"I do want to," I said slowly; "but I can't."
"But although I own I did my best towards the end to induce Fay to come away with me," continued Frank, in that throaty and rather husky voice which was so like Fay's that sometimes it thrilled my heart-strings to breaking-point, "I can't help saying that she oughtn't to have listened to me. After all, she was bound to you by vows, and I wasn't."
I lifted up my hand in protest. "Hush, hush!" I said sternly: "I cannot allow you or anybody else to dare to say a word against my wife."
"You are very loyal to her," he replied, after a short pause, in which I did him the justice to believe that he felt ashamed of himself.
"I loved her," I said. Then I corrected myself: "I mean I love her."
But it was not easy to suppress a Wildacre even when he did feel ashamed of himself. "Then you have forgiven her," said Frank: "Lady Chayford told me you hadn't."
There was a few minutes' silence whilst I tried to be honest with Frank and with myself. Then I said slowly: "I don't believe I really did forgive her altogether till I heard of her death, though I loved her all the time more than I loved life itself. But after she died I gradually realised that there was nothing to forgive. I had been weighed in her balance, and had been found wanting, and she had no further use for me: therefore she threw me on one side as worthless. I was hers to do what she liked with, and she had a perfect right to retain or to reject me as she thought fit. But, mind you, I didn't see this at first. I am no better than my neighbours, and for a long time I was as harsh and bitter and vindictive as any poor beggar of the so-called 'criminal classes' could have been in the circumstances. It is only since Fay's death that I have realised that she was justified in the course she took."
"But she wasn't——" Frank began; but I stopped him.
"No, no! Say what you like about yourself, my boy, but not a word against Fay. And don't think that because I completely exonerate her I also exonerate you. For I don't. Whatever lay between her and me, was sacred to her and me, and no one had any right to intermeddle in it. Neither had you nor anybody else a right to try to put asunder those whom God had joined together: and that—unless I do you a grave injustice—is what you did."
Frank pondered on my words for a short time and then he said: "To a certain extent, perhaps, I did come between you and Fay, and, as I have told you, I repent of what I did in dust and ashes. But I never meant to come between you. On that score my conscience is clear. What I did do was to persuade her to come away with me: but I never did that until something or somebody had already come between you and her, and I saw she was fretting her life out because of it."
I was startled. "Something had already come between us! What in Heaven's name do you mean?"
"It is rather difficult to explain, Reggie," replied Frank, carefully weighing his words in his endeavour to be lucid: "yet I think I must try to do so even if I make a hash of it, because at present you are absolutely in the dark about the whole affair. As far as I can make out, you think that Fay went away because she didn't love you enough."
"That certainly was my impression," I said, trying in vain to keep the pain out of my voice.
"Well, then, you are off on a wrong scent altogether. Fay went away because she loved you too much."
"Loved me too much! I don't understand." I was dazed by Frank's incomprehensible burst of confidence.
He did his best to make matters clearer. No Wildacre was ever at a loss for words. "You see, it was in this way: Fay absolutely adored you—simply worshipped the ground you walked on. I'm not justifying her for feeling like this," he added, with the first touch of his old whimsicalness that he had shown since his return; "I don't deny that it was very foolish of her to set up any man as a god and worship him like that: but that is what she did; and it is right for you to know it, before you judge her for what she did besides."
"I shall never judge her," I interpolated; "God forbid!"
"Well, then, before you understand what she did, if you prefer the word. It really was Fay's absorbing and unreasoning adoration of you that upset the apple-cart and did all the mischief. If she'd been more sensible and discriminating, all this trouble would never have happened: but she was young and foolish, and madly in love at that. And she was so wild with jealousy, because she thought you loved your sister more than you loved her, that she hardly knew what she was doing."
"I thought she found me old and dull and tiresome," I murmured.
"I know you did, and that really was too idiotic for anything! Why, she was simply crazy for love of you from the first time she saw you till the day she ran away; but you footled the whole thing! I'm sorry to say it, Reggie, but you really did."
Amazement had rendered me humble. I realised that if any one had known Fay thoroughly, Frank had; and it was as an expert that he spoke. "Please explain," I said meekly.
Nothing loth, he continued: "Well, if you want the truth, you shall have it. And of course you must bear in mind that, if Fay hadn't been so ridiculously in love, silly little things wouldn't have hurt her as they did, and she wouldn't have gone off her head with jealousy of Miss Kingsnorth. I know men like to feel that their wives are very much in love with them: but the wives who aren't so much in love are really the best for everyday wear. They are more tolerant and much less exacting."
Frank was a wiser man than he had been when he left Restham. I noted that. And for the first time a tiny doubt crept into my mind as to whether even then he had been the most unwise man there.
"In the first place," he went on, "Fay was most frightfully upset at your asking Miss Kingsnorth to stay on living with you after you were married. That started the feeling."
"I thought that as Fay was still such a child it would be a comfort to her to have a kind and loving woman to turn to and lean upon," I explained.
"Kind and loving fiddlesticks!" retorted Frank, by no means respectfully; but I was so glad to see him once more a little like his old self that I rejoiced in rather than resented his impertinence. In spite of my underlying enmity against him, I could not hide it from myself that Frank had attracted and fascinated me since his return as he had never attracted and fascinated me before: and this in spite of the fact that his good looks were faded, and his brilliance was quenched. "When girls are first married they don't want kind and loving women to lean upon: they want to lean upon the husbands whose business it is to be leant upon. And they hate anybody who comes between them and their husbands."
"But remember, Frank, I asked you to live with us as well as Annabel. It isn't as if I had asked my sister, and left my wife's brother out." I appeared to be exculpating myself to Frank; but in reality I was exculpating myself to myself.
"But that only made the matter worse. Fay didn't want me any more than she wanted Miss Kingsnorth to come poking my nose in between you and her. She wanted you to herself."
"I'm afraid that she and Annabel did not get on together as well as I had hoped," I said.
Frank shrugged his thin shoulders. "They'd have got on all right together in their proper places. Fay was quite fond of Miss Kingsnorth as a sister-in-law: but when she found Miss Kingsnorth put in place of her husband, why of course she kicked. Anybody would."
"Annabel wasn't put in place of her husband," I argued.
"Yes, she was; and of course the thing didn't work. You seemed to have an idea that Fay's love was transferable, like a ticket for a concert, and that if you didn't use it your sister could. But it's no good trying to transfer other people's affections any more than it's any use trying to change other people's religions. You can take the old one away, but you can't give them a new one in its place."
"But I never attempted to do such a ridiculous thing," I argued.
But Frank was firm. "Yes, you did. Or, at any rate, Fay thought you did, which comes to the same thing as far as she was concerned, and that was what made her so mad. For instance, when she particularly asked you to give her a Prayer Book with her name written in it by you, so that religion and you might all get mixed up together in her mind, and you be part of religion and religion part of you, what did you do? You got Miss Kingsnorth to give her the Prayer Book, so that Miss Kingsnorth should become part of her religion instead of you! Now it really was absurd to expect Miss Kingsnorth—I beg her pardon, I mean Mrs. Blathwayte—to become part of anybody's religion, except of old Blathwayte's—I mean the Dean's. I suppose she's part of his religion now, right enough. But she wasn't the kind of person to be ever part of Fay's religion, and I should have thought you could have seen that for yourself."
"Did Fay tell you that about the Prayer Book?" I asked, with a stab of anguish. It was incomprehensible to me how my darling could have discussed, even with her brother, things which lay entirely between her and me. I could never have talked to Annabel about matters which concerned Fay and myself alone! I should have regarded them as too sacred. But that is where men and women are so different from each other, and where women are so much less reserved than men. I believe that good wives tell more about their husbands than bad husbands ever tell about their wives.
But good Heavens, how it hurt!
"Yes," replied Frank, quite unconscious of my pain, "she told me everything. And it was only after she had told me everything, and I saw how miserable you were making her by setting Miss Kingsnorth above and before her that I began to urge her to run away and begin life over again. Of course I see now it was wicked of me to do so, although I was so furious with you for thinking more of your sister than of your wife; and besides being wicked, it was useless. Fay loved you so much that being away from you didn't seem to mend matters at all, but only to make them worse. But I thought that when once she'd got away from you and your treatment of her, she'd begin to forget you, and be happy again as she was before she and you had ever met. But unfortunately I was wrong."
I groaned. I couldn't help it.
"Then another time," Frank went on, the Wildacres never having been denied freedom of utterance, "she was almost mad with joy because you came all the way from Restham to Liverpool Street to meet her on her way home from Bythesea. It looked as if you really were as much in love with her as she was with you. And then you went and spoilt it all by saying that you had come to please your sister. Now, I ask you, what wife could stand that? I'm sure you wouldn't have liked to feel that Fay married you in order to please me: and in the same way she didn't like to feel that you had married her to please Mrs. Blathwayte."
"But it was absurd of her to feel like that! She must have known that I worshipped the very ground she walked on, and that the only fly in my ointment was that I felt I was too old and dull to make her happy."
Frank still had me on the hip. "Then that was equally absurd of you! Fay wasn't the only absurd one apparently. You see all the time that you were inventing trouble by thinking that you were too old and dull for her, she was inventing trouble by thinking that she was too young and silly for you, and that you were comparing her with your sister, and finding her inferior. And you know how mad a woman gets when she thinks her husband likes anybody else more than he likes her. There's nothing she wouldn't do to punish him and hurt herself at the same time! And that is how Fay got. She was so wild at finding you thought more of Miss Kingsnorth than you did of her, that she didn't care what happened. She thought you despised her, and that simply finished her off altogether. And when she was unhappy she tried to drown her unhappiness in theatricals and fallals of that kind, which didn't really do her the slightest good: but when husbands fail, women set up all sorts of ridiculous scarecrows in their place. It's the way they're made, I suppose. And when the theatricals turned out to be no good in helping her to forget, she took to travelling, and that was how we came to be in Belgium when the war broke out. But travelling didn't really help her either, though she had an idea that the old cities of Flanders might be rather soothing. But as things panned out they were quite the reverse, and we'd far better have remained in Australia!"
"It is all incredible to me," I said.
But Frank had no mercy. "The long and the short of it is you were so busy worrying yourself about the relations between Fay and your sister, that you let the relations between Fay and yourself slide. And that was really the only thing that mattered. Then Fay got it into her head that you regretted having married her when you compared her with Miss Kingsnorth and saw how young and silly she was in comparison: and so she decided to leave you and your sister once more alone together, as she believed that that was what really could make you happy. And even now I can't help admitting that Miss Kingsnorth is far more your sort than Fay was."
I was silent for a time. The solid earth seemed slipping away beneath my feet. Then I said: "Do you mean to tell me, on your word of honour, that to the best of your belief neither you nor Annabel tried to come between my wife and me?"
Without hesitation the answer came: "Certainly I do. I am positive that I never did, and in my own mind I am equally certain that Mrs. Blathwayte never did either. But where I was to blame was that when I saw matters had gone wrong, I tried to set them right in my own way: and I think probably that is what Mrs. Blathwayte tried to do also. But there was some excuse for us. The happiness of her brother and my sister mattered more to us than anything else in the world. Of course I see now that you asked Miss Kingsnorth here on Fay's account, though it was a ridiculous thing to do: but I own now you did it from a right motive. But Fay believed you did it because you thought you would find her too young and silly to be enough for you by herself, and so you wanted your sister and me to relieve the tedium, and make things more cheerful for you. That was Fay's idea, and I agreed with her. And naturally I resented your putting your sister before mine. Any fellow would."
"I never meant to."
"But you did. And it is for what we do that we are punished—not for what we meant to do. It is a way of yours to mix up essentials with non-essentials, and I expect always will be: I suppose you are made like that, and can't help it. But if you'd only realised that the important thing was not how Fay and Miss Kingsnorth got on together, but how Fay and you got on together, all this misery would never have happened."
I felt I could bear no more: so I went out alone into the autumn dusk to commune with my own soul on the revelations which Frank had vouchsafed to me. And when we met again, we did not refer to it, but talked only on indifferent things. For the boy not only knew when to speak: with a wisdom beyond his years he knew also when to be silent.
For several days I continued to commune with my own soul on the matters which Frank had revealed to me. And as I did so the conviction gradually took hold of me that I had been right in my ruthless decision that as long as I lived I could never forgive the man who had come between my wife and me: who had left my house unto me desolate, and had driven forth my darling to her death.
And then wherever I went I heard nothing but one awful message: the dying leaves whispered it, the dropping rain repeated it, and the autumn winds thundered it in my ears: the message which long ago struck terror and remorse to the heart of a great King struck terror and remorse also to mine. Wherever I went and whatever I did I kept hearing the appalling word of condemnation: "Thou art the man."
I awoke one morning with a strange feeling that something wonderful had happened during the night: and as my mind gradually cleared, I realised what that something was.
I had forgiven Frank Wildacre.
Or, rather, I had come to the knowledge that there was nothing to forgive: that the man whose insensate folly had spoilt my life and Fay's was not Frank at all, but myself.
But the result was the same. After nearly three years of the outer darkness I had come once more into the light: I was at peace with Man and therefore with God: and that seemed to be all that signified.
On myself I had no mercy. I could not forgive myself—I cannot forgive myself now—I never shall forgive myself. But that was a matter of no moment. Self-pardon is never the way of salvation. I knew—how I knew I cannot tell, but I did know it—that God had forgiven me: I believed from the depths of my heart that Fay, with the more perfect comprehension of those who are already on the Other Side, had forgiven me also: therefore my self-condemnation was no bar across the path of life, but rather a healthy and permanent discipline of the soul.
With a joy beyond all earthly joy I rose and dressed and went out into the hazy autumn morning. It was Sunday: and as I stood in the grey mist which still lay over everything and which shrouded the garden and the fields from my view, I heard the church-bell ringing for the eight o'clock Celebration. And for the first time for more than two years that bell called to me, and bade me come and take my place at the Eucharistic Feast: for at last I was in love and charity with all men, and intended to lead a new life.
I answered the Call and entered the Church which was hallowed by the worship of centuries: and there I made my confession to Almighty God, meekly kneeling upon my knees, as the pilgrims had knelt there ages and ages before me. And as in lowly adoration I partook of the Blessed Food Which Christ Himself had ordained, I thereby received Him into my heart by faith: and the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, once more filled my heart and mind with the knowledge and love of God and of His Son, Jesus Christ.
And so I began life over again in that autumn morning in Restham Church, at the beginning of the Great War.
I did not see Frank when I came home after the Service was over, as he never came down to breakfast: but as I sat at my solitary meal I knew no loneliness: the glory of the Great Reconciliation was about me still.
After breakfast Jeavons came to me in a somewhat deprecating manner.
"I am sorry to trouble you, Sir Reginald," he began, "and I told Maggie Pearson so, but she wouldn't take no, and begged me to come and give you her message."
Maggie Pearson was the daughter of one of my keepers—a respectable man with a tidy wife and a large family.
"And what was her message?" I asked.
Jeavons still appeared confused. "I really did my best, Sir Reginald, to make her understand that you'd given up all that sort of thing and never went in for it now, finding it more or less uncertain, as you might say, and out of the usual course of events, and so not altogether to be depended upon; and that she'd much better stick to the doctor and not trouble you, Mr. Wildacre being laid up in the house, and you with enough on your hands as it is. But she went on crying, and said her mother'd never forgive her if she didn't give you the message."
I felt that such unaccustomed loquacity was a sign of serious mental disturbance on the part of Jeavons. He was generally so very brief and to the point.
"Well, whatwasthe message?" I repeated, with (I cannot help thinking) commendable patience.
"Well, Sir Reginald, begging your pardon, the fact is that Mrs. Pearson's baby is dying of brownchitis or pewmonia or some other disease connected with its teething, and nothing will satisfy her but that you should come and lay your hands on it, like as was your custom at one time, having outgrown it since. I told Maggie as how you had given up the habit long ago, which she said her mother knew: but all the same, Mrs. Pearson still persisted that she was sure you could cure the baby if you tried, which was just like her obstinacy, and to my thinking a great impertinence."
"Have they had the doctor, do you know?" I asked.
"Yes, Sir Reginald, and he can't do nothing more than what he has done, he says, and he is afraid the child will die. Though what they wants with that extra child at all, beats me, having six besides, and none too much food for them all, with the dreadful war sending up the prices of everything."
For two years now I had refused all the villagers' requests that I would exercise my gift of healing upon them, as I knew, alas! that the gift was no longer mine: and they had gradually ceased to proffer these requests. Therefore it struck me as noteworthy that on the very day when, as the old theologists put it, I had "found peace," I should be asked to exercise this lost power once more. It seemed to be one of those wonderful instances of direct Interposition which we of this faithless and perverse generation disguise under the pseudonym of "remarkable coincidences."
"Tell Maggie that I will come at once," I said.
And Jeavons accordingly departed, leaving behind him an atmosphere of respectful disapproval and regret. Anything bordering on the unusual—let alone the miraculous—filled my excellent butler with horror and dismay.
When I am tempted—as indeed I often am, and frequently successfully—to despise those Jeavons-like souls who delight to burrow in the commonplace whenever the light of the supernatural shows above the horizon, I remind myself of the first Order that was given after the dread gates of death had been flung open and the ruler's little daughter had come through them back to life. He Who had performed the stupendous miracle did not take this unique opportunity of preaching a sermon to the company assembled in the house of mourning, with His Own Action as the text: on the contrary "He commanded that something should be given her to eat."
How joyfully those who had laughed Him to scorn when He contradicted their conventional assumption that death was the final ending—laughed, doubtless with the uncomfortable, mocking laughter of all materially minded people when confronted with things undreamed of in their smug philosophy—must have hurried to lay the table and prepare the meal, and perform all the trivial little duties which form the essence of the normal and the commonplace. How relieved they must have felt to find themselves once more in the ordinary routine of everyday existence!
And I like to think that it was then His turn to smile—He Who knew them so well, and remembered that they were but dust; yet the dust wherein He had clothed Himself in order to identify Himself with them. But I am sure that in His smile there was no scorn. He knew what they needed, and He supplied all their need.
Obedient to the Call which had come to me, I went through the village, hardly conscious of any volition on my own part. I had merged my will in another's, and had no longer any desire to act on my own initiative. It is a strange feeling, this absolute surrender of self, and brings with it that peace which the world can never give nor take away.
Still as in a dream I entered the cottage at the far end of the village, and found Mrs. Pearson rocking in her arms her dying child; the other children hanging round, all more or less in a state of tears.
"Good-morning, Mrs. Pearson," I said, when Maggie had ushered me into the midst of the weeping group. "I have come because you sent for me."
"And right thankful I am to you, Sir Reginald," replied the poor woman: "I says to myself, when the doctor give my baby up, 'If anybody can save her, Sir Reginald can.'"
"I will do what I can," I said, "but it is years now since I have had the power to heal anybody. I lost it when her ladyship went away."
"So I've heard, Sir Reginald. But I minded that story of the woman who wouldn't take 'No' even from the Blessed Lord Himself, but begged for just the crumbs under the table: and her child was healed in consequence."
I knelt down beside the rocking-chair, and laid my hands upon the little form lying on the mother's lap, at the same time lifting up my whole soul in prayer. And straightway the answer came—as in my heart of hearts I had known it would come. Like a mighty electrical force the healing power rushed through me to the child. I could feel it in every vein and every fibre of my body. And at the same time my consciousness of the Presence of Christ was so acute that it was almost as if I actually saw and heard and felt Him close beside me.
Whilst I prayed the moaning of the child ceased, and its laboured breathing grew gradually soft and easy: and when I rose from my knees and looked at it, I knew that it would live.
The poor mother clung to my hand, and wept tears of gratitude. But I told her—as I always made a point of telling those whom I was permitted to help—that her thanksgivings were not due to me, but to Another Whose messenger for the time I was allowed to be: and then I hurried back through the village to the Church, there to render thanks, with the rest of the congregation at the office of Matins, for the blessings that had (in my case so wonderfully) been vouchsafed to me.
When I returned home after the morning service, I found Frank dressed and downstairs: but it was not until lunch was over and we had settled down in our usual places—he on the Chesterfield on one side of the hall fire, and I in my easy-chair on the other—that I found an opportunity of telling him, without fear of interruption, of the marvellous thing that had happened to me.
"Frank, my boy, I have something to say to you," I began.
"Yes, Reggie, what is it?"
"To me it is so wonderful that I find difficulty in putting it into words. But though I may be slow to speak, you are always swift to hear, so I dare say you will understand in spite of my blundering way of telling it."
"Fire away," said Frank encouragingly. "I shall catch on right enough, never fear."
"Well, first and foremost, I want you to know that I have forgiven you completely for any share that you may have had in helping Fay to leave me."
Frank gave a little cry of joy. "Oh, Reggie, how splendid of you!" he began.
But I lifted up my hand to stop him. "Wait a bit, my boy. Please hear all I have got to say before you cut in. I was going to tell you that I forgave you freely because I had found that there was nothing to forgive. It sounds rather Irish, I know: but I think you will understand that we are obliged to forgive people when we think they have injured us, even when we find they haven't really injured us at all. I mean we are bound to get back into love and charity with them, whether the lapse from love and charity was their fault or ours."
Frank nodded his head in the way that reminded me so of Fay. "I know exactly what you are driving at. When we quarrel with anybody we've got to bury the hatchet before we can be happy or good again: and the original ownership of the hatchet has no effect whatever upon the importance of the funeral."
"Precisely so. I'd got to forgive you whether you'd done anything needing forgiveness or not: because I believed you had, and acted according to that belief. Therefore it was imperative upon me to root the bitterness towards you out of my heart: the fact that the bitterness to a great extent was undeserved, did not altogether rob it of its flavour. Well, then, that is the first thing: I want you to know that at last I am at peace with you after nearly three years of hot anger against you: whether you in any way deserved that anger, is your affair not mine."
Here Frank's enforced silence broke down. "I didn't deserve it as much as you thought, but I did deserve it a bit. I never tried to set Fay against you: but when I saw she was set against you, I induced her to cut and run, instead of using my influence to make her see things in a different light, and to bring you and her together again. After all is said and done, you were her husband: and when I saw the bond between you was loosening I ought to have helped to tie it tight again instead of undoing it altogether. Let's try to be just all round!"
"I am trying to be just," I replied: "and therefore I admit that though I myself was the principal culprit, you were not altogether free from blame."
"No, I wasn't. Neither was Fay, when you come to that, though I know you won't let me say so."
"Certainly I won't: so don't try it on. Let us pass on to the next thing. And that is that as I have forgiven you, so God has forgiven me, and has restored to me my power of healing."
"Oh, Reggie, is that really true? I minded that more than anything!" Frank's voice was hoarse with emotion and his language was confused: but I understood him right enough.
"Yes: I was instrumental in healing Mrs. Pearson's baby this morning; the first time that I have been permitted to do such a thing since Fay went away." Then I changed the subject hastily, with that shyness which all Englishmen feel when speaking about the matters that concern their own souls. "And there is yet another thing I want to say; that is to ask you to make your permanent home with me here. You can go over and visit your relations in Australia as often as you like; but I want you to feel that this is your real home. I have been very lonely ever since Fay went away. I was going to add, 'and ever since Annabel was married,' but candidly I don't think that really made much difference. When the worst has happened, minor troubles don't count. But you seem almost part of Fay—a sort of legacy that she has left me, because she loved us both: and I feel that it would please her if we devoted the rest of our lives to taking care of each other."
Frank was trying so hard to choke back his sob that he could not speak. He was still very weak after his awful experiences in Belgium. So I went on, order to give him time to recover himself.
"I think we shall be happy together, my boy, in a second-rate sort of way; but we can never be really perfectly happy until we see Fay again. At least I know I can't. But that is the worst of wrong-doing, or of any infringement of the great law of Love." I still continued talking, seeing that the boy was not yet master of himself: "We repent our wrong-doing, and God forgives us, and we know it will all come right again some day: but not here, or now. Between us you and I managed to spoil Fay's life; and no repentance of ours will set that right in this life, nor undo the harm that we (however unconsciously) wrought. There is no bringing the shadow on the dial ten degrees backward. We may pretend to ourselves that there is, but there isn't really. God still performs many miracles, but not that one. Of course Hecouldif He so willed it, but He certainlydoesn't; and so what is done is done, and what is past is past, and it is only left to us to bear with God's help the consequences of our own misdeeds."
To my surprise the usually undemonstrative Frank sprang up from the couch where he was lying, and flung himself on his knees beside my chair, at the same time throwing his thin arms round my neck. "Yes, Reggie, He can," he gasped between his sobs: "He can and He will and He does."
I turned my head in surprise, and for the first time since Frank's return to Restham, I saw his face within close range of my short-sighted eyes. For a moment I was literally paralysed with amazement, and my heart and pulses seemed to stand still and then to rush on in a very delirium of unheard-of joy. For the face into which I looked at such close quarters—the face quivering with emotion and disfigured with tears, and yet to me the dearest and most beautiful face in the whole world—was not Frank's at all—but Fay's!
This then is the story of the drama of my life; the story of how in my case the greatest miracle of all was accomplished, and the shadow on the dial was brought ten degrees backward. She who had been dead was alive again, she who had been lost was found. The past was given back to me to be lived over again, with its misdeeds expiated and its mistakes retrieved.
I learnt from my darling that the greater part of what she had told me was absolutely true; only that it was Frank who gave his life to save the child that was playing in the sun when the shells began to fall in that doomed street of Louvain—not Fay.
So Frank Wildacre died the death of a hero: for there is no more glorious death for any man than to give his life for another's. Again it struck me afresh, as it had often struck me before, how since the beginning of the Great War the prophecy had been literally fulfilled that the last should be first, and the first last. Frank, who had been thoughtless and irresponsible and frivolous, had been called to lay down his life for one of those little ones whose angels do always behold the Face of the Father: whilst I, who had taken the world so seriously, and had ever longed to do great deeds and think high thoughts, was left amongst the useless ones at home. Yet we were all part of the great army of the living God, and it was not for us to pick and choose who should go forth with the hosts and who should stay at home by the stuff. That was all left in the Hands of "Our Captain, Christ, under Whose colours we had fought so long."
Frank only lived for about an hour after he was hit. They managed to carry him into a house, but there was no hope from the first. He was conscious almost to the end; and he devoted those last moments to careful thought for his sister. He told her to cut off her long hair and dress herself up in his clothes, and try to get away to England as soon as she could, as it was not safe for her to remain in Belgium now that he was no longer there to take care of her: and as terrible and ghastly rumours were already current as to the unspeakable way in which the ruthless invaders were treating such women as were hapless enough to fall into their hands, he thought Fay would be safer if her sex were not known. And so he fell on sleep.
As soon as Frank had passed to his well-earned reward, Fay followed out all his instructions to the letter, and succeeded, after many vicissitudes, in escaping to England with a crowd of Belgian refugees. No one penetrated her disguise—not even Isabel Chayford, who put down Fay's extraordinary likeness to her own self to the fact that she and Frank were twins, and so were expected to resemble one another. And Fay kept to her own room most of the time that she was at the Chayfords', for fear Isabel should discover her identity. Ponty found her out at once: there was never any deceiving Ponty! But Fay could always twist my old nurse round her little finger, and therefore Ponty kept her secret for her.
To this hour I cannot conceive how I could have been such a fool as not to know my darling the moment I set eyes on her. But the grim fact remains that I am by nature a fool, and this was one of the occasions of my displaying my folly. My one excuse—and a feeble one it is!—is my extreme short-sightedness: the first moment that Fay's dear face was close to my own I recognised her like a shot: but lying in the Chesterfield on the other side of the fire-place, with her short curly hair and elfin face, she looked so like Frank that I took it for granted she was Frank; and she was so much aged and changed, alas! by all she had suffered, that she had lost much of her likeness to the Fay of the past. As to her voice, Frank's was so high for a man's and hers was so deep for a woman's that I frequently had mistaken the one for the other in the old days: so no wonder I did so now, when I was convinced in my own mind that Fay was dead, and that Frank was talking to me from the other side of the great fire-place.
I gathered that Fay's original idea was to find out whether or not I had forgiven her. If I had, she meant to reveal herself to me and to ask me to take her back as my wife: but if I had not forgiven her, she intended to return to Australia, leaving me with the idea that she was dead and I was free. A wild, childish scheme, just like my impracticable darling!
But when Isabel told her how deeply my anger against Frank had eaten into my very soul, destroying my gift of healing and coming between me and my God, Fay realised that there was far more at stake than just the relations between herself and me. The salvation of my soul was hanging in the balance, and it was for her dear hands to adjust the scales. With an insight beyond her years, she understood that before I could find peace I must forgive Frank, believing him to be alive: the easy forgiveness which we accord to the dead, who can no longer hurt or be hurt by us, was not the thing that was demanded of me. I was called upon to forgive Frank fully and freely, even although I believed that it was through him that my darling had gone to her death, and that therefore there was no possibility of her ever coming back to me, or of the wrong which he had done me ever being rectified.
This my darling enabled me to do, and thereby saved my soul alive.
And now we are once more all in all to each other; and the love that is stronger than death can lighten even the long shadows cast by the Great War.
I do not think there is any more to add to my story, save the interesting fact that we have christened our first-born sonFrancis.
At present he finds his sole occupation in mewling and puking in his nurse's arms; but his beloved mother and I have every reason to hope that eventually he will learn to employ his time with more profit both to himself and to the world at large.
I think that some day "Sir Francis Kingsnorth" will be quite an effective name and sound very well indeed. But I shall not be there to hear it.
THE END