Sara had spent the morning crying bitterly, in bed. Her letter to the Duke of Marshire was on the table by her side. From time to time she had taken it up, turned it over, shed fresh tears, and reproached herself for indecision. She held at bay every thought of Robert Orange, and formed the resolve of banishing him from her mind for ever. When the time came to dress for luncheon, she brightened a little, for the prospect of disguising her true feelings in the presence of Lord Reckage and Pensée appealed to that genius for mischief which animated the whole current of her life.To baffle the looker-onseemed not merely a great science, but the one game of wits which could never lose its interest. She was not insincere. She thought that lies, as a rule, were clumsy shifts, and abominable. Even in the moments when she was most thoroughly conscious of her talent for misleading others, she had never brought herself to think well of deception. She would have liked to feel that her heart was an open book for her friends to read. It would have been pleasant, she believed, if all could have known alwaysthat she practised a delicate art and played, consummately, fine comedy whenever she found spectators. But a solitary, mismanaged childhood, and the constant sense of being in many ways a foreigner, had taught her the penalty of frankness where sympathy could not supply, from its own knowledge, the unutterable half which makes up every confidence. The bitter pleasures of a conscience which caresses its worst burden were the only real ones of her daily existence. When she could say, at the end of the day, “I have fooled them all: they think I am happy, I am not: they think Reckage amuses me, he doesn't. They think I delight in these dull dinners and balls, I hate them,” a sort of exultation—the pride of a spirit singing under torture—would fill her whole being. All youth that is strong and thoughtful has much of this instinct of dissimulation. The world—to a young mind—appears controlled by elderly, suspicious, hateful custodians ever on the alert to capture, or thwart, every high enterprise and every passionate desire. There seems a vast conspiracy against happiness—the withered, dreary wiseacres in opposition to the joy, the daring, the beauty, the reckless vitality of souls still under the spell of spring. When poor Sara could escape from town into the country, mount her horse, and tear through a storm, the neighbours compared her to a witch on a broomstick, and, shaking their heads, would foresee much sipping of sorrow by the spoonful in the futureof Lord Garrow. To-day, however, the young lady assumed her most demure expression, and received the guests at luncheon as though she had never learnt the meaning of tears nor joined the gale in spirit.
Sir Piers Harding was the last to arrive. He was a thick-set, livid man with an unyielding smile and the yellow eyes of one whom rich diet rather than an angry god had rendered melancholy.
“You haven't changed in the least,” he said, considering Lord Garrow with some resentment.
“Ah, well!” replied his lordship, “eleven years do not make much difference at my time of life. You, however, are decidedly greyer. Where have you been hiding yourself? I think you were foolish to leave England. Gladstone was remarking but the other day, ‘Harding was always so cocksure.’ ‘And wasn't he right?’ said I. ‘Of course,’ said he; ‘and that was the worst of him. Hewasright. Who could stand it?’ That's the world. It's devilish unappreciative of the truth.”
Reckage, much bored by the old men, stood by Pensée's chair, where he could watch Sara and angle for her glance. When it happened that she smiled at him a little—either in mere friendship or mockery—he felt a kind of fire steal through his veins, and he told himself that she was a dangerous woman—a woman who could get her own way in the long run. That she was a girl—and, with all her shortcomings, a very innocent one—made her odd powers of fascination but the more insidious. She wore a dress of wine-coloured silk which fitted plainly over her breast and shoulders and fell in graceful flounces from the waist. The warm, olive lines of her cheek and throat appeared the darker in contrast with a twist of white lace which she wore round her neck; and her black hair, dressed higher than usual, was held in place by a large ruby comb which caught the fire-light as she moved. Reckage was conscious, for the first time in his life, of a real embarrassment. He could not talk to her; he felt tongue-tied when she addressed him. Ill at ease, yet not unhappy, he struggled to maintain some coherence in his conversation; but, at each moment, his own ideas grew less certain and Sara's voice more enchanting. It seemed to convey the lulling powers of an anodyne. When he tried to rouse himself, the effort was as painful as the attempt to wake from a dream within a dream.
“You were at the wedding this morning?” she asked lightly.
“No.... What a fool I am! Yes, of course. You mean Robert's wedding?”
She gave a little smile, and murmured, dropping her voice, “I meant Robert's wedding.”
Luncheon was then announced: the sliding doors which separated the dining-room from Lord Garrow's library were rolled back. They all walked in—Pensée and Sara leading the way.
“A sweet creature!” whispered his lordship behindtheir backs, indicating Lady Fitz Rewes. He sighed as he spoke. He could never feel that there was not something deplorable in Sara's physical brilliancy. Her upper-lip that day had a certain curl which he had learnt to regard as a danger-signal. What would she do next? As he sat down at the table and observed the sweep of her eyelashes toward Reckage, a presentiment of trouble clouded the new hopes he had formed for her career.
“Who are your strong men now?” asked Harding suddenly, after a moment's contemplation of Reckage, who sat opposite.
“Our strong men?” faltered Lord Garrow.
“Aren't most of 'em place-hunters and self-seekers?”
“You must meet Robert Orange,” said Pensée; “Mr. Disraeli believes in Robert Orange.”
“I never heard of him,” observed Sir Piers. “Who is he?”
“You may well ask,” said Lord Garrow. “He claims to be a de Hausée—on his father's side. Reckage can tell you about him. Many have a high opinion of the fellow, and say that if he will stick to one branch of politics, he may become useful. Personally, I don't call him a man of the world.”
“Not of our world, perhaps, papa. But there are so many other worlds!”
“Sara likes him. A lot of women like him,” said his lordship. He was annoyed at her interruptionand took his revenge by a feminine thrust. “The hero,” said he, “married some mysterious person this very morning. We may not hear so much about him in the future!”
“Dear Lord Garrow,” said Pensée, “his wife is a friend of mine—she is the most charming person.”
Sara put out her hand and touched Reckage on the arm.
“Do you think,” she asked, “that the wife will be an obstacle in his way?”
“Who can tell? Of course she has means, and he likes to do everything well.”
“Speaking for myself,” said Harding, “I have always held that a man's career rests rather on his genius than his marriage.”
“But you, my dear fellow,” put in Lord Garrow, testily, “you retired from political life because your theories could find no illustration there.”
“Pardon me,” said Sir Piers, with a grim laugh. “I retired because I had a faultless wife but unfortunately no genius. I shall therefore watch your friend's triumph or failure—for his position would seem to be precisely the reverse of my own—with peculiar sympathy.”
“Ah! I fear you are rather heartless,” exclaimed Sara. “For a man to have gone so far as Orange, and to know that perhaps—I say, perhaps—he can hope no higher because he made a fool of himself about a woman!”
“You speak as though it were a romantic marriage—a question of love.”
“Of course,” said the young lady softly. “It is a great passion.”
“Well, after all,” observed Harding, who was not insensible himself to Sara's delightfulness, “the British public is absurdly fond of a love-match. They adore a sentimental Prime Minister. They want to see him either marrying for love, or jilted in his youth for a richer man. These things enlist the popular sympathy. What made Henry Fox? His elopement with Lady Caroline Lennox.”
“To be sure,” said Reckage—“to be sure. That's a point.”
“It is a compliment to the sex,” continued Harding, “when a great man is taken captive by a pretty face. Men, too, rally round a Lochinvar. Such an evidence of heart—or folly, if you prefer to call it so—is also an evidence of disinterestedness. So, on the whole, I cannot follow your objections to the new Mrs. Orange.”
“You have been away so long,” said Garrow fussily, “that you have forgotten our prejudices. Orange himself, to begin with, has something mysterious in his origin. They say he is French—related to the old French aristocracy; but the less one says in England about foreign pedigrees the better. All that of itself is against him, and Mrs. Orange, it seems, is more or less French, or Austrian, too. Wecan't help regarding them as foreigners, and I always distrust foreigners in politics. Why should they care for England? I ask myself.”
“Why, indeed?” said Harding, with irony.
“Have I made myself clearer?” asked Garrow. “I can afford to speak. My own wife was a Russian. But I was not in political life, and she was an Ambassador's daughter.”
“You think you would feel more sure of Orange's patriotic instinct if he had chosen an Englishwoman?” said Reckage.
“I am bound to say that he would have shown discretion in settling down with one of our simple-hearted Saxon girls.”
“And who was Mrs. Orange before she married Orange?” asked Harding.
“A widow—a Mrs. Parflete,” said Garrow.
“Parflete!” exclaimed Harding. “Mrs. Parflete! But I have met her. She married Wrexham Parflete, an extraordinary creature. He lived for years with the Archduke Charles of Alberia. People used to say that Mrs. Parflete was the Archduke's daughter. I ran across Parflete the other day in Sicily.”
“But he is dead,” said Pensée, much agitated; “he drowned himself.”
“I cannot help that,” repeated Sir Piers. “I met him last week, and he beat me at écarté.”
“Then it is not the same man,” said Reckage, “quite obviously.”
“Wrexham Parflete had a wife; I heard her sing at a dinner-party in Madrid. She was living with the Countess Des Escas; there was a row and a duel on her account. I never forget names or faces.”
“But this looks serious,” said Reckage. “Do you quite understand? It's the sort of thing one hardly dares to think. That is to say if you mean what I mean. The marriage can't be legal.”
The two women turned pale and looked away from each other.
“I mean as much or as little as you like,” said Harding. “But Parflete was alive last Monday.”
“But bigamy is so vulgar,” observed Lord Garrow. “You must be mistaken. It is too dreadful!”
“Dreadful, indeed! And a great piece of folly into the bargain. It is selling the bear's skin before you have killed the bear.”
Lady Fitz Rewes glanced piteously at the three men and wrung her hands.
“Don't you see,” she exclaimed, “don't you see that if there is the least doubt of Mr. Parflete's death, we ought to go to them. Some one must follow them.”
“There is that touch of the absurd about it,” said Reckage, “which makes it difficult for a friend to come forward. To pursue a man on his wedding journey——“
“It is no laughing matter,” put in Lord Garrow; “and if the woman has deceived the poor fellow, it's a monstrous crime.”
“Oh, she hasn't; she couldn't deceive him,” said Pensée. “I know her intimately.”
“She was considered very clever—at Madrid,” said Sir Piers, finely. “To you she may appear more to be pitied than she really is.”
“Don't say such things! I won't hear them. I love her very much.”
“Perhaps she is clever enough to appear stupid in public.”
“No, no!” Her voice trembled and tears gushed from her eyes. “You will regret these words. This news will kill her.”
“Something must be done,” said Sara. “Beauclerk, you ought to follow them and tell them. Pensée is right.”
“This will make a horrid scandal,” said Lord Garrow, who was appalled at the prospect of being mixed up in so disagreeable an affair. “Why not leave it alone? It is not our business.”
“But it is Beauclerk's business, papa. Just put yourself in his place. Surely that is not asking too much.”
“We must avoid everything precipitate,” said Reckage; “we mustn't be over-hasty.”
Lady Fitz Rewes wiped her eyes, rose from the table, and began to draw on her gloves.
“But we must be friends,” she said; “if you cannot go to them, I will. Do you realise the poor child's position? An illegal marriage! She is the mostgentle, beautiful person I ever saw, with the best head, the purest heart. She professesnothing. I judge her by her actions.”
“But you must see,” said Reckage, “that I can't give Orange all this pain unless I have something more definite to go on. Sir Piers tells us that he played cards with Wrexham Parflete last week.” He paused.
“Wait a moment,” said Harding; “wait a moment. Does any one present know Parflete's handwriting?”
“I do,” said Pensée. “I saw his last letter to his wife. He wrote it before he committed suicide.”
Sir Piers took out his pocket-book, and, from the several papers it contained, selected a three-cornered note.
“By the merest chance,” said he, “I have this with me.”
The others unconsciously left their seats and looked over his shoulder while he smoothed out the sheet. It was dated plainly, “October 7, 1869,” and contained the acknowledgment of two £10 notes won at écarté.
“That is the hand,” said Pensée. “One could not mistake it.”
“Then this is really very serious,” said Lord Reckage, with twitching lips. “The whole story has had all along something of unreality about it. Robert seems fated to a renunciant career—colourless, self-annihilating.”
“What will you do?” murmured Pensée, with an imploring gesture. “What will you do?”
“They leave Southampton at three o'clock,” said Reckage; “it is now half-past two. The steamer goes twice a week only. I can send him a telegram and follow them overland—by way of Calais.”
“Then I must go also,” said Pensée firmly. “She will need me. I have had a presentiment of trouble so long that now I feel ‘Here it is come at last.’ I cannot be too thankful to God that it isn't worse.”
Nothing showed under the innavigable depths of Sara's eyes. She had moved to the fireplace and stood there holding one small foot to the blaze.
“Are you cold?” asked her father anxiously.
“I am ice,” she said, “ice!”
Reckage joined her and said, under his voice, “You think I ought to go, don't you?”
This question—given in a half-whisper—seemed to establish a fresh intimacy between them. It was the renewal of their old friendship on deeper terms.
“Yes, you must go,” she answered; “and, Beauclerk, write to me and tell me how he bears it.”
“He is accustomed to a repressive discipline on these matters. The philosophic mind, you know, is never quite in health. Probably, he won't show much feeling.”
His gaze seemed to burn into her face. It was as though she had been walking in an arbour and suddenly, through some rift in the boughs, foundherself exposed to the scorching sun. She felt dominated by a force stronger than her own nature. A little afraid, she shrank instinctively away from him, and as she dared not look up, she did not see the expression of triumph, mingled with other things, which, for a moment, lit up Lord Reckage's ordinarily inscrutable countenance. Lately, he had been somewhat depressed by his encounter with refractory wills. His horse, his colleagues on the Bond of Association, his future bride, had showed themselves fatiguing, perhaps worthless, certainly disheartening and independent accessories to his life. Here, at last, was some one brilliant, stimulating, by no means self-seeking, Quixotic in enthusiasms.
“Sara,” he said, obeying an impulse which surprised himself, “do you believe in me?”
This time she gave him a straight glance.
“Yes,” she answered. “You might do a great deal if you could forget yourself for a few months.”
Pensée, much troubled and full of thoughts, walked over to them.
“Oh, Sara!” she said, “isn't it terrible? If you could have seen them both this morning—she looked so beautiful, perfectly lovely—a sight I never can forget. And now this blow! What man can teach men to understand the will of God?”
Robert and Brigit were silent with happiness on their way to Southampton. Side by side they watched the country through the carriage windows. There had been a fog in London when they left, and the sun, at intervals, shone out like a live coal among dying embers. All was obscured; the foot-passengers and passing vehicles seemed black straying shadows in the atmosphere. But the express emerged at last from the clinging darkness into autumnal fields, some brown after the harvest, others studded with hay-ricks. At one point in the landscape they noticed a flock of sheep drinking at a stream. The boy who guarded them waved his cap at the train, and this little signal, coming, as it were, from human nature, gave them a reassurance of the day's reality. Near Bishopstoke the clouds were white and dense, but, rippling in places, they disclosed blue stretches of the heaven which, in their masses, they concealed. Southampton began with small houses. One had a tattered garden, where a stone copy of the Medicean Venus stood on a patch of squalid turf near a clothes' line and against an ivy-grown wall. Then the green sands were reached. The sea, like liquid granite, sparkled in the distance. Rows of dull dwellings, shops, public-houses, and hotels came next. The train, with a shriek, rushed into the station. It was still too early for lunch, so they walked down to the pier, where they saw several yachts and pleasure-boats at anchor in the harbour, and the New Forest greenly outlined in the distance. These were the things which engraved themselves on Brigit's mind. The impressibility of youth is retentive for outward objects, but the inner mood—the sensation and idea which make the mental state—lives unconsciously, and is recognised only in the long process of time. Brigit could have described the scene, but her emotions did not seem to her, emotions. Absorbed by them, and in them, she neither abandoned herself to the hour nor asked herself what the hour held. She and the hour were one—a single note; and the joy she felt at being with Robert, leaning on his arm and hearing his voice, was so simple that, even if a psychologist of the deepest experience had been able to probe into the workings of her mind, he would have found nothing there to analyse. Hers was a child's affection—the first love of a heart still immature, and not yet made suspicious of itself by contact with others less innocent. Parflete had been too worldly-wise not to guard and value—at its true price—a disposition so graceful in its very essence. She had a knowledge of affairs beyond her years, yet her owninstincts, her education, her few friendships, had kept her curiously ignorant of evil, of much also that is neither good nor evil, but merely human. The sombre sentimentality which lurks in most young girls of seventeen was not in her character at all, and in its stead she possessed the gaiety and carelessness of feeling which belongs to imaginative rather than to sensuous natures. A boy-like spirit showed itself in all her words, movements, moods; her womanhood still slept, and thus, while her intelligence made her an unusual companion and her beauty presented a constant appeal to all that is romantic, it was inevitable that melancholy and reserve should enter largely into the passionate love which Robert felt for her. He told himself that he would not have her different. The glance of her eyes, which stirred him strangely to the very depths of his being, never varied in its sweetness nor its calm. When her lightest touch could sway his body and spirit, she, unconscious of her power, would press his hand against her cheek and talk about the geraniums in the convent garden or the chances of the Carlist war. It was all wonderful. It had seemed perfect. And yet—and yet. She was not cold, but was she unearthly? Was she, perhaps, some straying angel—some fervid, bright spirit, flame-coloured and intangible, a being of the elfin race? As they stood together looking at the distant coastline a depression which he could neither fathom nor control came over him. His bride seemed so muchyounger than he had ever realised. She cared for him—how could he doubt it? But was the indefinable, indispensable feeling absent?
“Do you remember our journey from Catesby?” she asked suddenly. “I slept. Wasn't I dull? Did you mind?”
No one could see them. He stooped and kissed her fragrant, animated face. “I wish,” said he, “I wish that you were not quite such a child.”
The feeling of solitariness weighed upon his soul with a crushing weight unknown until that day—the day of days, his wedding day. Heretofore he had craved for solitude because it had been full of her imagined companionship. Now that she actually lived and talked by his side, the fancied image of her paled, vanished. The real creature was adorable, but, for some reason, maddening, and not, at all events, the being of his fancy. Their old relations—ethereal and exquisite, no doubt—now seemed an empty mockery, self-deluding foolishness. He coloured at the remembrance of all that Disraeli had hinted, and Reckage had brutally declared, on the large topic of idealism in passion. A man, in spite of all determinations to be uncomplaining, knows the How much and How little that he may demand, merely as a man, from any given advantage or disadvantage in existence. Robert, hating himself, condemning himself, was conscious, in spite of himself, that Brigit's affection for him was not love in the full human sense of the word.He had exchanged an ordinary self-restraint for an impossibly false position. She could inspire his life, but could she enter into it, be it, live it with him daily? Would there not have to be great reservations, half statements, and, worst of all, a subtle kind of hypocrisy? He reproached himself for selfishness, yet the fear came and it remained. He had captured the rainbow and married the goddess. Were there not many legends illustrating this folly?—stories of men who had married divinities and perished, not because the divinities were at fault, but because mortals must wed with mortals. The sight of his wife's beauty caused a sudden, violent irritation. He wished she had none, for then, perhaps, he thought he would have been satisfied, more than content, in the placid consideration of her charms of character. He found himself reduced to the absurd predicament of deciding to banish her from his thoughts—a last sophism which showed him, all too clearly, how wretched he was. Their silence, which had been due in the first instance to the sufficient delight of being in each other's company, became that long pause which arises from an unutterable embarrassment. Brigit felt by instinct some change in Robert's mood, but as she could not account for it then, her sympathy failed. The keen salt air filled her with its own free buoyancy; her delicate skin flushed in the wind; she forgot the nervous strain of the morning, the awfulness of the grey chapel, the new state of things, griefs that werepast, responsibilities that were to come. She turned to Orange as a child would turn to its inseparable comrade, and clapped her hands with amusement at an organ-grinder with a monkey and a dog whom she noticed sitting at the end of the pier, waiting, apparently, for one of the excursion steamers bound for the Isle of Wight.
“Pennies for the monkey, Robert,” she cried; “a lot of pennies! And then we must have our lunch. May I have some chicken and one of those very droll, very stupid, English rice puddings? Please let me have one.... And may I kiss the dog? It is a nice little dog—quite as nice as Pensée's Fidelio. Now I am going to talk to the monkey.”
She ran toward the little animal, who was shivering, pathetic and grotesque, in a military cap and red petticoat trimmed with yellow braid. The dog, which was a young pug with excellent points, gave Brigit, after many entreaties, his paw. She addressed the monkey in Italian, and laughed till she cried at its absurdities. Robert looked on, consumed by a sensation which he recognised, with much shame, as jealousy. He thought the pug dull and the monkey revolting. Yet she kissed one, and showered heavenly smiles on both.
“I did not know that you were so fond of animals,” he said, as they walked to the hotel for lunch.
“I am not,” she answered frankly, “as a rule. But when I am with you I feel so happy that I wantto kiss everything—the ground, and the trees, and chairs, and poodle dogs, and the whole world!”
“Then why not—me?”
She looked at him, blushed a little, and waited some moments before she replied.
“I don’t know,” she said at last. “It must be because I am not in the habit of doing so. I am not accustomed to you yet. I keep thinking ‘I shall wake up in a minute and he will be miles away.’ Can't you understand? So I am pretending to myself all the time that you are not really here.”
“I see.”
“No, dearest, you don't quite understand; and you are a little disappointed in me because I seem—I must seem—rather flippant. I daren't be serious—I daren't. I daren't believe that I am your wife.”
“But why not?”
She shook her head, and her whole face became clouded by the old, terrible, unnatural sadness which he knew so much better than her laughter.
“I am not used to joy,” she said. “Perhaps, if we ever get to Heaven, our first impulse will be to run back again to Purgatory, where we are more at home!”
“You have too much wit, darling, to be happy anywhere!”
“No! no! I don't ask to be conventionally happy, but I want you always. That is all ... you, always, on any terms—on a rag-heap, in a storm, with jackals howling at us!”
“What a picture!”
“My idea of unalloyed bliss, or, at least, the only one I have ever permitted myself. I can even believe that might be realised.” A smile hovered again about her lips, but she looked steadily ahead, as though she were still resolved not to reassure herself, by any too-frequent glances, of his much-loved presence.
The peculiar tenderness of her voice was in itself a charm against ill-humour. A rush of bitter self-reproach told Robert that his dissatisfaction had been the inevitable result of too many blessings on a base nature. He tried to speak; he watched instead, with a desperate, eager gaze, the play of her expressive features.
“I wonder,” she said, “what our life is to be? Not that I wish to pry into the future, but, for some reason, I can never feel settled. Every morning is a surprise. I think, too, about your character ... your career. Have I helped you, or have I been a hindrance? I am perverse, capricious—not an angel. No human influence can help me very much. I must depend on the discipline of God. Oh, if I could know all that He wants me to do!”
“Most of us have that desire, Brigit. At least it is better to be damned, in the world's opinion, trying to do the will of God than saved—doing nothing! One has to take a good many chances—even the chance of displeasing Him—if it comes to a crisis.”
“Many people would call that reckless.”
“Let them call it anything,” said the young man; “names do not matter. The ghastly, unspeakable dread is to be timorous, halting, the creature of indecision.”
“We are too much alike,” she sighed. “Oh, Robert, if we did not suffer horribly within ourselves when we do wrong, I believe we should both defy every law in the world! I am a born rebel.”
More than a note of her mother's insolence was in the speech, but the whole spirit of the dead actress seemed to possess Brigit for that moment. Her being rippled, as it were, with the new disturbance, just as a pond will tremble to its edges at the mere dip of a swallow's wing. The artistic hatred of all restraint and the wild desire of liberty were the imperious passions of her heart—more vehement than any other feeling—even her love for Orange.
“I could fight,” she said, “a visible devil, but this struggle with moods and tastes is deadening.”
“What are the moods and tastes?” he asked.
“I cannot describe them well. But music calls me; I hear it trilling, and sobbing, and whispering everywhere; and sometimes it is so loud and so beautiful that I wonder why every one else doesn't stop to listen. They never do. So I sing back my answer. It is silent singing. You would only wonder why I was so quiet all at once.”
“But I have heard you sing.”
“Not with my real voice, Robert. It is strongerthan it used to be.” She checked herself and hesitated, stopped by a sudden scruple—a sort of delicacy. She thought nothing at all of her beauty and never of her fortune; but in giving Robert her voice, and the nameless ambitions which enveloped it, she was conscious that she had made, in some way, a renunciation.
“Say what you were going to say, dearest?”
“I cannot forget,” she exclaimed desperately, “that mama was an actress. And I remember some of the nights at the theatre.... I liked the theatre.... I believe I could act.... I have learned the whole ofPhédreand the whole ofJuliet. That is why I live.”
This avowal of her secret over-ruling instinct set free the sanguine strength which circumstances had imprisoned, but could not destroy, in her character. The constant effort of hiding from all observation the irrepressible yearnings of a talent that would not be denied, had given her that quality of mysteriousness, of dreamy habits of thought, of languor, which, even to Robert, had looked as though she might find this earth too rough to live on. But the despair which comes from fighting, unsuccessfully, the world, is not that appearance of weakness which is the result of fighting—more or less effectively—one's own energy. In this latter issue the beaten foe joins forces obediently enough with the conqueror, till at last the opposing elements are directed, whether for good or evil, by one will.
“So you want to go on the stage,” said Orange quietly.
She turned to him and saw, with anguish, the deep amazement his words had not expressed.
“No,” she said, “no. I have you instead. I want to devote myself to you—to exist for you.”
“Oh, don't you see, my dear child, that this is a kind of—of pity—of anything you like, except the one thing——“
“I adore you, Robert. Oh, I can't get at what I want to say! Any talk about love always sounds very stilted or hollow. I only know that I want to live intensely in all that concerns you; that just to think of you makes me perfectly happy. When I said that learningPhédreandJulietwas the reason I lived, I was thinking of the time when I had no right to think of you. Of course I loved you always, from the beginning. It began at Chambord when I first met you. I very seldom say these things, and it is better that they should remain unsaid for the most part. But you must never doubt me, and I feel to-day, in spite of all we know about each other and all we have suffered, that you are doubting me now. You fear I don't know my own mind. Isn't this the trouble?”
The intuition which comes to men and women through suffering has always the certain sharpness of a surgeon's knife. It may be a reassurance to have the inmost thought plucked at by some loving spirit,and yet it is seldom that the touch can be given without inflicting agony. Orange could not reply at once. In his resolve to be unselfish—to put aside that personal equation which was nothing less than his whole nature—he had to steel his heart to her, contradicting painfully, by curt, unfelt phrases, the promptings of a soul turned in upon itself, desolate and confused.
“I have been selfish and thoughtless,” he said abruptly; “a missed vocation is irreplaceable and it is also indestructible. You hear the echo of the call as long as you live—perhaps afterwards. At your age you could feel, but you could not wholly understand your talents. If you had told me all this before——“
She laughed with real joyousness and clung more closely to his arm.
“I didn't tell you,” she exclaimed, “because you would have said just what you are saying now. You are the one. All the rest is a means of forgetting you. It is something resembling happiness to be alone in the turmoil of the world with one unspoilt illusion. This illusion in my case is a little idea that I could be a great actress—perhaps! Don't look grave, Robert. It makes you sad when I talk this way.”
“Those who can be disillusioned have no convictions. Disillusion is the failure of a half-belief. I learnt that long ago. But I hate the very word in your mouth. Woe to us both if we cannot beresolute now. I could have waited—had I seen any reason to wait. Time could make no difference in my love. As it is, I have stolen you from yourself. But now I have stolen you I will keep you. I cannot—cannot give you back again to anything or anybody.”
He spoke with that almost mocking tenderness which dissembles its passion. At the practical difficulty which now confronted him, all that was merely romantic and speculative in his soul took flight, as birds that are frightened from a quiet orchard by the yelp of dogs. He became aware that he was bitterly independent of the joys he had once found in the mere spectacle of the exterior world—the play of light and shade, the changing visions of the sky, the charm of the earth. His own thoughts were now the sole realities, and the dulness which suddenly came over his vision for outward things seemed to render it the more acute and concentrated for the things of the mind. As distant hills and tree tops show most distinctly before a storm, so every possibility which can arise from a conflict of duties stood out with a decisive clearness for his consideration. He had married in haste a child-bride. There was no blinking the fact. She had the strenuous religious fibre, and with it real Bohemian blood. She was also at the yielding age, when a dominant influence could do much to divert or modify every natural trait. He could not doubt that he had this power over her then. How far, and towhat purpose, should he exert it? For himself he wished to discourage any hankering on her part for public life, and, most of all, public life behind the footlights, under an artificial sky. No one knew better than he that there are certain things of love, of nobility, of temperament, of pride, in certain lives which the world at large would rather calumniate than comprehend. People in general clung to their opinions not because they were true, but because they were their own, and among pretty general opinions—particularly in the year 1869—there was a strong prejudice against handsome young women who went on the stage. It was not in him to consider—even as an egoistic reflection to be put aside—how far Brigit's project, carried into action, could effect his own political career. His apprehensions were all for her and her own content.
“Promise me,” he said, “that you will always tell me when the acting mood comes over you. Never fight it, never try to resist it, give it the liberty to die, but also the right to live. There is an old Hindoo proverb: ‘Find the flower which can bloom in the silence that follows—not that which precedes—the storm.’ This applies perfectly to a talent or a vocation. If the mood is there, in spite of fatigue, or discouragement, or other claims—happiness for that matter—you may depend that it is the ruling motive of your life and not to be vanquished. You must follow the bent or you will suffer—suffer till you die of it.”
“How? in what way?”
“Either in your vanity or your conscience; either by the world's judgment on your conduct or by your own estimate of your conduct. You have no vanity, so the world doesn't count. But you have a conscience, and that counts for all!”
He had not calculated, and he could not have foreseen, the effect of his words. Her eyes filled with tears.
“My dearest,” she said, “don't you see how trivial everything is to me in comparison with you? But I dare not love you so much as I can! So I encourage other enthusiasms—out of fear. Sometimes it seems as though the extraordinary, impossible ideal would be to have you with me for ever, and be an actress as well. But that is out of the question. And if I had my choice—if I could be as great as Rachel or Mrs. Siddons, or live with you on my dear rag-heap, with the jackals howling—do you think that I would hesitate, that I could hesitate?”
“If I believed you I should be a dreadful coxcomb!”
“Risk the coxcomb,” she said. “I can!”
A clanging bell and the noise of traffic on the quay recalled them to the moment. They had barely time to reach the steamer and get on board. A strong, cold breeze was blowing; the sun shone full on the sea, which, near the horizon, was as green as the sky on a summer evening. But clouds were gathering inthe north-west, and the peculiar brightness which presages rain lent a fugitive brilliancy to the atmosphere. The town and its spires glittered; the water, frothing round the paddle-wheels, sent its shining spray upon the brown boards of the wharf. Brigit kissed her hands toward France.
“Soon,” she exclaimed, “soon I can kiss its ground. How I love my country and the place where you lived, Robert, as a boy!”
Lady Fitz Rewes had determined to prevent the marriage of Lord Reckage with Agnes Carillon. She could not forget the dreadful scene with Sara when that poor girl was endeavouring to reconcile herself to the Duke of Marshire's proposal. Pensée had studied each person concerned in the possible tragedy. She saw that Agnes was by no means serene, that the portrait by Rennes somehow made no progress, that Reckage was feverish and excitable. His bearing toward Sara during the lunch confirmed Pensée's suspicion that the love which had existed between them as boy and girl was still unextinguished on either side. He would have been less than mortal, she thought, if he had not felt, with all the bitterness of a conscious fool, that he had missed his true destiny. Sara possessed the warmth and wealth of heart which were the complements his own bleak nature required. Agnes Carillon, with her accurate, invariable beauty, had a prim disposition, wholesome enough for a man of strange, dark humours like David Rennes, but perilous always in its effect on any frigid or calculating mind.And Reckage was known to be supremely selfish. It seemed to Pensée that Sara had behaved very naturally, very touchingly, through the trying conversation on the subject of rising men and their marriages. Her demeanour had been unsurpassable. But it was not in nature that a woman who understood a man could look on, inactive and indifferent, while he fettered himself with some damaging influence. Perhaps her ladyship felt the situation the more keenly, because, much as she loved Mrs. Parflete, she could not bring herself to think that she was the wife for Robert. She had spent many weeks refusing admittance to this thought, yet prudence was prudence, and, by virtue of its stability, it prevailed. The union, even viewed in the most favourable light, had always seemed imprudent. It was too hurried. Shocking, mortifying as the possibility of its being illegal was, Pensée's conviction that Almighty God ordered all things for the best seemed less a faith and more a matter of pure reason than was usual in the ordinary run of hard cases which made demands upon her piety. “Two diamonds do not easily form cup and socket,” was an old saying in her home circle. The more she had seen of Brigit Parflete the more she had been struck with her—struck with her moodiness, struck with her contempt for received opinions, her vigour and independence of will. Was she the wife to further the advance of a man of extraordinary ability, already much handicapped on the world's course by a proud spirit, areckless, impetuous disdain of creatures generally considered the pink of human excellence? He was passionately in love, and the strength of this sentiment carried, for the time, every thought of his being along with it. But love was not unalterable. The change would surely come. The fever and folly, the exaltation and ardours would fade into a sacred affection—an instinctive tenderness; yet other interests, as vital, and in their season more absorbing, would flock into his life. What then?
Pensée and Reckage did not exchange many words till they found themselves alone, face to face, in the railway carriage bound for Dover. Then they looked with wonder at each other, stupefied at the errand on which they were bound, and the strangeness of the whole proceeding. Reckage noticed that his companion was attired so correctly and with such discretion that no one could have told she was a pretty woman. Her veil was not unusually thick, yet it disguised every charm of expression and feature. He had bought her a novel, some papers, and a few magazines; she turned these over listlessly, and murmured, as the train sped along—
“Of course, I had to come. No one will say a word when the circumstances are known. I hope poor Renshaw is comfortable in the next carriage.”
Reckage replied—
“You have behaved like an angel!”
He probably but half understood Pensée's character:he underrated her intellect, and he misconstrued her friendship for Orange into a weak infatuation. Agnes Carillon shared his view on this point, for, as he and his future bride could never be confidential with each other, they managed an appearance of intimacy by discussing with great freedom the private affairs of their friends. Agnes, in the fervour of godliness, had even seen much that was reprehensible in Lady Fitz Rewes's devotion to a man who had no idea of marrying her. She had declared that she could not understand it—an attitude pleasing to her fancy and gratifying to her pride. Reckage had thought it was not quite clear that the danger was immediate. Such was his feeling now toward Pensée, although he was conscious of a certain curiosity with regard to her motive in taking Brigit's part with such magnificent self-effacement. This seemed to him unnatural; and although she had impressed him with the highest opinion of her kindness, he could not believe that a woman of genuinely tender sensibilities could have approached such an altruistic height. She was an excellent creature—as creatures went, he thought, but hard in a feeble way. Then he closed his eyes and called up the elusive image of Sara de Treverell—very dark, very handsome, with her superb black hair reaching to her knees—as he had often seen it when she was a little girl—her blue eyes shining with a strange light, her lips smiling, her white arms held out....
“Sara may not be a happy girl,” said Pensée suddenly, “but she is a clever one.”
Reckage started from his reverie.
“How odd!” he exclaimed, surprised into candour. “I was thinking of her at that very moment.”
Pensée had read as much on his face, but she did not tell him so.
“I feel for her very much,” she observed instead. “She must be the greatest possible comfort to her father, although he may not realise it. Yet he is forcing on the engagement to Marshire. She keeps up in the most courageous way, but she has ideals, and no persuasion will induce her to change them.”
He turned red, and said, looking out of the window—
“Ideals do no harm when, for some reason or other, we are unable to carry them out.”
“I cannot imagine what she will do, or how she will bear her life if things continue as they are.”
“What things?”
“She is like a slave to Lord Garrow. She is with him constantly, reading to him, and doing everything for him. She will be a cruel loss to his home when she marries.”
“I rather revel at the thought of the dismay which will attend her final capture of Marshire.”
“I used to hope that you perhaps——“
He glanced up and smiled with an air of satisfaction.
“I don't like the appearance of measuring myselfagainst Marshire.... But—but he certainly seems, in character, the culminating point of mediocrity! In fact, Mr. Disraeli, whom I seldom quote, so described him.”
“What a husband for that brilliant, affectionate girl! She likes all that is simple and grand. A real love—if it were a happy one—would make her even more charming, and if it caused her suffering, it would make her even more noble. But failing this, there will be a frightful void in her life.”
Reckage, whose imagination began to play round this thought, replied with unusual seriousness—
“I should be horribly grieved to see any declension from her better nature. I think I am getting to think less of mere social power. I feel more than I used to do that, if one could literallyliveone's theories on moral strength, it would be a complete refutation of these ideas about the influence of money or a big accidental position. Old Harding was right when he said at luncheon to-day that disinterestedness counted very highly in the popular vote. The point about Henry Fox's elopement with Caroline Lennox was sound.”
“It would not have been sound,” said Pensée, “if Caroline Lennox had been a third-rate woman. A man can be desperate so long as his choice, on the whole, justifies, either by her beauty, or her talents, or something uncommon, an extreme measure. Now, Robert may not have made a wise choice, but it iscertainly a distinguished one. It can be understood and it commands respect.”
“Oh, yes, his is a thorough-going emotion, and one couldn't find a fault with its object. A strong man is always a man who feels stronglyandwho can carry his feeling into action. Robert, with all his mysticism, is never subject to the deep depressions of spirit which usually afflict men of his gifts. He does not know what it is to be languid; or to have invincible indecisions. He will die game—even if he does know German metaphysic backwards!”
She was astonished.
“How well you understand him!”
He leant forward a little and adopted a more confidential tone—
“Sara spoke of him at lunch. Her judgment of men and affairs—for so young a woman—is nothing short of amazing. I attribute it to the Asiatic streak on her mother's side. It is a kind of second-sight. What a wife for a Prime Minister! And Marshire, a fellow of middling ability and no experience, has had the sense to perceive her qualities!... My feelings can't be easily defined, nor, indeed, is it necessary they should.... I have gone so far that I cannot see anything for it but to go on.”
“You mean—in your own marriage?”
He sighed profoundly, remained for several minutes silent, and finally roused himself with a painful effort.
“There are some griefs which can defy any consolation save that of time. Time ultimately cures everything. It is a matter of history that I was once very much attached to Sara.”
“I know,” murmured Pensée. “I know.”
He covered his eyes with one hand and looked through his fingers at her face, asking himself by what transition he could best arrive at a frank exposition of his embarrassed sentiments. It seemed to him that she was intelligent as well as trustworthy, and he felt impelled to call in her assistance, being sure that, in any cause where love could be pleaded, she would show a judicious leniency.
“If you have not observed that I am still—too interested, you have not observed with your usual sagacity,” said he.
“I think—if I may say so—that time seems only to deepen a sorrow of that kind.”
“Particularly when it is associated—as in this case—with a certain self-reproach. In times of trial my pen is my refuge. I could not write for a year after I had decided—irrevocably as I believed—that Sara and I could not make each other happy.”
“Then you never actually proposed to her? There was never any tacit understanding?”
“Never. And if there be any part of my conduct in life upon which I can look with entire satisfaction, it is my behaviour with regard to Sara. I did not mislead her in any way. I was even over-scrupulous,and purposely avoided opportunities of meeting. I say this in order that you may know how very determined a man's will must be—if he does not wish to be selfish. A course of struggling is miserable indeed. I spared her any knowledge of my misery.”
“She might have been happier had she known of it! Last year she remained entirely alone; and solitude is full of bad things—it is very dangerous, however much one is accustomed to it.”
“Poor girl! But I could not, in honour, suffer a false impression to be formed. As a matter of fact, my family wouldn't hear of the match. There is no denying that they were set on my marrying Agnes.”
At last he had been able to mention her. He leant back and relied on his companion's tact to elaborate the theme.
Pensée murmured—
“Dear Agnes! If there are storms, they won't come from her side. She is of a very elevated spirit——“
He winced, but she continued—
“Generous, sternly honest, greatly esteemed by every one. Neither pique nor passion nor petty feelings could ever influence her mind. She is the most angelic, good woman I ever met—she is one to whom one may complain, and be a bore. She has such utter patience!”
“You would not be impressed by professions, noram I very clever at making them,” said he, “but you know, by sympathy, that my affection for her is—is the heroic feeling of devotion which has also a kind of exclusiveness——“
He could not finish the sentence.
“It leads you to imagine that you could never survive her loss,” said Pensée gravely. “But need you lose her—as a friend?” Something in his countenance encouraged her to pursue this train of thought. “Agnes has the deepest admiration for your qualities. No doubt, you truly realise the high standard of character which she would hope for in one to whom she gave her love. You have proved yourself worthy to call out her best feelings.”
Reckage was very touched by this tribute.
“Andherbest feelings,” said he, “ought to make us—at our best—very humble.”
Pensée lifted her veil just above her eyes, clasped her hands tightly together, and kept her earnest glance full upon his.
“I believe,” she continued, “that if it were in man, or woman, to command the heart, you would have her entire affection. I believe she is unhappy. During the last week she has had many ups and downs. She has passed with astonishing rapidity from the lowest despair to the height of joy. She has tried to distract her mind by incessant occupation. But you know her manner—it is transparent near the surface, difficult to sound in its depths.”
“Yes, she has a childlike openness—up to a certain point.”
“I can only tell you, therefore, what I think, judging as a woman, by outward signs. I seem to detect a sort of self-doubt—as though she feared making some error. She has become of late strangely intense and vivid—she is fascinated by books, and drawn to music, as she never was before. Perhaps she sees that you give her a priceless, beautiful friendship which must indeed be flattering. Yet—yet in marriage friendship is not enough. So she is acquiring a stock of interests which are impersonal.”
Loyalty to Agnes forbade any reference to David Rennes. She had no intention of giving the least hint of her own private conviction on the subject. She desired merely that Reckage should learn how the engagement might be broken off without giving unimaginable grief to the young lady. The move under this aspect was skilful and successful. Reckage received her words as a subtle appeal to his honour and kindness.
He said at once—
“I am glad you have told me this. I could bear my own mistakes. I could not bear hers. Let me look at the step which I have taken! The choice is for life. Agnes is inflexibly conscientious and self-denying. Several years of attachment have tried us both. She knows my faults; I know where her”—he paused for a moment—“her qualities mightclash with mine. We spoke of this together; we considered every circumstance that could, by any remote chance, weigh against our common happiness.”
Pensée shook her head.
“Of course, that was right,” she said doubtfully.
“It is no easy matter to get a promise from Agnes,” he went on; “but when once given it is inviolate. This throws a grisly responsibility upon me. I must risk everything, if I am to do anything. You have expressed a dread which I have been endeavouring to stifle. I am making her wretched.”
“I don't say thatyouare making her wretched; I say she seems disturbed and unsettled when she ought to be full of the brightest hopes.”
“Quite so. I fear the unsettlement is exceedingly great. A neutrality on your part is all I could in reason expect; but your counsel in such a grave matter——“
Pensée summoned all her energy, and breathed a little prayer for the well-being of the two women whose lives were at stake.
“I saw Agnes this morning,” she said, speaking at a rapid pace; “she came up for some shopping, and she returned home directly after tea.”
“She ought to have told me that she was in town,” he exclaimed.
“My dear Beauclerk, you know her sweetness! She said, ‘I don't wish to take up his time; an engagement ought not to be a servitude.’ That is the reason why she did not tell you.”
“She ought to have told me,” he repeated. “Such extreme delicacy was most uncalled for. It wasn't even friendly. When we were old friends, and nothing more, she would have told me.”
“Yes, when you were friends.”
“I think she gave me a nasty rap in so acting; I do, indeed. One would infer that I had failed in some ordinary attentiveness. It is a distinct reprimand.”
“You are quite wrong. She meant it in the noblest way.”
“Then it is a desperately near thing between noble conduct and a downright snub. I can't help lashing out about it.”
In Pensée's own private perception this outburst of temper was no bad sign. It convinced her, at least, of the sincerity of his feelings towards Agnes and his genuine desire to behave well at every point in their relationship.
“Don't you understand,” she said, “that Agnesdaresnot love you. This being the case, I cannot see that she could go on in what might be called a natural way. Will you bear with me, and, if I am indiscreet, forgive me? She wants all the sympathy and support she can get. She is suffering very much from want of courage. She trusts, perhaps, in her friends' prayers. It seems as though something very momentous were going on, but that she has nothingto do but to wait for it. I think there may be a way out still; God may overrule people's hearts.”
She had never intended to say so much, and she trembled with an excitement which she could not subdue.
“I must admit,” said Reckage, “that for some time I have had a conviction, weaker or stronger, but, on the whole, constantly growing, that Agnes and I are unsuited to each other. I am too much accustomed to this idea to feel pain at it.”
“O, it makes my heart ache—I mean so much painfulness for every one concerned!”
“This conviction must, sooner or later, lead me to action. The world is indulgent to the impetuous, because they appear strong; and it is most severe to those who hesitate, because hesitation is taken for a sign of weakness. Lookers-on have no patience with moral combats—and least of all in affairs of this kind. But no opinion will force me to do what I do not think right. If our engagement is a mistake, I don't intend to ‘lump it,’ as they say. We must mend the evil. And, thank God, it is not too late. The merciful part is that in relieving my own mind I shall also greatly relieve hers. It is clear she doesn't love me. This last act proves the fact conclusively.”
Pensée did not agree with this, but she remained silent, fearing lest a rash word should spoil her good work.
“For a long, long time,” he continued, “my constant question has been, ‘Can this last? is it a delusion?’ But I do not shut my eyes now. I knew they were all wrong at home when they made out that she was in love with me, and expected me to propose. We are both the victims of an impertinent, if well-meant, interference—what Robert calls ‘the jabbering of the damned.’ Poor Robert, we are forgetting him. I am ashamed to talk so much about myself.”
“In his case, I see no help but resignation to the will of God,” said Pensée.
“But that resignation is an awful thing,” said Reckage. “It is a shade better than the atheism of despair; yet only a shade better.”
By degrees Pensée was learning why Robert had such a strong, tenacious attachment to this man. He was always faithful to his mood. All he did and all he said represented accurately all he thought and all he felt. Some live a dual life—he lived but one; and, with his faults, peculiarities, and egoism, there was never the least dissimulation. It was true that, if occasion required, he could hold his tongue; but he abhorred tact and hated doctrines of expediency—everything, in fact, which put any restraint upon the “development of his inclinations.”
The train was now approaching Dover. He decided to put his own troubles aside, and, out of mere decency, concentrate his thoughts on the severe trial in store for Orange.
“This business about Parflete,” said he, “is a great blow. One becomes indifferent to what is said of, or done to, one's self; but that all this uncommon, saddening, sickening trouble should come upon Robert is too bad. It seems a kind of hacking and hacking, bit by bit.”
“You are certainly very fond of him,” said Pensée.
“Yes, I am. He's so dependable.”
Pensée engaged a private cabin for the crossing, and she retired there with her maid. Too tired and over-strung to sleep, she lay down, closed her eyes, and lived again through the many fatiguing, agitating moments of that day. Her affection for Orange had been so steeped in hopelessness from the hour, months before, when he told her of his love for Brigit, that the wedding of these two had been a relief rather than a final anguish. The agonising possibilities which had sometimes darted into her mind would never again surprise her: the questions which she had always striven to prohibit were no longer even in existence. He had taken the unredeemable step: he was married. Jealousy had no part in her suffering. Robert had never given her the smallest right to feel slighted, or neglected, or abandoned. Some women are jealous by temperament, but the greater number are jealous only when their trust is insulted or their dignity brought down to the humiliating struggle for a lost empire. Empire over Orange she had never possessed or claimed: she could feel no bitterness, therefore, atthe thought of the small place she occupied in his destiny. The sorrow which cut and severed her heart was loneliness. She felt that, after the wedding, she could hardly do anything or take interest in anything. It seemed as if the waters were gathered in heaps on either side; things, she thought, could not be better, or worse. God was with her still, and her children—her dear children—were with her still, but she could not disguise the greatness of the loss. Her single wish, as far as she dared have a wish, had been to benefit Robert and to win his confidence. She had seen his mind working in various directions, and although she was not, in the faintest sense, his fit companion intellectually, she had a knowledge and experience of life which made her friendship valuable—a gift worth offering to any man. She had been able to advise him. Brigit now had even this privilege also. “I shall seem an intruder,” thought Pensée, again and again.
It was altogether a terrible crisis. How she should struggle through all the parts of it, or what she should be when it was over, she could not trust herself to say. The world seemed too heavy a burden to be fought against. Yet with what thoughts and aspirations and earnest prayers she had stood by Brigit's side at the altar rails. She had been given a supernatural strength for the marriage ceremony. She was by nature and before all things, from first to last, unalterably a good friend, and at that moment ofintensest difficulty the sight of Robert's happiness had made her oblivious to every other consideration. Glad tears had risen to her eyes. She had been swayed by one feeling—a deep, sincere thankfulness that his love-story, which had promised sorrow only from the very beginning, was ending, unexpectedly, so well. She might have feared that he was changing one form of unhappiness for another, but she knew his impatient spirit, and, knowing it, she could not imagine that any earthly pain could try him so sorely as a lifelong separation from the one woman he loved—loved to the pitch of madness.
And then—in one moment—the strange tidings came which drove her from the stupor of resignation to fevers of anxiety more consuming than any she had ever felt before. A great flame, successive flames, of terror swept over her, as she feigned placid sleep in the little cabin, at the thought of the news poor Reckage would have to break on the morrow. How would Robert bear it? That he would act a noble and true part she could not doubt. But at a certain degree of suffering, the strongest man can think of nothing except himself, and she felt already, in anticipation, the dumb torture she would have to endure in looking on, helpless and unnoticed, at an agony which she could neither share nor relieve. The fear of losing him had been dreadful, but it was even more dreadful to know that although she might have, after all, a certain rightnow to offer him sympathy, she could never make him happy, that she could never hope to learn the secret regrets, griefs, and torments, the unspoken broodings which would surely enough prey upon his spirit. She pictured herself sitting at his side, or walking with him, for hours—he absorbed in his own sorrowful thoughts, she striving vainly to distract him by a tinkling prattle on every topic except the one nearest his heart. Oh, how fearfully wide asunder they were! A sensation of the enormous distance which can exist between two souls in daily companionship filled her with a sickening, shivering heaviness. She thought she would have to cry out because of the slow fire which seemed to scorch her dry and aching eyes. Robert would never really need her, never really care about her. This new trouble would take him farther away than ever. He would burn all his ships, and any poor little tenderness he might have had in the past for her, with them. Some great revulsion would take place in his character; he would perhaps grow silent, reserved, enigmatic, his face would show to the world the terrible, false, unknowable peace which is the veil of the dead. It was useless to smooth her difficulties which existed. It was foolish and wrong to encourage herself in unreal ideas about him. It was best always to be straightforward and admit the truth—no matter how bitter. And yet he had been kind and helpful to her in a way in which scarce any one else could have been. Sheclung to the belief that she would be able to do something to make his hour of trial less severe. The hope which insinuates itself into every unrequited love still lingered. He could at least always talk to her about Brigit: that common memory would be a constant link between them. She had earned his esteem, and perhaps with his esteem an affection deeper than he himself realised. Under the pressure of a sudden and tragical necessity, he would turn to her with the certainty that she would not fail him. She was modest enough about her own powers. A remark she had once heard Reckage pass, to the effect that religious women of devoted lives were unhappily conspicuous, as a rule, for feebleness of mind and strength of prejudice, haunted her as a kind of doom from which there was no appeal. She knew, too, the verdict usually passed on those of either sex who have the courage to maintain an unselfish attitude whether toward God or some fellow-creature. But here she comforted herself by deciding that her utter isolation in this universe rested on the fact that she did not much deserve to be loved by anybody. This granted—not without a pang—she felt the signs of weariness in her heart, but none of wavering. She resolved to be foolish in the eyes of the self-satisfied.
Lord Reckage meanwhile was pacing the deck. His conversation with Pensée had cast a darkness over his spirit. He had made up his mind, weeks before, that the marriage years of his life would be the best,the most distinguished, and most useful. With the utmost pains he had chosen a wife. He had acted with the greatest caution in no weak or superficial, or haphazard, or fitful way. Nevertheless, the outlook was dismal. This first step in decline from his ideal caused him much pain and restlessness, and led him to think cynically of many doctrines to which, in serene moments, he had unconditionally subscribed. He compared his own case with Robert's. Robert, in his headstrong passion, had certainly rattled up sleeping lions, heedless of all consequences, and in defiance of every warning. He had now met, poor fellow, with an appalling chastisement, but could any one pretend that he had not brought it, to a great extent, upon himself? He (Reckage), however, had behaved, from first to last, in an unexceptionable manner. He had studiously avoided the one girl of whom he was inclined to be immoderately fond. It was true that he had practised this restraint less in her interest than his own. But this was because he feared—as every creature will fear by instinct its mortal enemy—the power of an ardent attachment. His mind had revolted in a panic at the thought of becoming dependent on a woman's humours. The noblest of the sex were capricious, and far and away the best course was to select a partner whose unavoidable nonsense would leave one, merely from indifference, undisturbed. Sara de Treverell, in the past, had been, by her vagaries, directly responsible forseveral sleepless nights, and a sleepless night was one of the few things he simply could not stand. Thoughts of her had seemed to unfit him for his work, to weaken his nerves, to act, in various ways, to his disadvantage. She had been exacting in her demands upon his nature. They were not uttered demands, or demands which he could formulate, but he had been conscious of them always. He had been obliged to pause and ask himself at every thought, at every step—“What would Sara say to this?” It was a tyranny—if not a species of witchcraft. And so he had determined to see her no more. Following the usual, most correct method in such procedures, he went abroad. After a week of irritating meditations, furtive, all but unconquerable desires, after he had passed the day on which it had been his custom for months to call upon her, after he had learned how to discipline the hours he had used to spend riding with her in the Row, he felt as a convalescent after some exhausting malady—quiescent, dulled, possessed by a drowsy stupidity, inaccessible to any serious emotion. He was cured of his fancy, although no effort of will could protect the soreness of the bruise. He had persevered in his course of treatment—congratulating himself, at the end, on his escape from a dangerous obsession. The picture of Sara grew paler and paler before his eyes—indeed, it seemed to fade all too quickly, and, with the perversity of consistent egoism, he felt many twingesof sadness to think that he had forgotten her so soon. His vanity would have preferred a longer combat—for even the most shallow admit the romantic admirableness of an obstinate love. Still, what could he ask better than this triumph over a cruel, an obstructive memory? He had regained, so he believed, his old independence as the man of action, energetic, self-controlled, moved by one passion only, and that the finest of all—ambition. In surveying once more the great design of his career, he found it an effort to bring up—from the far recesses of his experience—the poor little sentimental episode, so insignificant and commonplace, which, in a kind of aberration, he had taken for an affair of the heart. He returned to England. He threw himself with vigour into the questions which were then disturbing Churchmen. He revived a touching acquaintance with Agnes Carillon, an acquaintance which was peculiarly soothing to his preoccupied mind. Here was a girl, he thought, who could be a fit helpmate. She asked for nothing, absorbed nothing, and gave a great deal of gentle, kind companionship when he wanted it. When he did not want it, she understood perfectly—possessing, in an eminent degree, the rare domestic art of being able to make herself scarce—alike in his thoughts and his engagements. The truths did not occur to him that a woman in love could never have been so unnaturally prudent, or that a woman whom he loved could not have interested him so slightly.He took great pride in her perfect skin and hair and eyes, in her beautiful, graceful, and gracious manners, but his soul never kindled at her approach, his pulse beat no slower at her departure. He requited her agreeableness with respect. And so they had become engaged—to the unbounded gratification of all his relatives, amidst the congratulations of his friends. There seemed a certain shadowiness in his conception of their future existence together as man and wife: something which he recognised as an interior voice chimed in, from time to time, with provoking interrogations, mostly unanswerable. A plaintive need of happiness, melancholy, obscure, but recurrent, mixed in his fluctuating thoughts. Finally, it pursued him, haunted him, and caught him with the strange tenacity of an incorporeal grasp. Sara, now dethroned from her place of power, loomed in all his dreams. Irresistibly, he was drawn toward the forbidden recollection of her delightfulness. There seemed no longer any danger in these musings. He had entrusted his actual life to the safe-keeping of the nicest woman he had ever known. Where then was the harm in harking back, merely in reverie, to the frivolous, amusing phantom of a renounced sentiment? Yet, after a reverie of the kind, why did he often wonder how he and Agnes could look in one another's faces and pretend to any sort of real intimacy? Sara knew him better than he knew himself. Her sympathy ran into a hundred sinuosities—she understood his silence as well as his conversation. He was never conscious of the smallest strain, the least dissimulation, in her society. Beneath their curious disparities an identity seemed to unite them. There was an unrepenting quality in her conscience which braced and stimulated his moral courage. Agnes, on the contrary, with her instinct of behaviour, made him over-cautious and encouraged the tendency to indecision which interfered with the comfortable balance of his soul. And he wished his faculties to work with astronomic punctuality. It is certain, however, that he would have accepted his choice as a thing settled beyond any readjustment, but for the news of the Duke of Marshire's proposal, and the sight of Sara herself on the fatal afternoon when he was feeling especially forlorn. She had thrown him a glance in which defiance, disdain, and an indistinct affection were blended in one provoking dart. He was a moralist who believed that there is always, between men and women, the dormant principles of mistrust and hatred. He had discussed this theory frequently with Robert, who found the notion as repulsive as it was false. But it seemed a truth beyond contradiction to Reckage, who possessed, in his own mind, constant irrefutable testimony in support of the view. Sara had never before defied him. She had never before seemed to feel her power as a creature incomparably superior in brilliancy to all the other girls in their circle. She had never beforeseemed to pity him as a man who had feared to do what Marshire—a being considered remarkable only for his family and his fortune—had boldly, gladly volunteered to carry out to the ultimate consequence. That glance pierced his self-love, his pride, his will. After his long hesitations, after the wearisome, interminable debates between his judgment and his inclination, he decided suddenly, all at once, without further reflection, that he no longer belonged to himself. He was the slave once more of doubts, fears, and temptations. His excited nerves and troubled senses asserted their right to be regarded as threads, at least, in the web of destiny. From the hour of that chance encounter in the Park, till he and Sara met at Lord Garrow's that day, he had not been able to escape from the inexorable cruelty of an ill-used passion, once more, in full command. Every individual has his rule—could one but find it out—and a rule to which there are no exceptions. With Reckage it was simple enough: he invariably followed the line of his own glory. The distress he suffered—really, and not colourably—took its rise from the intervention of Marshire. He felt as a racing man feels when he sees a friendless horse, which he might have purchased, beat the Derby favourite by some three lengths and a half. He winced at the suspicion that he had committed an error in judgment, and lost a great opportunity. The words of Sir Piers Harding on the subject of audacity in love had fallen on his ears withstartling force. It was an illustration of that old saying—“The appetite, the occasion, and the ripe fruit.” Convinced now that his reputation, his career, and his comfort depended on his conduct toward Sara, all hesitation left him. He would have to drive Marshire, in confusion, from the field, and bear away the prize himself. Pensée's observations with regard to Agnes had cleared away most, if not all, of his difficulties in that particular quarter. No one had ever accused him of cowardice. Whenever he took refuge in procrastination or deceit, it was never because he was afraid, but in order that nothing might interfere with the purpose he had in hand. The growing miseries of the situation which he saw, already in part, served only to augment the violence of his resolve. His vanity forbade him to believe that Agnes would not suffer very much when he told her, as he intended, that they had both mistaken a profound esteem—based on reason—for love, which, as all the world admits, is something remote indeed from one's will and one's power. He was desirous to remain her friend, but he could not, without insincerity—and by God's grace, he would not—continue longer in a position which was false in itself and an injustice to each of them. He proposed to dwell very frankly, but in deep sadness, on the fact that although their engagement had been a seeming success—outwardly—the success had been by no means proved either to his satisfaction, or, he ventured to think, to hers. Hewould pray that she would not consider herself under any restraint in speaking freely to him, from her heart, at all times. He hoped that the inevitable criticism of malicious or ignorant persons would never shake her faith in his unwavering loyalty, his singular desire for her happiness. On the other hand, he did not wish to involve her in justifying his action to the world. There was no call for that. She might be assured that he would do as little as possible to protract the agony—he used the word advisedly—of their separation. He believed it would be the best way—if God gave them the ability—not to meet until they had trained themselves to the peaceful, sweet relationship of their first acquaintance. All this and more he composed and turned over in his mind as he paced the deck. His eyes frequently filled with tears, and he thought how little, how fearfully little, he had ever suspected this severance from a noble life with which he had wished most earnestly to join his own. He was unhappy according to the measure of his capacity, and he was genuine in so far as he regretted the necessary suffering of the innocent with the guilty. But guilt is in the intention, and he could say, with truth, that he had never intended to give pain, or to make trouble, in his life.