last few days."
"Oh! I'm all right."
"All Hampshire has been to call. I knew you would be bored, so I did not let them disturb you."
"Thanks."
"Is there anyone you would like to see?"
"No one that I know of."
"No one atall?"
Michael made a mental effort which did not escape Wentworth.
"I should like very much to see—presently—if it could be done——"
"Yes," said Wentworth eagerly. "Ofcourseit can be done, my dear boy. You would like to see?"
"Doctor Filippi," said Michael, looking deprecatingly at Wentworth. "He was so good to me. And I am accustomed to seeing him. I miss him all the time. I wonder whether you would let him come and stay here for his holiday. He generally takes it in June. And—let me see—it's May now, isn't it?"
Wentworth's heart swelled with jealousy and disappointment. The jealousy was of the doctor, the disappointment was about Fay. The larger of the two emotions was jealousy.
"You have sent Doctor Filippi a very handsome present," he said coldly. "I chose it for you, a silver salver. I went up to London on purpose at your wish a week ago."
"Y-yes."
"And I don't think he would care to come here. No doubt he has his own friends. You must remember a man like that is poor. It would be putting him to expense."
Michael looked down at the sleeping puppy. He did not answer.
Wentworth was beginning to fear that his brother had an ungrateful, callous nature. Was Michael so self-absorbed—egotism revolted Wentworth—that he wouldneverask to see Wentworth's future wife, the woman who had shown such unceasing, such tender interest in Michael himself.
"I hoped there was someone else, someone very dear to me, and a devoted friend of yours, whom you might like to see again."
Wentworth spoke with deliberation.
"I could send him a cheque. He need not be at any expense," said Michael in a low voice. His exhausted mind, slower to move than ever, had not left the subject of Doctor Filippi. His brother's last remark had not penetrated to it.
Wentworth became scarlet. He made an impatient movement. Then part of the sense of his brother's last words tardily reached Michael's blurred faculties.
"An old friend of mine," he said, vaguely flurried. "What old friend?"
"Fay," said Wentworth, biting his lip. "Have you forgotten Fayentirely? How she tried to save you, how she grieved for you? Her great goodness to you? And what she is tome!"
"No," said Michael. "No. I don't forget. Hergoodness to me. How she tried to save me. Just so. Just so. I don't forget."
"Won't you see her? She and Magdalen are driving over here this morning. You need not see Magdalen unless you like."
"I should like. She is going to be married, too, isn't she? I feel as if I had heard someone say so."
"Yes, to Lossiemouth. You remember him as Everard Constable, a touchy, ill-conditioned, cantankerous brute if ever there was one, who does not care a straw for anyone but himself. I can't think what she sees in him. But an Earl's an Earl. I always forget that. I have lived so much apart from the world and its sordid motives and love of wealth and rank that it is always a shock and a surprise when I come in contact with its way of looking at things. I never liked Magdalen. I always considered her superficial. But I never thought her mercenary—till now. But Fay——"
"I will see her, too," said Michael. "Yes, of course. I somehow thought of Fay as—as—but my mind gets so confused—as at a great distance, quite removed all this time. Hundreds and hundreds of miles away in England. Left Italy for good."
"My dear boy, she is living at Priesthope, four miles off. I've told you so over and over again. I go and see her every day."
"Yes, at Priesthope, of course. Four miles. I know the way. You can go by Wind Farm, or Pilgrim Road. You did tell me. More cheerful as time passes on."
Wentworth looked with perplexity at Michael's thin profile. The doctor had most solemnly assured him that his mind was only muffled and deadened by hisphysical weakness. But it sometimes seemed to Wentworth as if his brother's brain were softening.
He felt a sudden return of the blind despairing rage which was wont to grip him after his visits to Michael in prison. This inert, cold-blooded shadow; was this all that was left of his brother?
A great tenderness welled up in his heart, the old, old protective tenderness of many years. He put his strong brown hand on his brother's emaciated, once beautiful hand, now disfigured by coarse labour, and scarred and discoloured at the wrist.
"Get well, Michael," he said huskily.
Michael's hand trembled a little, seemed to shrink involuntarily.
Then a servant appeared suddenly, coming towards them across the grass, and Wentworth took back his hand instantly.
"The Duchess of Colle Alto and Miss Bellairs are in the library."
"Are you quite sure that youreallywish to see them—that it will not tire you?" said Wentworth.
"Quite sure."
"I will bring them out."
"No. Send one at a time. Fay first."
Michael lay back and closed his eyes.
On this May morning as Fay and Magdalen drove together to Barford, Magdalen looked at her sister's radiant face, not with astonishment, she had got over that, but with something more like fear.
The happiness of some natures terrifies those who love them by its appearance of brittleness. ToMagdalen Fay's present joy seemed like a bit of Venetian glass on the extreme edge of a cabinet at a child's elbow.
It is difficult for those who have imagination to understand theinsouciancewhich looks so like heartlessness of the unimaginative. The inevitable meeting with Michael seemed to cast no shadow on Fay's spirits; Wentworth's ignorance of certain sinister facts did not seem to disturb her growing love for him.
Their way lay through a pine wood under the shoulder of the down. The whortleberry with its tiny foliage made a miniature forest of pale golden green at the feet of the dark serried trunks of the pines.
Small yellow butterflies hovered amid the topmost branches of this underfoot forest.
Fay leaned out of the pony carriage and picked from the high bank a spray of whortleberry with a butterfly poised on it.
"I thought for one minute I might find a tiny, tiny butterfly nest with eggs in it," she said. "I do wish butterflies had nests like birds, Magdalen, don't you? But this is a new butterfly, not ready to fly. I shall hurt it unless I'm careful."
She made her sister stop the pony, and knelt down amid the shimmering whortleberry, and tenderly placed the sprig with the butterfly still clinging to it in a little pool of sunshine. But as she did it the butterfly walked from its twig on to her white hand and rested on it, opening and shutting its wings.
It was a pretty sight to watch Fay coax it to a leaf. But Magdalen's heart ached for her sister as she knelt in the sunshine. Words rose to her lips for the twentieth time, but she choked them down again. Whatuse, what use to warn those who cannot be warned, to appeal to deaf ears, to point out to holden eyes the things that belong to their peace?
The vision is the claim, but it must be our own eyes that see it. We may not look at our spiritual life through another man's eyes.
As Magdalen waited her eyes wandered to the blue haze between the tree trunks which was the sea, and marked a white band like a ribbon between the blue and the fields. That was a piece of land newly reclaimed from the sea. When a tract of land is thus captured, the first year that it is laid open to the ministry of sun and air and rain it bears an overflowing crop of white clover. The clover seed has lain dormant, perhaps a thousand years under the wash of the wave. The first spring tide after the sea is withdrawn it wakes and rushes up. It was so now in that little walled-in tract by the shore, where she had walked but yesterday. Surely it was to be so in Fay's heart, now that the bitter tides of remorse and selfishness were ceasing to submerge it, now that at last joy and tenderness were reaching it. Surely, love itself, the seeds of which lie dormant in every heart, love like a marvellous tide of white clover, was finding its chance at last, and would presently inundate her heart.
Then, unharassed, undelayed by vain words and futile appeals from without—all would go well.
At the last moment when the meeting with Michael was really imminent Fay'sinsouciancebegan, as Magdalen feared it might, to show signs of collapse. It deserted her entirely as they drove up to Barford.
"Come out with me," she whispered in sudden panic, plucking at her sister's gown, when Wentworth asked her to go and speak to Michael for a few minutes in the garden. But Magdalen had drawn back gravely and resolutely, and had engaged Wentworth's attention, and Fay had been obliged to go alone across the lawn, in the direction of the deck chair.
Her step, lagging and irresolute, was hardly audible on the grass, but Michael heard it, recognised it. We never forget the footfall, however light, that has trodden on our heart.
The footfall stopped and he opened his eyes.
Fay was standing before him.
And so they met again at last, those two who had been lovers once. She looked long at the man she had broken. He was worn down to the last verge of exhaustion, barely more than a shadow in the suave sunshine. She would hardly have recognised him if it had not been for the tranquil steady eyes, and the grave smile. They were all that was left of him, of the Michael she had known. The rest was unfamiliar, repellant. And his hands! His hands were dreadful. Oh! if only she had known he was going to look like that she would never have come. Never, never! Fay experienced the same unspeakable horror and repugnance as if, walking in long, daisy-starred grass, she had suddenly stumbled against and nearly fallen over a dead body.
The colour ebbed out of her face and lips. She stood before him without a word, shrinking, transfixed.
He looked long at her, the woman for whom he had been content to suffer, that he might keep sufferingfrom her. Fay's self torture, her protracted anguish, her coward misery, these were written as it were anew in her pallid face. They had been partially effaced during the heedless happiness of the last few weeks, but the sudden shock of Michael's presence drew in again afresh with a cruel pencil the haggard lines of remorse and despair.
He had not been able to shield her from pain after all.
"Oh, Fay!" he said below his breath. "How you have suffered."
"No one knows what it has been," she said hoarsely, sinking into a chair, trembling too much to stand. "I could not live through it again. I couldn't bear it, and I had to bear it."
"You will never have to bear it again," he said with compassion. "It is over and done with. You are going to be happy now."
"You have suffered too," she said, reddening.
"Not like you. It has been worst for you. I never guessed that you had felt my imprisonment so much as I see now by your face you have."
"Not have felt it! Not have suffered from it!" said Fay, amazed. "Michael, how could I help grieving day and night over it?"
The question almost rose to his lips, "Why then did you not release me?" But the words were not spoken. There is one pain which we need not bear, but which some of us never rest till we have drawn it upon ourselves, that of extorting from the one we love vain excuses, unconscious lies, feeble, inadequate explanations that explain nothing. Let be. The excuses, the lies,these shadows of the mind will vanish the moment Love lights his lamp. Till then their ghost-like presence, their semblance of reality but show that the chamber of the Beloved is dark.
Michael was silent. Though his body and mind were half dead, his spirit was alive and clear, moving swiftly where the spent mind could not follow.
"How could I help breaking my heart over the thought of you in prison?" said Fay again, wounded to the quick.
She stared at him, indignant tears smarting in her eyes. Another long look passed between them, on her side bewildered, pained, aghast at being so misunderstood, on his penetrating, melancholy, full of compassionate insight, that look which seems to herald the parting between two unequal natures, but which is in reality a perception that they have never met.
"I knew you would rejoice when I was set free," he said tranquilly, smiling at her. "Ah! Here are Magdalen and Wentworth. How radiant she looks!"
When Magdalen and Fay had departed, and Wentworth had seen them to the carriage, he came back and sat down by Michael.
"Not over-tired?" he said, smiling self-consciously, and poking holes in the turf with his stick.
"Not in the least."
"She was looking a little pale to-day." It was obvious that he wished to talk about Fay.
"She is more beautiful than ever," said Michael, willing to give his brother a leg-up.
"Isn't she!" said the affianced lover expansively. "But it isn't her beauty I love most, it is hercharacter.She is so feminine, so receptive, so appreciative of the deeper side of life, so absolutely devoted. Her heart has been awakened for the first time, Michael. She has, I feel sure, never been loved before as I loved her."
"I imagine not."
"I can't believe she ever cared for the Duke. I saw him once, and he gave me the impression of a very cold-blooded individual."
"I don't think he was cold-blooded."
"Evidently not the kind of man capable of drawing the best out of a woman like Fay."
"Perhaps not."
The man who felt himself capable of this feat prodded a daisy and then went on:
"You used to see a good deal of them in Rome before—while you wereattachéthere. Did you gather that it was a happy marriage, a true union?"
"Not very happy."
"I daresay he was selfish and inconsiderate. That is generally the crux in married life. Fay has had an overshadowed life so far, but I shall find my chief happiness in changing all that. It will be my object to guard her from the slightest touch of pain in future. The masculine impulse to shield and protect is very strongly developed in me."
"It is sometimes difficult to guard people," said Michael half to himself.
"I hope some day," Wentworth went on shyly, colouring under his tan, "your turn may come, that you may meet the right woman, and feel as I do now. It will be a revelation to you. I am afraid it may seem exaggerated in a person like myself, who am essentiallya man's man. (This was a favourite illusion of Wentworth's.) But some day you will understand, and you will find as I have done that love is not just slothfully accepting a woman's slavish devotion."
"Indeed!"
"No, Michael, believe me, it is something far greater. It is living not only for self, but as for her sake. To take trouble to win the smile of one we love, to gladly forego one's momentary pleasures, one's convenience, in order to serve her. That is the best reward of life."
Michael's eyes filled with tears. He felt a hundred years older than Wentworth at that moment. A tender pained compassion welled up within him. And with it came a new protective comprehension of the man beside him who had cherished him from his childhood onwards.
He put out his hand and gripped Wentworth's.
"God bless you, Wenty," he said.
And for a moment they who were so far apart seemed very near together.
She sees no tears,Or any toneOf thy deep groanShe hears:Nor does she mindOr think on't nowThat ever thouWast kind.—Herrick.
She sees no tears,Or any toneOf thy deep groanShe hears:Nor does she mindOr think on't nowThat ever thouWast kind.
She sees no tears,Or any toneOf thy deep groanShe hears:Nor does she mindOr think on't nowThat ever thouWast kind.
She sees no tears,Or any toneOf thy deep groanShe hears:Nor does she mindOr think on't nowThat ever thouWast kind.
—Herrick.
It quickly became plain to Magdalen that Fay's peace of mind had been shaken by her interview with Michael. She had vouchsafed no word concerning it on her way home. But in the days that followed she appeared ill at ease, and a vague and increasing unrest seemed to possess her. Magdalen doubted whether she had as yet asked herself what it was that was disturbing her tranquillity. But it was at any rate obvious that she shrank from seeing Michael again, and that she was at times dejected in Wentworth's presence.
Wentworth perceived the change in her, and attributed it to a most natural and pardonable jealousy of Michael to which, while he made the fullest allowance for it, he had no inclination to yield.
Michael had for a moment seemed to take more interest in life after Fay's visit, and although he had quickly relapsed into apathy Wentworth told himself that he was anxious to foster this nascent interest byanother meeting between him and Fay. At the same time he desired to rehearse the part of central figure poised between two great devotions which was to be his agreeablerôlein the future. For Michael would of course live with them after his marriage with Fay. And if there were any ebullitions of jealousy between Fay and Michael—Wentworth dwelt with complacency on the possibility—he felt competent to deal with them with tact and magnanimity, reassuring each in turn as to their equal share in his affections.
Michael at any rate showed no disinclination to meet Fay again, and even evinced something verging on a desire to see Magdalen. And presently Wentworth arranged to drive him over to luncheon at Priesthope. Throughout life he had always liked to settle, even in the most trivial matters, what Michael should do, with whom he should associate. The situation was not new, nor was there any novelty in Michael's pliability.
But when the day came Wentworth arrived without his brother, and evidently out of temper. Magdalen asked if Michael were less well, and was curtly assured that he was steadily improving. The luncheon dragged through somehow as under a cloud. Colonel Bellairs was fortunately absent on a visit to Miss Barnett at Saundersfoot. His absence was the only silver lining to the cloud. Fay hardly spoke. Magdalen was thankful that her prickly Lord Lossiemouth had departed the day before.
After luncheon, when they were sitting on the terrace over their coffee, Bessie left them, and Magdalen was about to do the same, when Wentworth said suddenly:
"I left Michael with the Bishop of Lostford. That is why he is not here now. The Bishop is inducting the new Rector of Wrigley this afternoon, and he sent a wire this morning—he is always doing things at the last moment—he never considers others—to say that he would call at Barford on his way to see Michael. Michael is his godson, and he has always been fond of him. I left them together."
Magdalen and Fay sipped their coffee in silence.
"Michael had been as inert and apathetic as usual," continued Wentworth sullenly, "until the Bishop appeared. The Bishop took him off into the garden, though I said I did not like his going out so soon after dressing—he was only just up—and it was perfectly plain they did not want me. I believe that was why they went out. I was of no account. The Bishop has always been like that, your friend one day, and oblivious of you the next. But he and Michael seemed to have a great deal to say to each other. I watched them from the library walking up and down. Michael can walk quite well when he wants to. Then when the victoria came round—I thought he would find that less fatiguing than the dogcart—I went to tell him that it was time to start, but he only stared vaguely at me, and the Bishop took his arm and said that you must excuse him for this once, as he did not mean to let him go at that moment. So I came away without him."
"There will be many more opportunities of seeing us, and one must clutch what few chances one can of seeing the Bishop," said Magdalen.
"When I went to warn Michael that the carriage was there," continued Wentworth, "he did not see metill I was quite near—there was a bush between—and I could not help hearing him say, 'That was half an hour before I was arrested.'"
There was an uneasy silence.
"It seems," said Wentworth with exceeding bitterness, "that I have not Michael's confidence. The Bishop has it, but I, his only brother. Oh, no. He can talk to the Bishop about his imprisonment, but to me—not a word, not a single word. At first when we were together at Venice I asked him quietly about it once or twice. I asked him why he had never said a word tomeabout it at the time, why he had not confided to me at any rate that he was shielding the Marchesa, but I soon saw that the subject distressed him. He always became confused, and he never would reply. Once, since we were back at Barford, when he seemed clearer, I asked him most earnestly to tell me one thing, whether he actually witnessed the murder of the Marchese by his wife, as she supposed, and what had first put it into his head to take the blame on himself. But it seemed that any allusion to the subject exhausted and worried him. I said to him at last: 'Do you still hate talking of it as much as ever?' And he said 'yes.' I could understand that, and from that day to this I never alluded to it again. But though he won't say a word to me, it seems he can to others."
The miserable jealousy in Wentworth's face touched Magdalen.
"He knew you had strained every nerve to save him," said Wentworth, turning to Fay. "Has he ever shown his gratitude for what you tried to do for him?"
"N-no," stammered Fay.
"His imprisonment has changed his nature, that is what it is. He went in alive, and he has come out dead. He has ceased to care for anything or anyone. He has been killed by inches. He was so affectionate as a boy. I was father and mother to him. He used to trot after me like a little dog. And if anyone had his whole confidence I had. I was everything to him. My one fear of marrying has always been that he might feel pained at seeing another person first with me." (Wentworth had never had this altruistic misgiving, but he stated it with conviction.) "But now he is not the same. I suppose he still has some affection for me. He shows it sometimes by a kind of effort. He seemed to wake up a bit after you came over, Fay. I think he had a sort of glimpse from things I said to him of what love can be, and just for a moment he was more like his old self, and appeared to enter into my feelings. But he soon sank back again. As often as not he seems to shrink from any real conversation. We sometimes sit whole evenings together without speaking. He does not really want me any more, or anyone. He talked at first a little about the Italian doctor, but he never mentions him now. And as for my marriage, as for being distressed by my caring for someone else," resentfully, "he is absolutely indifferent. You would think that Fay and I, the two people of all others who have done most for him, who have grieved most over him, who have shown him most affection, were nothing to him."
There was a ghastly silence.
"I don't blame him," said Wentworth with something nearer passion than he had ever experiencedbefore, in which even his petty jealousy was momentarily extinguished. "At least, I can't look at him and remain angry with him. It breaks my heart to see him like this, so callous, so regardless of all I have suffered on his account. I don't blame him. He is not himself. His brain is weakened by his poor body. No. The person I do blame is that accursed woman who allowed him to suffer for her, who skulked behind him for two endless years, who let him sacrifice his life for hers, who never had the courage to say the word, and take her crime upon herself, and get him out of his living grave."
Fay became cold as death in the May sunshine. What ghost was this which was taking form before her? What voice was this, how could it be Wentworth's voice, which was saying at last aloud with passion what that other accusing voice within had so hoarsely, so persistently whispered from its cell, during the long years? Her brain reeled.
"The Marchesa did repent," said Magdalen.
Wentworth laughed harshly.
"Oh, yes. On her deathbed, in order to save her soul. She wanted to be right with the next world. But how could she go on, year in year out, letting him burn and freeze alternately in that vile cell? She must have known, someone must have told her, what his life was like. How well I remember, Fay, your saying: 'Why does not the real murderer confess? How can he go on letting an innocent man wear out his life in prison, bearing the punishment of his horrible crime?' How little we both knew. I always supposed the assassin was a man, a common criminal of the lowest order.Yet it seems there are women in the world, educated, refined women, who can remorselessly pinch a man's life out of him with their white hands. The Marchesa has murdered two people, first her husband, and then my boy, my foolish, quixotic, generous Michael. May God forgive her! I never will!"
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you.—W. B. Yeats.Je veux aimer, mais je ne veux pas souffrir.—A. de Musset.
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you.
—W. B. Yeats.
Je veux aimer, mais je ne veux pas souffrir.
—A. de Musset.
In the days that followed the Bishop's visit Michael's mind showed signs of reasserting itself. He was as quickly exhausted as ever, and with fatigue came the old apathy and helpless confusion of ideas. But his languid intelligence had intervals of increasing clearness. His face took on at these times a strained expression, as if he dimly saw something with which he felt powerless to cope. We see such a look sometimes, very piteous in its impotence, in the faces of the old, when an echo reaches them of the anguish of the world in which they once lived, which they have well nigh forgotten.
Michael's body, which had so far profited by the inertness of his faculties, resented the change, and gave unmistakable signs of relinquishing the slight degree of strength it had regained.
Wentworth became suddenly frantically anxious once more, and in a moment the wrongs on which he was brooding were forgotten. He decided to go to London the same day under the guise of business, and to consult the great doctor privately about Michael, perhaps arrange to bring him back with him.
"I wish you would drive oftener," he said to Michael before he left. "It's much better for you than walking up and down. Why not, if you feel inclined, as you will be alone all day, drive over to Priesthope this afternoon. I said you would come the first day you could. It's only four miles, just an easy little drive."
An indefinable change passed over Michael's vacant face at the mention of Priesthope. His eyes became fixed. He looked gravely at his brother, as if the latter had solved some difficult problem.
"It's a good idea," he said slowly. "I ought to have gone before, but——"
"The Bishop stopped you most inconsiderately last time."
"Did he? I don't remember being stopped. Oh! yes, yes, I do. But if Ihadgone that day—— But anyhow I will go to-day."
Fay was sitting alone in the morning-room at Priesthope, pretending to read, when Michael was announced.
When he had been conveyed to a chair and had overcome the breathlessness and semi-blindness that any exertion caused him he saw that she looked ill, and as if she had not slept.
"I ought to have come before," he said mechanically, making a great mental effort and putting his hand to his head. "I meant to come, but——" he looked hopelessly at her. He had evidently forgotten what he intended to say.
"The day you were coming with Wentworth the Bishop stopped you," said Fay drearily. Every wordthat Wentworth had said that afternoon was still echoing discordantly in her brain.
"That's it. The Bishop," said Michael with relief. "He told me, we had a long talk"—his mind was clearing rapidly—"how you meant to save me."
"Yes, I meant to do it," said Fay, looking at him with miserable eyes. "But the Marchesa, the same day—it was in the papers."
"I know, I know. The Bishop told me. He said I ought to know that you had been willing to make the sacrifice. I have come to thank you, Fay, and to ask you to forgive me for misjudging you. You see I was not aware you—had thought of it."
"It's for you to forgive me, Michael, not me you. And you don't bear me a grudge, do you? I somehow don't feel as if you did. And—oh, Michael, you never, never will say anything or do anything, will you—youcould, you know—to stop my marrying Wentworth?"
Michael's eyes turned on her almost with scorn.
"When first we met again, that second time in Italy," he said gently, "do you remember it by the tomb in the gardens? There were roses all over it. I never saw such roses. Perhaps there were none like them. Then I had no faintest thought or hope of marrying you, though I had not forgotten you, Fay. I had put it all away, buried it. You were another man's wife. Now that we meet again—the position is the same."
Fay looked at Michael.
The impersonal detached look which she had set herself to extinguish that day amid the roses, which had been in his face when she saw him first as a lad, which she hadtwiceextinguished, was in his eyes again.There was no pain in them now, any more than there had been when they leaned together beside the tomb: only the shadow of something exceeding sharp, endured, accepted, outlived. Michael looked through her, beyond her.
"And yet the position is not quite the same," he said tranquilly, "for then you were married to a man you did not love, and now you are to marry a man you—Oh! Fay, youdocare for Wentworth, don't you?"
"I would not have kepthimin prison for a day," she said, and hid her face in her hands.
If only it might have been Wentworth who had sacrificed himself for her with what desperate rapidity she would have rescued him. How calm her agonised heart would be now. Fay was beginning to learn that it is ill to take a service save from the hand we love. And perhaps, too, in her heart she knew that Wentworth would never have sacrificed himself for her, for Michael possibly, but not for her.
"Wentworth is worth caring for," said Michael. "Not worth caring for in part, a bit here and a bit there, who is? but worth caring foraltogether. I have loved him all my life. I love him more than anyone in the world. You asked me just now not to say anything to stop his marrying you. But that is just what I've come about. I am so afraid of his marriage with you being stopped."
Fay raised her face out of her hands, and stared at him.
"It's the only thing I've ever known him really wish for, almost keen about. He can't care much about things, not as other men care. He has always waitedto see whether things will come to him of themselves, and then if they didn't he thought it was a wise Providence taking them away, showing him the vanity of setting his heart on anything, while all the time it's his own nature really that makes things somehow slip away from him. People slip away from him. I've seen it happen over and over again. He can't take hold like other men. He does not put himself out for any one, you know, and he doesn't realise that other peopledo; he has no idea how men like the Bishop and Grenfell and the Archbishop stand by each other, and hold together through thick and thin. Wentworth has no friends, but he doesn't know it. He has only you and me. The Bishop said we must remember that, and that if—anything happened to shake his—his feeling for either of us, his belief in either of us, it would be cruelly hard on him."
"Why should anything happen," said Fay faintly, "if you don't tell him?"
"I shan't tell him on purpose, you may be sure of that, but since—since the Bishop came over I'm certain he suspects something, I don't know what, and I have to be careful all the time. Fay, I've grown so stupid and muddle-headed since I've been in—inItalythat Ican'tremember what I may say and what I mayn't about that time. My only safety is in absolute silence, and lately that has begun to vex him. And he asks such odd questions, which I don't see the meaning of at first, like traps. He often tells me he never asks any questions, but he does, indirect ones, all the time. I'm getting afraid of being alone with him. Sometimes I think if I stay much longer at Barford I'm so idiotiche'll get it out of me. Has he asked you any leading questions?"
"No. Once he asked if you showed any gratitude for what I had done for you in the past. And I said no. It was the first time I had told him a lie, for it was a lie except in the actual words."
"Aren't you afraid," said Michael gently, "that it may not be the only one, that perhaps there may be some more?"
There was a long pause.
"I think Wentworth will find out some day," he went on. "I'msurehe will. Then, Fay, it might be too late for you and me to save him from a great pain. He might feel that we had both betrayed him."
Fay turned her quivering face towards him.
"Oh, no. I haven't done that. It's you I betrayed, Michael. I'm so thankful it wasyou, and not him."
"I was yours to keep or to throw away. You could do what you liked with your own. But it is not the same for Wentworth. Wentworth belongs—tohimself."
In her heart she knew it. Love had shown even her certain things about the man she loved.
"And I am afraid he might feel it if he found out that you had let me stay—in Italy."
"I'd give anything I have," she said with a sob; "I'd give both my hands, I'd give my being pretty, which I think so much of, and he thinks so much of, I'd give anything if only I had not—done that, if I could only undo that. Sometimes I wake in the morning and think I haven't done it, that it's only a dream. And it's like Heaven! I cry for joy. And then the knowledge comes. I did not know, Michael, what Iwas doing. But since you came back I'veseen; since I loved Wentworth I'veseen—what I've done to you; just brushed you aside when you got in the way, and left you to die."
He looked at her in silence. It had come, the moment of anguished realisation that he had foreseen for her, but it had come to her through love for another. That to which his great love would fain have drawn her, she had reached at last by a lesser love than his.
"I have been cruel to Wentworth. I might have tried to get you out for his sake if not for yours. He never had a moment's happiness while you were shut up. But I didn't. I didn't really care for him then. I only tried at last to get you out, because I could not bear the misery of it any longer. I have never cared for anyone but myself—till now. I see now that I have been hard and cruel. I have always thought myself gentle and loving and tender-hearted, like you thought me, poor, poor Michael. You have paid for that. Like Wentworth thinks me now. Oh, Michael,must Wentworth pay too?"
Michael looked at her with compassion. "I am afraid he must. But do not let him pay a penny more than is necessary. You still have it in your power to save him part of the—the expense. Let him pay the lesser price instead of the greater. Tell him, instead of letting him find out."
Silence.
"It is the only thing to do, Fay."
No answer.
"I am afraid you do not love him after all," said the inexorable voice.
Again silence.
Michael dragged himself feebly from his chair, and took her clenched hands between both of his.
"Love him a little more," he said. "Take the risk and tell him everything—while there is still time. Listen, Fay, and try to forgive me if I seem cruel. You thought you loved me once. But it was not enough to risk anything for me. You threw me away by your silence because you found the truth too difficult. Don't, don't throw Wentworth away too, because the truth is difficult. Fay, believe me," Michael's voice shook, "it's hard to find out you've been deceived. It's hard to be betrayed." His voice had sunk to a broken whisper. "Don't put him through it. You wouldn't if you—if you knew what it was like."
Magdalen, coming in half an hour later found Fay lying on her face on the sofa alone. She looked, poor little creature, with her outstretched arms, not unlike a cross on which Love might very well be crucified anew. It does not matter much whether it is on a cross of wood, or of fear, or of egotism, that we nail Love to his slow death.
Fay loved for the first time. Was she going to crucify that love, to pierce its upholding hands, to betray that benign saviour, come so late but come at last, to help her in her sore need?
His own thought drove him like a goad.—Tennyson.
His own thought drove him like a goad.—Tennyson.
"Now," said the great doctor to Michael next day, "I have been hustled down here against my will by Mr. Maine. I'm wanted elsewhere. I calculate my time at a pound a minute. Out with it. What is it that's worrying you?"
Michael did not answer.
The great man groaned. But his eyes were kindly.
"You want something you have not got, eh? like the rest of us. We are all in the same steam launch."
"I don't want anything, thanks."
"In love?"
"No."
"Quite sure? I have always observed that people who are in love are desperately offended at the bare supposition that such a thing is possible. Things might be arranged, you know. Young women aren't intended by nature to live single any more than you are. Would a few weeks in London meet the case? The season's just beginning. No theatres, of course, and no late hours. Your brother here seems made of money, though he will soon be ruined if he goes on sending for me. For I always charge double if I'm sent for unnecessarily. Come, sir, whatdoyou want?"
"I don't know," said Michael, half amused. He was still exhausted by his expedition to Priesthope of theprevious day. "I don't want anything, thanks. I'm—all right."
"What do you say to a change?"
"I had not thought of that," said Michael with a flicker of interest. "Now you mention it—yes. That's the very thing. I should like—a change."
Wentworth came forward at once.
"Norway?" he said eagerly, "or Switzerland. We must be guided by you, doctor. Or a yacht? You used to be fond of yachting, Michael. We will go anywhere you like."
Michael's face fell.
The doctor leaned back and examined his finger tips. He had seen what he wanted.
"The yacht won't do," he said with decision. "And Norway's out of the question. Much too far. In fact, there's only one place that will do."
"Where is that?" said Wentworth.
"I don't know yet. Where is it, Mr. Carstairs?"
"I should like," said Michael, colouring painfully, for he knew he was going to hurt Wentworth, "I should like to go to Lostford; not for long, just for a little bit."
"Lostford!" exclaimed Wentworth, amazed. "Lostford, down in that hole. Oh! no."
"Well, and why not Lostford?" said the doctor with asperity. "Mr. Carstairs shows his sense. He is not up to a long journey. Quite near. Interesting cathedral. Cultivated society. I should have suggested Lostford myself if he had not."
"I will ride over and take rooms at the 'Prince Consort' to-day," said Wentworth meekly.
"You will do no such thing. Are you taking leave of your senses. Your brother is not fit to stay in a rackety hotel."
"The Bishop has asked me," said Michael faintly, "to spend a week or two with him whenever I like. I believe—it's very quiet there."
"The Bishop!" said Wentworth. "It would be far from quiet at the Palace. Worse than an hotel. The Bishop lives in a perpetual turmoil."
Then he suddenly stopped short, and became very red. Michael preferred the Bishop to himself.
"It's a good idea," said the doctor. "I know the Bishop. Splendid man. The best of company." He got up with decision. "My orders are, Mr. Carstairs, that you proceed to Lostford without delay. How far is it? Six miles. Go to-morrow." Then he turned to Wentworth. "You will go over and see him in a week's time, and report to me."
"You think him worse," said Wentworth nervously to the doctor in the hall.
"No," said the doctor emphatically, watching his motor sliding to the door, "but he is not better. He is anxious about something, and he can't afford to be anxious. He is not in a fit state to have a finger ache with impunity."
"He has nothing to be anxious about," said Wentworth. "And if he had a trouble I should be the first to hear of it. I have his entire confidence—at least, I had till lately. I must own he has become very changed of late. Of course, I never appear to notice it, but——"
"Quite right. Quite right. I wish others were assagacious as you are. Let him go to Lostford for a week or two—and get you off his nerves," the doctor added to himself as the motor shot down the beech avenue.
A few days later Wentworth was sitting idly watching the stream of Piccadilly from the windows of his club. The same day that Michael had gone to Lostford he had discovered that he had business in London. He would have found it difficult to say what his business there was. But one of Wentworth's many theories about himself was that he was a very busy man. He had so constantly given "urgent business" as a reason for evading uncongenial social engagements that he had finished by believing himself to be overwhelmed with arduous affairs. So he went to London, and visited a publisher anent his forthcoming history of Sussex, and dined with a man whom he met at Lord's, whom he had not seen for years, and wrote daily to Fay, expressing ardent but vague hopes that he might be able to "get away" from London by the end of the week.
He was in no hurry to return.
A vague fear of something grievously amiss with Michael, he knew not what; an unformulated anxiety weighed upon him. And he was jealous. Jealousy had brought him up to London. He was not going to remain deserted at Barford. Jealousy was keeping him there now. He had seen that Michael was glad to get away from him, that he had caught at the doctor's suggestion of a change. His sullen heart was very sore about Michael. Why did hewantto leave him? Where would he meet anyone more devoted to him thanhimself? What could any man do for another that he had not done for Michael? Was it true then, after all, what he had so often heard was the fate of men of deep affections like himself, that they give all, and are given nothing in return.
A sudden exclamation made him look up.
"Why, Maine, is it you?"
A tall, bald man was holding out his hand to him. For a moment Wentworth did not recognise him. Then he remembered him. Lord John Alington.
He shook hands with tepid civility, but Lord John always mistook a pained recognition for an enthusiastic welcome. He drew up a chair at once.
"Now this is what I call luck," he said, his red face beaming. "And so your brother is freed at last. Only heard the news when I landed from Norway a week ago. I congratulate you with my whole heart. I never was so glad about anything before." And Lord John sawed Wentworth's limp hand up and down.
"I was present, you know," he went on. "Made a great impression on me. Sobered me for a long time I can tell you. I saw Carstairs come forward and give himself up. Never had such a shock in my life."
"I remember now you were there."
"Rather. And I was dead certain from the first that he had never done it. I always said so. And now at last the mystery is cleared up. And I was proved right. He hadn't. But fancy shielding that old Marchesa with her long teeth. Why, she was forty if she was a day. Who would ever have thought of it!"
"No one did," said Wentworth.
"Ididn't. I may tell you frankly that I didnot.The Marchesa! I knew her. But it never so much as crossed my mind that she had massacred her old hubby. 'Good God! The Marchesa!' Those were my exact words when I heard a week ago. Is Carstairs in London? I should like just to shake him by the hand."
"He is not in town. He is still feeling the effects of his imprisonment."
"I should like to have seen him. It was my fault he was found you know. I said 'Perhaps he's behind the screen.' Dreadfully sorry. Wish I hadn't. Only my fun. Never thought he was there, or anyone. I've never forgotten his coming out from behind the screen. But what I want to know is," Lord John tapped Wentworth on the arm with his eyeglass, and lowered his voice confidentially, "why he ever went behind it. That's what has been puzzling me ever since I read the Marchesa's confession. If he wanted to shield her, why the deuce did he hide at all? Why not strike a noble attitude bang in the middle of the room—from the first?"
Wentworth looked at him astonished. The vague suspicion of the last weeks that Michael was concealing something from him was taking shape at last.
There was no doubt that Lord John had got hold of a listener.
"No, no, Maine. When Carstairs was hiding behind the screen he was not dying with anxiety to take the Marchesa's crime on his white shoulders—not at that moment. That explanation don't wash. I believe I know a better one."
Wentworth became very red.
"The Duchess's maid! Did you ever see her? No, evidently not. You've no time for looking at youngmaids. Taken up with contemplating an old maid in the glass. You miss a lot, I can tell you. She was the prettiest little baggage I've set eyes on for years. And she was not of an iron virtue. But she wouldn't look at a little thing like me. Can't think why. Come, now, don't look so demure. We aren't all plaister saints like you.I'mnot, in spite of my Madonna face. Wasn't that the truth? The Marchesa story is for the gallery. But you and I are behind the scenes. Mum's the word. But wasn't that why Carstairs was hanging about the house after everyone else had gone just for the same reason that I was—to get a word with that little hussy?"
At that moment a tall, middle-aged man came into the room, and Lord John's roving eye fell upon him. He sprang to his feet.
"Lossiemouth," he said, seizing the latter's unwilling hand. "Why, you're the very man I wanted to see. Congratulations, my dear chap. All my heart. Ship come in, and ancestral halls, and going to be married too, all in one fell swoop. Know Miss Bellairs a little. Jumped with her in the same skipping rope in childhood's happy hours, danced with her at her first ball. Madly in love with her. Never seen her since."
Wentworth escaped.
The chamber of his soul had been long in readiness, swept and garnished for the restless spirit that had returned to it—not alone.