When Paul Macleod left Mrs. Vane's drawing-room that afternoon she told herself that she could, for once, afford to sit with folded hands and let the world go its own way for a time. Everything seemed working for her, so there was no need for her to work for herself. The question of those letters could very well wait for a time. For all she knew to the contrary, the lawyers might have similar proof of little Paul's legitimacy; if they had not, why they ought to have. Unless, indeed, that marriage certificate had nothing to do with the boy at all. That in itself was conceivable with such a woman as Jeanie Duncan must have been. Anyhow, for the present, the child was in comfortable circumstances, since Dr. Kennedy had taken him in charge, and, as Marjory mentioned in her letter, he was to come to London and become a scholar at her school. The first thing was to see this foolish, ridiculous engagement broken off, and then if the big Paul were wise, and realised that both love and money were at his command, it might be possible to tell him the truth. But under no other circumstances, since none could console him as she could for the loss of Gleneira. Therefore, for the sake of everybody concerned, the best thing that could happen was that she should be Paul's wife. A great tenderness showed in her face at the very thought. "Poor Paul," she said half aloud; "he would be quite happy with me, quite content, and I, oh! surely I deserve something after all these years? I am getting tired of doing everything for people I do not care about, as I have done all my life long."
And it was true. In all the trivial details of life she was as thoroughly unselfish a woman as ever stepped, ready at a moment's notice to weary herself out for the sake of making the world more pleasant to others.
So those letters should remain locked up, perhaps for ever. In sober truth she could scarcely imagine herself using them. Their melodramatic force was so unlike the gentle spiriting by which she usually effected her object; and though she could never recall the night of poor old Peggy's death without a shudder, her sound common sense told her that after all in advising the old woman not to open the lawyer's letter, she had done so in ignorance. She had acted, as she thought, for the best, and everybody was liable to make mistakes.
So much for the one party to the interview; the other, once the spell of Mrs. Vane's personality was removed, felt vaguely that matters were becoming uncomfortable. It had never occurred to him before thatheran the chance of being jilted, and the bare idea filled him with indignation; and yet he saw the justice of Mrs. Vane's remarks. He was not a good match for a girl who wished for nothing better than to remain in that state of social comfort to which it had pleased Providence to call her. But, if this were so, it would be better to save his dignity by broaching the possibility himself. Anything was better than being dismissed like a footman. He was never long in deciding a question of this sort, yet, quick as he was, he found himself not a moment too soon, for when he walked round to see Mr. Woodward next morning, before that gentleman went down to office, he found him in the act of writing a note asking him to call.
"The fact is, Macleod," said the elder man, a little nervously, "I wanted to continue our talk about your engagement to my daughter."
Paul flushed up, but took the bull by the horns without a moment's hesitation.
"I came for that purpose, sir. It has occurred to me that I have somewhat overlooked Miss Woodward's side of the question, and I shall be infinitely obliged if you would treat me with perfect frankness in regard to what you, no doubt, know better than I."
The dignity of this speech soothed him, and he awaited the reply with tolerable equanimity.
"Very straightforward--very straightforward on your part, Macleod," said the man of business, approvingly. "One can scarcely be too careful in regard--er--in regard to such contracts; and your remark makes me regret more than ever--my--my duty. For you really have been all that is--all our fancy painted you, I may say. But that does not alter the fact that I am now a comparatively poor man. Of course, I may, I very probably shall, recoup. At the same time it is not the sort of security for--for--marriage settlements and trustees; you understand me, of course. Now, what we have to face is this: Do you think my daughter is suited to be the wife of a poor man--even a possibly poor man? I don't. And, then, would she be content if she had to live most of the year at Gleneira, away from society and--and telegraph posts--I mean posts and telegraphs? It's a pretty place, Macleod, and an interesting place--with--with a sort of--er--respectabilityabout it, but it is a devilish bit out of the way."
"Perhaps; but I would do my best to make your daughter forget that," said Paul, gloomily; the sense of being weighed in the balance and found wanting--he, Paul Macleod, whom so many women had fancied--was exquisitely painful.
Mr. Woodward blew his nose elaborately. "Just so; of course, of course! Very right and proper; very much so, indeed; only, my dear Macleod, marriage, after all, is a speculation, and I don't like to see my girl putting her capital into a concern which hasn't even a good prospectus. How many shareholders would even my name produce, if all we could say of a new railway was that, though the chances were dead against traffic, we would do our best to ensure it? Of course--er--if you were violently attached to each other one might allow something for the--er--the good-will of the business. Under those circumstances, I am led to believe--though I know nothing about it myself--that young people are content to live--er--on a ridiculously small income. My own impression is, however, that Alice is not that sort of girl; but, of course, I may be mistaken."
"In that case," put in Paul, loftily, "it would be best to refer to Alice herself."
"Exactly what we--I mean--er--decidedly. You two can settle it for yourselves. Her mother and I have no wish to interfere unnecessarily. That, I think you will own, is fair dealing, though, of course, as a business man I have felt it my duty to warn her against risking what is virtually her all in a concern which, to put it briefly, has an unpromising prospectus. And, if you will allow me, I will give you the same advice."
There was a pompous warmth in his shake of the hand, but as he accompanied his visitor to the door his tone changed to a confidential whisper:
"You see it isn't as if it were a limited liability, but the Lord only knows how many children you might have."
Paul, as he made his way to the little boudoir where Alice frittered away so much of her time overchiffonsand picture papers, felt that he was being pursued by a Nemesis of his own creating. He had entered into this engagement by the light of reason, in obedience to the dictates of sound common sense, and it seemed likely that he would be driven from it by the same means. He found her, for a wonder, busy with needle and thread, and though the subject of it was only the stitching of tinsel round some remarkably large velvet leaves pasted on satin, it gave her a more solid air than she usually had. That, and a brighter flush upon her cheek, told him that he was expected, and forewarned him of her decision. Indeed, he felt that words were really unnecessary, and that he might just as well have turned round and gone downstairs again, leaving her white fingers busy with the gold thread. But there was a certain strain of savagery in Paul Macleod, as there is in most men when their dignity is touched, and he resolved to go through with it.
"I have just seen your father," he began, "and now I have come to you."
She might have been excused for turning a little pale and letting her work drop, for his tone was not reassuring. He saw her dread of a scene, and gave a faint laugh.
"There is no need to be afraid, Alice. I have never made myself disagreeable to you yet, and I am not likely to begin now, when I have come to ask you plainly whether you could be happy with me? Could you?"
She clasped and unclasped her hands quite nervously. "I am ready to try--if you like--if you think I ought to."
"That has nothing to do with it. Put me out of the question, please. Of course, it is always painful for a man to know that a woman does not care for him sufficiently----"
"It is not that," she broke in hurriedly. "I would not have promised if I had not liked you--it is the dulness, and the poverty. I have never been accustomed to it, and I might not be contented, and then how could I be a good wife if I were not happy? It is not as if there would be distractions, but there would be none, and I don't like the country as some girls do--Marjory Carmichael, for instance."
He looked at her sharply, but her eyes met his without any hidden meaning in them.
"She would not be dull, but I should, and then how could I cheer you up? For you need cheering at Gleneira--you know you do."
The truth irritated him. "From which I infer that you would rather be free. Well! you have only to take me or leave me," he said curtly.
She caught in her breath, and, as usual, the display of temper made her piteous. "Don't be angry, Paul! There is nothing to be angry about. If you wish it, I will try; but we can always be friends, and if it is wiser to part, then it is wiser."
"That is for you to decide. I am at your orders." He stood there looking very handsome, and she gave a sigh of indecision, though a certain resentment at being, as it were, thrust into the breach, came to her aid.
"Do you think it wiser?" he repeated.
"How can I tell? All I want to do is my duty, and I am afraid----"
"If you are afraid, that is enough," he said, losing patience. "Good-bye, Alice; if you had decided otherwise I would have tried to be a good husband to you."
A faint flush came to her cheek. "And I would have tried to be a good wife; but----"
"Well?"
"Don't you think that with you trying to be a good husband and I trying to be a good wife, life would have been a little dreary--sometimes?"
The curse of home truths seemed in the air, and Paul felt he had no answer ready, and yet he liked her the better for the first touch of sarcasm he had ever heard from her lips. It reminded him of Mrs. Vane.
As he shook hands with her, the servant entering announced Mr. John Woodward, and Paul, going downstairs, met a big, florid young man coming up with a gardenia in his buttonhole, and a parcel tied with gold thread in his hands. It was a box of Paris chocolates which Jack had purchased on his way from Riga. The two scowled at each other as they passed, after the manner of Englishmen who have never been introduced, and Paul, as he put on his hat, felt a sudden insane desire to go up again, and tell Alice that he had changed his mind. And yet, as he walked aimlessly through the Park, and so northward into the streets beyond, the certainty that life had been changed in the twinkling of an eye came slowly to him, and as it did he scarcely knew whither to turn for a little solid self-esteem. Of late he had been nurturing his own magnanimity, and, as Mrs. Vane had told him to his face, the fact that Alice Woodward's fortune was for the time diminished, and in the future uncertain, had not been without its consolation. It prevented him from feeling that people knew, to a fraction, what price he had put upon himself. And now, though he was, as it were, a "genuine reduction," he had been rejected! Rejected! the thought was intolerable. Even the memory of Marjory, and the look in her eyes which he had seen that last night, brought him cold comfort, for he told himself that, even if he had wished to do so, he could never go to her and say he had been jilted; yet he would not tell her a lie.
But he did not want to seek consolation from Marjory; after all, it had only been the old story of a passing fancy fostered by romantic surroundings. Since he had left Gleneira he had scarcely thought of her, and for himself would have been quite content to fulfil his engagement. Therein, to tell truth, lay the whole sting of the position.
So he wandered on until he found himself in Regent's Park, and then, with that idle distaste to some decisive action which a return clubwards would necessitate, in the Zoölogical Gardens. It was years since he had been there of a morning without a band and a crowd. Years since he had brought papers of nuts and biscuits, and given them to the bears. But now he was free--yes! that was one comfort! he was free to do as he liked, so he watched the Polar bear--which made him smile at the recollection of Mrs. Vane's sally--and found a certain dreamy pleasure in strolling round by the antelopes and recognising beasts the like of which he had shot in strange climes. There is always some satisfaction to be got from bygone prowess in sport, and, as he finally found himself leaning over the railings of a tank where a pair of dippers were bobbing about, he had in a measure forgotten the present in the past.
So, as he watched the birds indifferently, a sleek round head slid suddenly, oilily from the water, and a pair of wistful brown eyes looked into his.
The card affixed to the railings only bore the legend:
"Phoca vitulina;or, Common Seal."
Yet no magician's wand could have been more powerful in transformation--say, rather translation--than the sight of the creature so designated was to Paul Macleod. In the twinkling of an eye the London haze--that condensed essence of millions of men, women, and children, struggling confusedly for breath--had passed from him, and he was in a new heaven and a new earth. A boat was rocking idly on the summer sea, the blue clouds were sailing overhead, the world, its ways and works, were beyond the rampart of encircling hills, while a girl, with clear bright eyes, leant against the rudder.
"Why didn't you shoot, Captain Macleod?" He could hear the odd little tremor in her voice, as she gave the challenge, and feel the dim surprise of his own answer: "I never thought of it!"
Then, with a rush, the one side of his nature challenged the other. Why--why had he done these things? Why had he given up paradise? Had he not been happy? In very truth, had he even thought of the world and its ways, of himself and his instincts, when he was beside her? Yet, what a return had he not made to this girl who had taught him to forget these things. Had he not in a way taught her to know them? Had he not roused in her something, blameless enough, God knows! in its way, beautiful enough, though of the earth earthy, compared to that other strange comradeship, in which there seemed no possibility of passion, no sense of sex. In truth, he had taught her to love him as women and men will love to the end of all things. Taught her, and left her to face it alone--as he had left Jeanie Duncan long years ago.
The unbidden remembrance brought a new shame with it for that old offence, even while it intensified the sudden remorse he felt for the present one; since Jeanie, in all her sweet maidenhood, had never seemed so hedged about from evil as this Brynhild, whose very womanhood had been hidden beneath her glittering armour of mail. That he should have thought these things showed the strain of romance, the touch of mysticism, which was in him by right of his race, and though, as ever, he chafed against these things, he could not escape from them, or from the self-contempt which took possession of him. Ever since the night when he had said good-bye, as he had boasted, to the best part of him, there had been something to prevent his realising the extent of his degradation. First, the relief of certainty, bringing with it a very real content; then, the anxiety for the child, bringing out all the kindliness of his nature--finally, the knowledge that he was not, after all, so mercenary. But now he was defenceless against his own worldliness, against the memory of his wanton insult to Marjory--for it was an insult, nothing less.
As he wandered moodily back into the town, back to face his world and its comments, it seemed to him as if there were not a rag anywhere wherewith to cover his wounded self-esteem. One thing he could do: he could go down and ask Marjory to marry him. He owed her so much. She would refuse him, of course, since she was not the sort to care for other folks' rejections; and he knew, by long experience, how keenly such love as he had seen in her eyes resented neglect, how quick it was in changing to repulsion if the pride were outraged.
Yes! he would go down to Gleneira and regain some of his belief in himself by giving Marjory her revenge. Then he would go abroad and shoot lions, or do something of that sort. Everyone would know he had been jilted, so he might as well play the part to the bitter end, and behave as a man ought to behave who has had a disappointment.
Meanwhile he might as well go and see Violet, and congratulate her on her acumen. He might even go so far as to tell her that, taking her words to heart, he was about to propose poverty to the girl he loved, as he had proposed it to the girl he had not loved. She, of course, not knowing of that wanton insult, would not understand how idle a proposition it would be; but she liked to be thought clever--liked to be at the bottom of everything.
So he was not exactly in an amiable or easily managed mood as he followed the servant upstairs at Mrs. Vane's house. And, as luck would have it, he came at a time when she herself was too disturbed to have the cool head and steady nerve necessary to steer him into the haven where she would have him. Yet it was a trifling thing which had upset her: merely the certainty that little Paul Duncan would not get a penny of his grandmother's money. There it was in black and white, set down in the wills and bequests column of theIllustrated London News. Now, the difference between keeping a boy with a hundred thousand pounds from possibly inheriting some acres of heavily mortgaged bog and heather, and keeping a nameless, penniless waif from a name and some hundreds a year was palpable. She was no hardened criminal, and for the first time she found herself really facing the question: "Am I to do this thing, or am I not to do it?"
Should she put those letters in the fire and say no more about them, or should she tell the truth?
Though she knew its contents almost by heart, she took the slender packet out once more and looked doubtfully at the marriage certificate.
"Captain Macleod," said the servant at the door, for Paul was a privileged visitor, with theentréeat all times to Mrs. Vane's little sitting-room. She had barely time to thrust the paper under a book ere he was beside her.
"How you startled me!" she said, with a nervous laugh, as she took his hand. "I did not expect you to-day; you were here yesterday."
"I came to inquire for your fever," he replied a trifle coldly. "You have it again, I see--and feel. You should be in bed as it is."
He wheeled the armchair to the fire, brought a cushion from the sofa, and waited, holding it in his hand to settle it comfortably for her as she sate down.
She gave an odd little sort of choke.
"What a coddle you are, Paul! There is nothing really the matter with me. I grow old, that is all; I grow old." It was not a good beginning for an interview in which she would need all her self-control, all her common sense; and had the letter been within reach at that moment it would have received scant justice at her hands, for nothing in the wide world seemed worth consideration save this man with his kind ways and soft voice. He, at any rate, must not suffer.
The room was growing dusk. That pleasant duskiness which obliterates corners and seems to concentrate comfort on the flame-lit circle by the fire.
"What a good nurse you are, Paul," she said, with an effort after her usual airiness. "The woman you marry will be lucky."
"I'm glad someone thinks so," he remarked briefly, "for there does not seem to be much competition----"
"Paul!" she interrupted, with a sudden flutter at her heart. "Do you mean----"
"Yes! you were right, as usual, if that is any comfort to you. I have got my dismissal. Does that satisfy you?"
She looked at him frankly. "It does. You do not like it, of course, but I cannot be sorry. She was never good enough for you, even when she was rich, and when she was poor----"
"Don't let us discuss it, please. The thing is over; and what with those who are too good and those who are not good enough I seem to have made a muddle of it. By the way, I suppose Miss Carmichael is still at Gleneira?"
"Certainly--but--but why? I fail to see the connection." It was not true; she saw it clearly enough, and her voice showed it.
"Only because I am going down there to-morrow."
"To burn your wings again?--that is foolish!"
"I have no wings to burn; but I am going to ask her to marry me--to face the villa with me, as you put it."
Mrs. Vane started from her pillow with fear, surprise, dislike in every feature.
"Are you mad, Paul? The girl does not care for you; I'm certain of that. Then she is half engaged, I believe, to Alphonse--Dr. Kennedy, I mean. Her letter is full of him; you can see it if you like."
"I have no doubt of it; he is a far more admirable person than I am. I fully expect she will refuse me, but I mean to ask her all the same."
"But why? Since you have told me so much you may as well tell me all. Why?"
"Because I choose, and because I like following your good advice."
"My advice?" she echoed; "my advice? That is too much." Then recognising the fact that no good would follow on direct opposition, she tacked skilfully. "If you choose, I suppose you will do it, though I cannot for the life of me see why you should put yourself to needless pain, for it must be pain, since you were certainly in love with her at Gleneira----"
"I believe I was," he interrupted, "but I'll risk the pain."
"No doubt," she answered bitterly; "self-inflicted pain is always bearable. But for the girl--why not consider her comfort? It is always a disagreeable thing to refuse, and a man who forces a girl into that position without due cause is----"
"Is what?"
"A presumptuous cad, my dear Paul."
"Thank you! You are clever, Violet, and your conclusions are generally right; but in this case you argue without knowledge of the premises."
"I know that Paul Macleod never did and never will come under that category," she replied readily, "and that is enough for me."
"If it were true, but it is not." He had not meant to tell her the truth, but a certain contrariety led him on. "I used not to be one, perhaps; but I was one to her. That last night, after I was engaged to Alice, I told her that I loved her."
A little fine smile showed on Mrs. Vane's face. "Well, it was not fair on Alice, but it was very like Paul. Only why repeat the mistake?"
"You do not understand. I was half mad, I think, at leaving her--and at her unconsciousness. And then--and then, I kissed her."
"Really? That was very naughty, of course; but still more like Paul."
He winced, as if she had struck him. "Don't laugh, Violet, as if it were the old story; it isn't."
His tone struck a chill of fear to her heart, yet she still kept up her amused serenity. "Is it not? Yet she is surely not the first girl you have kissed without a 'by your leave.'"
He was silent, and then to her infinite surprise, as he sate leaning forward looking into the fire, covered his face with his hands as if to shut out an unwelcome sight.
"You don't understand," he said, in a low voice. "She hadn't a reproach--she--I can see the look in her eyes still."
There was another silence, and then Mrs. Vane's voice came with an indescribable chill in it:
"You mean that she loved you, or you think she did."
"I am sure of it. She did not deny it. Violet! she is the first woman, I verily believe, who has loved me truly, and I repaid her by insult."
A dangerous rush of sheer anger came to send tact and prudence to the wind for the time. "You say that! The only woman! Then I say, Paul, that you insult others by your doubts--others who have loved you longer. Paul!" She was very close upon the verge, when she pulled herself up short, and gave a little laugh. "You cannot think her love very deep if you say she will refuse you. But what reason have you to think she will? Because you kissed her? That is absurd, and you know it. I believe you wish her to accept you."
"Do I?" he asked wearily; "for the life of me I scarcely know; but I mean to ask her. I must. Surely you can see that; you generally understand me."
"I do understand you, Paul; better perhaps than you understand yourself. That is why I tell you not to go down to Gleneira. You aretête montéenow. You are not yourself. Look the matter in the face! Supposing she were to accept you; what then?"
He paused a moment. "I should marry her, I suppose--but she won't. I am not the sort of fellow she could marry." His voice had the tenderest ring in it, but his head was turned away. To see it she leant forward closer to him, almost on her knees, and the firelight lit up her eager, appealing face.
"Paul, don't deceive yourself with doubts. You love her more than ever, and if, as you say, she loves you, the result is a foregone conclusion, if you meet. It is a future of poverty, and, oh, how you will regret it! Don't go, Paul, I beg of you; I beseech you--I am an old friend, my dear."
As she laid her flashing jewelled hands on his shoulder, his went up mechanically and drew them down. So holding them in his, he looked into her face kindly. "You are, indeed--but I must go--I have no choice."
His soft, caressing touch made her risk all, and her breath came fast in swift denial. "No choice! That is not true! You said but now, no one had loved you truly but this girl. Think, Paul, did not I? You know I did. Was it for my own sake that I gave you up--that I sent you away? You know it was not. I am not of the sort on whom the world turns its back. I would have faced it gladly. It was for you. Because you loved your profession--because--but you know it all! Even when I was free, but poor, I would not claim you. Will Marjory do as much for you? Will she say, 'I love you, but I will not injure you by marrying you'? I think not. But I should not injure you now--I am rich, I am rich, and I love you."
Once before she had told him so plainly, but it had then been with an easy self-control, suggesting the idea but withholding its inception. Now she was pleading as if for life.
"You are very good," he muttered, feeling the truth of what she said.
"Yes!" she echoed, with a tinge of bitterness at her lack of power to move him more. "How good you will never know. I have stood between you and more evil than you dream of; and now I ask you to stay with me, Paul, not because I love you, but because you are always happy with me, because you will be safe with me--with me--only with me."
That was true also; he was always happy with her. But safe?
"I do not understand," he said. "Why should I be safer with you? I know of no danger." Then he clasped her hands tighter, looking into her face curiously. "What is it, Violet? Is there danger? You speak---- By Heaven! there is something, Violet! What is it?"
She drew from him quickly, realising her own imprudence, for she was not prepared for any decisive step. "Nothing, Paul--nothing to speak of," she said, rising to her feet with a hasty laugh, but her voice shook, her hands were trembling. "Since you will not listen, go to Marjory; she can protect you as well as I can."
"I don't care to hide behind any woman," he said sternly. "Not even behind you. What is it? You are not the kind of woman to say that sort of thing unless you meant it. What danger do you know that I do not?"
Even to hear his questioning roused her to a sense of what the knowledge would mean to him, and the instinct of defence overcame even her pride. "Am I not the sort of woman? All women are alike when they are jealous. Can't you see it, Paul--can't you understand? or will you force me to say it all over again? I know nothing, positively nothing, to prevent your marrying Marjory. Go down to Gleneira if you will."
He shook his head. "Don't prevaricate, Violet. I had rather you lied to me, but for pity's sake do neither. Be my friend and tell me the truth."
For an instant his gentleness overcame her fence. "I cannot, Paul--I cannot," she almost wailed; then remembering herself, she went on, "How can I, when there is nothing to tell?"
"I will not leave the room till I know," was his reply. "Thereissomething, and you shall tell me. You will not; then I must find out for myself--there was a letter in your hand. Let me go, Violet! I don't want to hurt you, but I must and will have that letter, unless---- No! I cannot trust you for the truth. I must see that letter for myself."
She knew enough of him to recognise that now his imperious temper was roused, her only chance lay in an appeal to his affection.
"Listen, Paul! I have done so much for you. Pay me back now--only this little thing. I don't want you to see that letter--you have no right to see it."
He shook his head, and she flung the hands she had been detaining from her with a cry.
"You do not trust me! You do not trust me! That is hard after all these years."
"No! I cannot trust you, dear; you are too good to me," he said gently, as he walked over to the table.
The dusk had grown into dark, and he passed on to the window, in hopes of sufficient light to decipher the letter he held; failing that he came back to the fire.
"Don't strain your eyes over it," she said bitterly, as she leant--as if tired out--against the mantelpiece, watching him sombrely. "I strained mine over it once--needlessly. I will ring for lights, and you can surely wait for so much, now you have got your own way."
So they waited in silence, standing side by side before the fire, till the servant had set the shaded lamp on the table, and drawn the window curtains carefully, methodically. Then he glanced at the superscription, and pointing to it, said, "Why did you read it?" for across the first blank page was scrawled legibly, "Not to be read by anyone till Paul Macleod of Gleneira is dead."
"Because I chose--the reason whyyouread it, I suppose."
The old admiration for her spirit which, even now, did not hesitate to meet him boldly on his own ground, rose in him as, instinctively, he turned to the signature for some further light to guide him in reading the closely written sheets. Then his eye caught a name at the bottom of a page where the writing merged from ink to a faint pencil.
"Jeanie Duncan!" he exclaimed, half aloud; "what can she have to do with me?" The instant after he turned to Mrs. Vane, as those who are puzzled turn to those who are better informed. "Janet Macleod! did she marry a Macleod after all?"
"She married your brother Alick, and the boy is their son. Now you know the worst--andIhave told you it--I, who would not hurt you for the world."
"She married---- Then little Paul?" He stood as if unable to grasp the meaning of his own words.
"Sit down, dear, and read it, since you have chosen to read. There is no hurry. You know the worst," she said gently.
So with a sort of dazed incredulity he read on in silence:
"Paul Macleod! yes! Paul! you shall read this some day; some day soon. I am revenged. You were ashamed of me, and now I am the laird of Gleneira's wife. Yet I did not mean to be revenged till he came, like a fool, and put it into my head. I was getting tired of the life, too--of the hard, thankless life. It was by chance I fell in with him in Paris. I went there with someone and stayed on; so he could not guess that I was Jeanie Duncan, whom he had never seen. And I hated him because he was your brother; so he grew mad after me, and promised marriage. Then the thought came--I, whom the laird's Jock did not think good enough to love or marry, will take the laird himself, and flaunt it over them all. So we were married, and then, before I had time to settle anything, he died--died of drink, Paul!
"Well! I hated him, so I did not care. I hated him for being so like you, and caring for me when you did not----
"And now, if it is a boy, I will have my revenge--my just revenge--and turn you out of the old place. But I wait, because, if it is a girl, you will not care, and I will not have you jeer because my revenge has failed. I pray day and night that it may be a boy, and lest I should die, I write all about it, and put my marriage lines with the letter. Then my son can come, and turn you out. I did not seek revenge, remember. It came into my hand, and it is just. You know that it is just!
"Jeanie Duncan.
"P.S.--Look in the photograph shops in Paris for 'La Belle Écossaise,' if you wish to know what I was like whenhemarried me."
Paul, reading methodically, paused for a second, passed his hand across his forehead as if to clear his mind, and then went on to a fainter pencil scrawl:
"Well! I have waited, Paul! It is a boy--so like you, Paul! I lie and think--for they say I am dying, and so it cannot hurt now--that heisyour son, and that we were married in the old days. But it is all a lie! He ishisson, and I will have my revenge! If only I could remember anything but the old days, Paul! Ah! surely when people love as we did---- No! I do not understand. Only, the boy is so like you. I lie and think, and I feel he must never turn you out. Never! never! Only, if you die, then the boy must have his rights, for he is your son.
"Janet Macleod.
"P.S.--Mother will keep this; she has come to see me die, so it will be quite safe. She does not know I am married, and I have written outside that no one is to read it till you are dead. Ah, Paul! I wish you could have seen it. Forgive me, Paul--forgive me that he is not your son!"
A greyness had come to the handsome face, and, as he folded up the letter methodically, his hands trembled.
"How long?" he asked; and it seemed almost as if he could not finish the sentence.
"Since the night of old Peggy's death. I suspected something, so I stole it."
"You suspected!" he interrupted quickly. "What could you suspect?" Then he laughed bitterly. "I suppose you suspected I was the boy's father, and thought the knowledge would be useful. If I had been it would have been better." His hand holding the letter came down heavily on the mantelpiece as he rose in sudden passion. "My God! what a devilish revenge!"
She gave a quick catch in her breath. She had been silent till now, but now it was time to begin--time to make him think.
"You forget that she repented--that she gave up her revenge. That is why I said nothing, Paul. I am a woman, too, and I know how she repented. I did not dare to speak--to disobey her dying wish; who has a right to do that, Paul?--no one."
"But the boy," he murmured, "the boy."
"The boy will not suffer. If you die he will have his rights, as his mother wished. If he were really your son he would not have Gleneira till then, and you can look after him. It is not as if he were in want, dear."
He sate listening, listening to that soft, persuasive voice, which had such a knack of following his every thought, and yet of leading them.
"I had no right to steal the letters, of course," it went on a little louder, "but I am not sorry; for others might not have understood, and so the poor thing's repentance would have come to naught. Now, no one knows but you and I. You who loved her, I who pity her; because I love you, Paul, as she loved you."
She came a step closer with wide-open, serious eyes, and touched him on the breast with her slender white hand. The faint perfume of jasmine which always lingered round her stole in on his senses familiarly, taking him back to many a past pleasure and kindness associated with it, and, half unconsciously, his empty hand clasped hers; and so they stood looking, not at each other, but into the fire.
"So it is easy to fulfil her wish--her dying wish. You did her a wrong, Paul, in the old days, and you owe her reparation. She did not wish you to read the letter, remember; but that can be as if it had not been. Give it to me, dear! I would have burnt it before, as she would have wished it burnt, but I wanted you to know for certain what she had wished."
Her small, white hand was on his, the paper rustled and seemed to slip from his hold while he stood, as if mesmerised, looking into the fire. It was all true--every word of it true.
"Give it to me, Paul. You are thinking of the boy; but we could bring him up, you and I, if you would have it so. Paul! This is my reward at last! I can do this for you, now that I am rich."
But still his fingers resisted faintly, and there was a pause, a long pause. Then the hand which lay in his seemed to slacken, to lie in his like a dead hand, and her voice came with a sob in its softness:
"Paul! do this for me, and I will ask no more. Paul! let me save you--save you and Marjory!"
It was her last plea. She had kept it back till now, hoping against hope, and, as she made it, she touched the highest point of self-forgetfulness it is possible for a woman to reach. But in touching it she struck a false note in the syren's song, and Paul Macleod's hand closed like a vice over his one tie to an honest life--the letter.
The name had roused him. "Marjory!" he echoed absently. Then he turned and looked at his companion compassionately, yet decisively. "You mean to be kind, Violet, but you don't understand," he said quietly; then raised her little slack hand, stooped to kiss it, and left her so, standing by the fire alone. She had played for her love boldly, skilfully, and she had lost. She had tried to save Paul for his own sake, and she had failed. Yet even so, the innate courage of the woman faced the facts without a tear, without a complaint.
"It is my own fault," she said, half aloud. "I ought to have burnt the letter long ago, but I was not meant for that sort of thing. My heart is too soft." Then she smiled a little bitterly. It was at the remembrance of Paul Macleod's assertion, "You do not understand!" If she did not understand him, who could?
Nearly a month had gone by since Marjory Carmichael had whispered to the darkness, "Come back to me, Paul, and we will forget our love." The sudden awakening to the realities, not only of life but of her own nature, caused by his reckless avowal of love, had passed, as all awakenings must, into calm acquiescence in the commonplace facts of consciousness. There was no denying of the truth possible to her clear sight, and as she sate on the last day of October, on the last day of holiday before she and little Paul set off together to make acquaintance with a new world, she laid down her pen in the middle of a sentence in the letter she was writing to Tom Kennedy, and looked out over the stormy whitecrested waves of the loch set in its rampart of grey, snow-powdered, mist-shrouded hills, and wondered how she could have been so blind for so long. Blind to half the great problems of life! And then, with a smile, infinitely sweeter than it used to be because infinitely stronger, she took up a letter which lay beside her, and leaning back in her chair began to read it over again, just as she had re-read a letter down by the river side three months before, on the day when her holiday began--on the day when she had first seen Paul Macleod.
But it was a very different letter from the one Dr. Kennedy had sent her then; for all unconsciously the girl, in the first bewilderment of her awakening, had stretched out her hands to him, as it were, for help, and he had given her what he could, smiling a trifle bitterly as he wrote to think how little that was. "You ask me to tell you the truth," she read, "but how can I when I do not know it myself? If I had, the world might have been different--for us both. Only this seems clear, that friendship is a bigger thing than love, unless they both grow from the same root, and then--I fancy, Mademoiselle Grands-serieux, that the botanists ought to characterise the product as a sport! It is rare enough--God knows! I have sate for hours over the puzzle, trying to get at the bottom of myself, only to come back to the old paradox that Love is not worth calling Love unless it is something which is not Love. And that is no solution. Pure and simple, unveiled of mist and sentiment, it is all too easy of explanation. It is ever-present, and must be so--it seems--till the end of all things. Then there is--shall we call it the transcendental form conceivable only to those who recognise some innate, or almost innate, sense of order or beauty in mankind. That too, given this premise, is easy. I believe I understand it. I am sure you do. It is the hybrid of these two held up to our admiration, and believed in by the majority of cultivated people, which beats me altogether. Look round you, dear, and think for yourself. A man and a woman have mental sympathy with each other. What has that to do with marriage? A man and a woman are married. What has that to do with mental sympathy? The two things are not incompatibles. Heaven forbid! But have friendship and what the world calls love any real connection, and what part have they to play in marriage? That sounds like a conundrum, and perhaps it is as well, since we were getting too serious, and that is a fatal mistake when there is no answer to the riddle. But there is a sacrilegious little story, my dear, regarding the reasons for not enforcing celibacy on the clergy, which is not altogether irrelevant to our subject. Luther, I believe, is responsible for declaring that marriage is a 'discipline' not to be surpassed in spiritual efficacy; a discipline before which hair shirts and flagellations are sensual indulgence. N.B.--Was Luther any relation of the Cornish man who said, 'Women was like pilchards; when 'ums bad 'ms bad, and when 'ms good they is but middlin'?' I beg your pardon, Mademoiselle G.S., but one must laugh--if one is not to cry. What if love were the mutual attraction of certain elements, which combined and neutralised in the children, would go to form a more useful compound of humanity? Would not this go further towards raising our instincts out of the mire than all the romance in the world? And then it would account, of course--since chemicals are apt to evolve heat in combining--for a good deal of friction in the married state, which in its turn must polish the sufferers! But as this theory canonises Mrs. Caudle, and makes wife-beating a virtue, perhaps we had better change the subject by saying, as we said at the beginning--friendship is a bigger thing than love, and so pass on to the lives we have to lead, love or no love."
So with kindly thought, and a plentiful humour irradiating every page, he went on to tell her of his work, of stirring scenes in that hand-to-hand fight with Death, the great enemy of Love, in which he lived. A tender, charming letter, such as his were always. Letters which none know how to write save those who, despising the control of time and space, have learnt to lean over the edge of the world, and claim a part in some far-off life. Letters which, without one word of sentiment from beginning to end, leave both the writer's and reader's hearts full of a great kindliness and peace.
They set Marjory a thinking, as they were meant to do, and the result was good, since her clear common sense never failed her. Yet side by side with that common sense existed a certain fanciful idealism, which took the place of the former in matters beyond the limits of plain reason. And this, as she read, made her pause to wonder if Tom could be right, and the calm content which came to her from him, so different from the unrest which the mere thought of Paul produced, meant that they were too nearly akin to need neutralisation. Then she laid down the letter and took up the pen again, striving unconsciously to imitate his playful touch.
"No, Tom!" she wrote; "I am not growing morbid. I am not, as you call it, trying to measure my world with home-made imitations of the imperial quart; still, I do wish I knew what the cubit was! Then I would add it to my stature and rise superior--perhaps. If I had known what I know now when my holiday began would it have made any difference? If I had had a mother, if I had been brought up with other girls, should I have gone on as I did, using a wrong terminology? I will tell you something, Tom. What I thought was love in those old days is just what I feel for you, dear. Perhaps I might have thought so all my life if I had not met him. And now, if I meet him again, Tom, what will happen? I sit down before the proposition; but it is not to be solved like a problem in Euclid, because I have discovered that my heart and my brain are quite separate, and I used to think they were both a part of me. Don't tell me, please, that I am wrong. Perhaps I am physiologically. I know all about that horrid little V-shaped spot in themedulla oblongata, isn't it, where a pin-point will stop Tears and Laughter, Love and Friendship for ever. What then? Does it make it easier to understand why the heart beats, to know that we can stop its beating? I wish I knew! I wish I knew! I don't want it to beat, but it will. Oh! what a mercy it is that we two do not love each other!"
She laid down the pen as a knock came to the door.
"A strange shentlemen to see Miss Carmichael," said the new servant who had replaced the peccant Kirsty discovered--direful offence--in putting a dirty skimmer into the milk.
Now, in the country a "strange gentleman" generally resolves itself into the piano-tuner, so Marjory bade him be shown up with a certain calm impatience at the necessity for explaining that his services would not be wanted; then, the thread of her thoughts broken rudely, she sate waiting, her eyes fixed absently on the words, "that we two do not love each other!"
She looked up from them to see Paul Macleod standing at the door. He had come back to her!
Five minutes before she had asked, almost passionately, of her friend what she would do in such case. Now there was but one answer.
"Paul!" Her outstretched hand sought his, as he stood tall and straight trying to master his emotion, to preserve the calm to which he had schooled himself through the long journey which had ended here--here, where he might once have found rest; here, where all, save such self-respect as apology might leave him, was lost for ever.
"Paul--Oh! how tired you look--how cold your hands are! Come, dear--come and warm yourself; you must be perished!"
He did not speak, perhaps because the hoar frost of pride which had chilled his eyes melted before the radiance of hers; and hoar frost is but water after all. So she drew him to the fire, and then, still holding one hand as if loth to lose touch of it, knelt on one knee to stir the peats to a brighter blaze.
"I'm so glad you have come back," she said, with a little tremble in her voice; "so glad!" And then she looked up suddenly into the face above her, surprised at the almost painful strength of his grip. For Paul Macleod's composure was almost gone, and he was struggling hard for self-control. What she saw kept her silent; but she bent towards him till her soft, warm cheek touched his hand caressingly. The action, with its tale of tender solicitude, its boundless sympathy, was too much for him. He drew in his breath hard, and resting his arm on the mantelpiece turned from her to hide his face upon it, and so escape the pity in her eyes.
And he had dreamed of something so different! Of something coldly just, reasonably reproachful! Without a word she had guessed, hadknown, that he must be free to come, because hehadcome back.
"What is it, dear?" she asked softly, as she stood beside him. "Are you afraid that I am angry? Are you afraid that I care--aboutthat?Paul! I do not choose to care--I will not. Look at me, and you will see if that is not the truth!"
What he saw was a face soft with the passion he knew so well--the passion which lies so perilously close to self--which claims so much, and resents so easily. But it was radiant also, as with a white flame of cleansing fire, pitiless in its purity.
"What is it to me?" she went on, her voice ringing clearer. "What is it to any woman unless she stoops to care? Oh! I understand now, Paul--I understand things of which I never even dreamed before; things which have been in your life--things which might have been in mine, perhaps--God knows!--if I had been in your place. But they are no more to me than this--a grief, a regret, because they are a stain upon your past, as all wrong must be. They are no more to me than that, because I do not choose to count them more!"
So, with a smile in her eyes, and a quiver of pain on her lips, she raised her face to his and kissed him.
Thus neither humiliation nor forgiveness was allowed a part in this woman's reading of the Divine Comedy. Perhaps she was wrong, and yet no scorn, no righteous indignation, could have made Paul Macleod feel more acutely the gulf which lay between his past and hers. Between their futures also. They might be friends, but from that pure Love of hers he was for ever outcast, though she might not know it--though he might spend his life in trying to conceal the fact that he lived on a lower plane than she did. Why! the past was with himnow, even at the touch of her lips. He loved her, as he had loved so often before.
"Marjory!" he cried passionately, "I don't deserve it, but I can't miss it--if you will put up with me?"
She drew herself away, and looked at him with a half-tender, half-mocking expression.
"Put up with you? What else is there to be done now that you have come back to me?"
What else, indeed! She was right; it was he who had taken the responsibility, he who defied natural consequences in this dreaming of something beyond and above his past. He was not hardened enough to be blind to this, and the thought showed on his face.
"Come," she said consolingly, "sit down and tell me all about it--why you came back, I mean; I know why you went away."
If she did, he felt that she was wiser than he, since, sitting so beside her, sure of her sympathy, her confidence, it seemed incredible that he should have fled from this sure haven of his own free will. He told her all, it seemed to him without a pang; told her of his dismissal, of the change in his prospects. Yet, when he put Jeanie Duncan's letter into her hands, and walked away to the window while she read it, he felt more of a cur than he had ever done in all his life before. What would the girl say? What could she say but that it served him right? If she dismissed him also, and told him that she did not care to exchange her love for his, would not that serve him right also!
And so, as he stood frowning moodily at the growing glint of sunshine far out in the West driving the mists in dense masses up the Glen, her voice came to him as she laid down the letter with a sigh:
"I am glad she called him Paul."
He turned quickly to her in a sort of incredulous amaze! Was that all she had to say? A sort of chill crept over him, even though he found himself at her feet, with her hands in his, kissing them softly as he told her, with a break in his voice, that she was too good--too good for any man. The thought brought him a certain consolation, as she went on, evidently with the desire of taking all sting from his memories--to speak of the strange coincidence of little Paul's devotion to her, and of her liking for the lovable little lad. Surely, if Gleneira had to go, he would far rather it went to him than to some stranger, who would care nothing for her and her ways.
"Why?" she said, a trifle tearfully; "he has been so much with me lately, since old Peggy died, that I felt quite lost without him when he went yesterday for a farewell visit up the Glen to the Macintoshes. The boys were his great playmates. So you see, Paul, it will not matter so much, for he will live with us, of course, and it is a long, long time before he comes of age. And even then I don't believe he will turn you out of house and home altogether. We will teach him better things than that! Won't we?"
In truth, spoken of in her calm, clear voice, and with her wise eyes on his, and that sweet convincing "we" in her phrases, the prospect did not seem so hopeless. Yet he caught himself wishing that she had not taken his renunciation quite so much as a matter of course; wishing that she appreciated his victory over temptation more keenly. Yet, how could she, when he had not told her that part of the business, or how near he had been to purchasing peace with dishonour by destroying Jeanie Duncan's letter and the marriage certificate it contained. But there were many things in his past, he told himself, with a sigh, of which it was better she should continue to know nothing; for her own sake, not for his. He could scarcely fear her blame, and it would have been a certain comfort to, as it were, bring her closer to him by confession. But Paul Macleod was too much of a gentleman for that kind of self-indulgence, and he was realising for the first time in his life the supreme impotence of repentance either in the past or the future. Had he not, even at the time, repented him of the evil in regard to Jeanie Duncan; yet had not a Nemesis grown out of his very repentance?
"Come with me part of the way back, dear," he said, when the necessity for writing business letters broke through even his desire to linger within touch of her kind hand. "I can't bear somehow to lose sight of you for an instant, but I must go--there are the lawyers--and Dr. Kennedy."
"I can tell Tom if you like," replied Marjory. "I write to him most days."
Something rose up in her hearer and cursed Tom, though the next moment he was reviling himself. That sort of thing would have to be put away for ever when he was Marjory's husband.
"You will have to marry me as soon as you can," he said, with what to her seemed great irrelevance.
"I will marry you as soon as you like, Paul; you know that," she replied cheerfully.
Yes! so far was easy; but afterwards? How would she ever put up with him? Yet the question was once more forgotten in the charm of the present.
It was the end of a soft day, and the summitless mountains looked purple and green under the mist wreaths which every now and again seemed to descend to fill the valley and leave sparkling drops of dew on the little curls below Marjory's cap, while the river ran roaring beside them, making a kind of droning accompaniment to the shriller drip from the trees upon the stones. Then the fine rain would cease, the birds begin to twitter, rustling the damp leaves, and sending a faster shower on the path; while from the West a gleaming blade of light would sever the mists, and give a glimpse of a new heaven and a new earth, where the sun was setting peacefully.
As she walked along beside him, her face seemed to hold the sunshine, his the mist, and once, in the middle of some talk over the future, he paused to hark back to the past.
"If we could begin it all over again from the day I first met you on the river, I think I might have a better chance--at least, I would not play the fool so utterly--at least, my memories ofyouwould be free from pain--and I should have left undone the things that I have done."
"Why should you say that?" she asked. "Is it not enough that what you did made me love you?"
"Your godfathers and godmothers should have christened you Barnabasina," he replied, with an effort after his old, light manner, "for you are verily a daughter of consolation, Marjory; but even you cannot take the sting out of some things. If I could have the past over again! Nothing short of that will satisfy me."
Her quick, bright face grew brighter.
"Then you shall have it, dear, as far as I'm concerned. Yes! you shall! It will be pleasant for me, too. Don't laugh at my fancy, for I like fancies sometimes; they help one along the dead level bits of the road. I'll say 'good-bye' here, Paul, here in the very spot where you said good-bye before--do you think I could forget it? And then to-morrow----" she hesitated in her very eagerness.
"Yes, to-morrow, Marjory?" he echoed.
"To-morrow you shall meet me at the old place on the river--you remember it, of course, and we shall begin all over again--all over again from the very beginning, to the very end. I remember them all, Paul; everything, I believe, that you ever said--everything, at any rate, that you ever said which I disliked. Is that unkind? And so when the time comes for those bits you shall not say them--we will cut them out of the past."
"It will be Hamlet with the Prince left out," he said, falling in with her playful mood.
"Not a bit of it! Besides if it were I should not mind. It was never the prince I liked, but Paul--the real Paul."
"I wonder which one that is," he replied quickly, yet with a smile; for her radiant face would not be cheated of its due.
"We shall see to-morrow--good-bye, Paul."
He shook his head.
"No! No! Marjory. Neither that, nor adieu, any more. Till to-morrow--Auf-wieder-sehn, my love!Auf-wieder-sehn."