“Well?” he said, awed in spite of himself by her voice, her words, her look, yet half-mocking still. “After to-night?”
“After to-night,” she said, and drew herself from his hold, facing him with a gesture of freedom that was even regal, “you will never see me again, because I swear to you—before God—that I shall be dead.”
He blenched a little, but in a moment recovered himself. “Pshaw! Words are easy—especially with women. That threat doesn’t move me.”
“No.” She got up from her chair with a strange calmness. “It may not—yet. But it will—it will. If you were all beast, you might not care. But you are a man at heart, and so you will never forget it. And you will care—terribly—afterwards.”
She turned from him with the words, walked to the settee before the stove, and sat down, holding her hands to the warmth, ignoring his presence utterly.
He did not follow her. There was that about her that made it impossible just then. He had not thought that she had the strength so to dominate the situation. It had been completely in his own hands, but somehow it had passed out of his control. Wherefore? The sight of her weakness had made the conquest seem so easy that he had almost despised her for it. And now?
He turned sullenly from her, took up a glass and drank.
After many seconds he spoke. “The last time I saw you, you gave me to understand that it was only your pride that kept you from marrying me. That is not the reason you want to back out now.”
“I gave you my reason then,” she made answer, without turning. “I did not love you.”
“You loved me once,” he rejoined, “before you threw me over.”
She uttered a short, hard sigh. “I hadn’t even begun to know the meaning of the word.”
He flung round savagely. “There’s someone else in the field. I suspected it before. Who is it? That maniac at Tetherstones?”
She leaned forward a little further to the glow. “It doesn’t really matter,” she said. “Even if it were so, it wouldn’t really count, would it?”
“It would not,” he rejoined curtly.
“So why discuss it?” said Frances.
Her weariness sounded again in her voice, but there was no weakness with it, rather a species of solitary majesty upon which he could not intrude. Yet, baffled, he still sought to penetrate her defences.
“You loved me once,” he repeated doggedly. “What did I ever do to forfeit your love?”
She turned suddenly as she sat, and faced him, pale, with burning eyes of accusation.
“I will tell you what you did. You desecrated my love. You killed it at birth. You treated me then—as you are treating me now—dishonourably. You gave me stones for bread, and you are doing it still. I think you are incapable of anything else. Love—real love—is out of your reach!”
The fire of her words scorched him; he drew back. “Gad!” he said. “If you’d lived in the old days, you’d have been burnt as a witch.”
“There are worse fates than that,” she answered very bitterly.
“There are!” he returned with a flash of anger. “And hotter hells! Well, you’ve made your conditions. I accept them. You are free to go.”
He flung the words with a force and suddenness that struck her like a blow. She sat for a few moments, staring at him. Then, with an effort, she rose.
“Do you mean that?”
He came close to her. His face was drawn. Somehow she felt as though she were looking at an animal through the iron bars of a cage.
He spoke, between his teeth. “Yes, I mean it. I will let you go—just to show you that—as you kindly remarked just now—I am not—all—beast. But—I hold you to your promise. Is that understood? You will marry me.”
She lifted her head with a certain pride. “I have said it,” she said, and turned from him.
He thrust out a hand and grasped her shoulder. “You will say it again!” he said.
She stopped. That grip of his sent panic to her heart, but she stilled it with a desperate sense of expediency. Yet, for the moment she could not speak, so terrible was the strain, and in that moment, as she stood summoning her strength, there came the sound of an electric bell cleaving the dreadful silence so suddenly that she cried out and almost fell.
“Damnation!” Rotherby said. “See here! I shall have to go to the door. You don’t want to be seen here. You’d better go into the other room.”
He indicated a door at the further end of the one in which they stood, and she turned towards it instinctively.
He went with her, and opened it, switching on a light. She glanced within, and drew back.
“Go in!” he urged. “I can’t help it. It’s only for a few seconds. I won’t let anyone in. Quick! It’s the only way.”
She turned to him like a hunted creature, wildly beseeching quarter. “You will let me go afterwards? You promise it? You swear it?”
“Of course I will let you go,” he said. “There goes that damn’ bell again. You’ll be all right here, and I won’t keep you long.”
He almost pushed her into the room, and shut the door upon her. The bell was pealing imperatively. She sank into a chair at the foot of the bed, and wondered if this nightmare would ever pass.
The door was shut, but there came to her the sound of voices in the distance, and she listened intently, holding her breath. At any moment he might return, at any moment the dread struggle might be resumed. He had given her his word, but she did not trust him. She never had trusted him; and the memory of his grip upon her shoulder gave her small cause for confidence now. She glanced around her for a possible means of escape, but the only other door in the room led into the little hall in which even now Rotherby was parleying with his unwelcome visitor. The impulse came to her to brave all risk of observation and walk straight out while he was thus occupied, but a more wary instinct bade her pause. If the visitor were an old friend, he might enter uninvited, and if that happened the outer door would be left unguarded, and she could make her escape unobserved, before Rotherby could get rid of him. This would be far the easier course, and would offer fewer difficulties later. So, with stretched nerves, prepared for immediate flight, she waited.
The opportunity came even sooner than she expected. Very suddenly she heard the tramp of feet in the room she had just quitted, and in a second she was on her feet.
But in that second she heard a voice raised abruptly like the blare of an angry bull, and she stood rooted to the spot, listening, listening, listening, with her hands clasped tight upon her heart.
Words reached her through the tumult of sound, words and the sounds of a fierce struggle.
“Damn you, I’ll have an answer! I’ll kill you if you don’t speak. What? You infernal skunk, do you think I’d stick at killing you? There’s nothing I’d enjoy more.”
There followed a dreadful series of sounds as of something being banged against the wall by which she stood, and then suddenly there came a terrific blow against the door itself. A cry followed the blow—a gurgling terrible cry, and it did for Frances what nothing else could have done; it gave her strength to act.
She could have made her escape in that moment, but the bare thought was gone from her mind. She sprang to the door, and threw it open. Then she saw that which she had already beheld that evening, but with unseeing eyes—the big man in the ulster who had waited just below her in the rain at the theatre steps half-an-hour before.
He was holding Rotherby between his hands as he might have held a sack of meal, and banging his head against everything hard in the vicinity. Rotherby was struggling with gasping, broken oaths for freedom, but he was utterly outmatched. As Frances flung open the door he fell backwards at her feet, and the man who gripped him proceeded furiously to stand over him and bang his head upon the floor.
“Oh, stop!” Frances cried in horror. “Oh, for God’s sake, stop!”
He stopped. Her voice seemed to have an almost miraculous effect upon him. He stopped. But he knelt upon Rotherby, holding him down, and his face, suffused with passion, was to her the most appalling sight she had ever beheld.
There followed an awful silence, during which he remained quite motionless, bent over his enemy. Rotherby was bleeding profusely at the nose, but he was half-stunned and seemed unaware of it. His arms were flung wide, and his hands opened and shut convulsively, in a manner that made the onlooker shudder.
How long that fearful silence lasted she never knew. It seemed to stretch out interminably into minutes so weighted with dread that each was like an hour.
At last, when she could endure no longer, huskily, with tremendous effort, she spoke. “Do you want—to kill him?”
He raised his head slowly and looked at her. His eyes were bloodshot and the veins of his temples visibly throbbing, but the rest of his face was ghastly white.
He looked at her, and she felt a quick, piercing pain at her heart that made her catch her breath.
“I have wanted to kill him for years,” he said. “Do you value his life? If not——”
It was terrible, it was monstrous; but it was real. He was asking her—actually asking her, as a victorious gladiator in the arena—for permission to despatch his victim. And even as he spoke, she saw his right hand move towards the throat of the prostrate man.
She cried out wildly at the sight, in an anguish of horror. “Arthur, no—no—no! That’s murder! Arthur,—stop!”
“He is worse than a murderer,” Arthur said in the same fatalistic tone.
“Ah, no!” she made gasping answer. “And you! And you!”
“And—you!” he said, with terrible emphasis.
She broke in upon him desperately, for the need was great. “He has done me no harm. Let him go! You must—you must let him go.”
“Why?” he said.
“Because I ask you—I beg you—because—because—” She halted, frantically searching for adequate words. “Oh, wait!” she besought him. “Wait!”
His eyes regarded her immovably. “For your sake?” he said at last.
She wrung her hands together. “Yes—yes!”
He got slowly to his feet. “For your sake then!” he said. “Now tell me—what you are doing here? And why did you cry out just now when I rang the bell?”
His manner was absolutely quiet, but there was that in his look that warned her that the danger was not past. She did not dare to tell him the truth.
“I cried out,” she said, “because—I was startled. I hid in this room for the same reason.”
“And—you came here—for what?” he said.
She glanced away to the spread table, for she could not meet his eyes. “We had been to the theatre. I came in—for supper.”
“And he has behaved towards you absolutely as a gentleman should?” he questioned, in the same level voice that made her think of a weapon poised for striking.
“Yes—oh, yes!” she answered.
He was silent for a moment or two, and she knew that his look searched her unsparingly. Then: “I don’t believe you are telling me the truth,” he said. “But I shall soon know.”
He turned abruptly to the man on the floor. “Get up!” he said.
Rotherby had drawn his hands over his face. He rolled on to his side as the curt command reached him, and in a few seconds, grabbing at a chair, he dragged himself to his feet. But his face was ashen and he could not stand. He dropped into the chair with a groan.
Frances went to the washing-stand, squeezed out a sponge in cold water and brought it to him. He took it in a dazed fashion and mopped the blood from his nose and mouth.
Arthur stood by, massive and motionless, his face set in iron lines. He was like an executioner, grim as doom, waiting for his victim. He made no comment when Frances brought towel and basin to Rotherby’s side and helped him.
But at length, as Rotherby began to show signs of recovery, he waved her to one side.
“Now, you! Let’s have your version! What are you and Miss Thorold doing here?”
Rotherby looked at him through narrowed lids. His face was very evil as he made reply. “I chance to live here.”
“I know that. And you’ll die here without any chance about it if you don’t choose to give me a straight answer to my questions. What did you bring her here for?”
“What the devil is that to you?” said Rotherby sullenly. “You go to hell!”
Though he was beaten so that he could hardly lift his head, he showed no fear, and for that Frances, who knew something of the temperament of the man who had beaten him, accorded him a certain admiration. To be punished as he had been punished, and yet to refuse submission proved a strength with which she had hardly credited him.
At Arthur’s swift gesture of exasperation, she moved forward, intervening. “Let me speak!” she said. “I will answer your questions.”
She stood between the two men, and again, vesting her with a majesty which was not normally hers, there came to her aid the consciousness of standing for the right. Whatever the outcome, she recognized that the protection of Rotherby must somehow be accomplished. To save the one man from death and the other from committing a murder, she braced herself for the greatest battle of her life.
Arthur’s look came back to her. He regarded her sombrely, as though he recognized in her a factor that must be dealt with.
“You say he brought you here for supper,” he said. “Did he give you no reason for believing that he meant to keep you here all night?”
She faced him steadfastly. The man’s life hung in the balance. It rested with her—it rested with her.
“I was on the point of leaving when you arrived,” she said.
“Is that the truth?” he said.
“It is the truth,” she answered quietly.
“You honestly believe he meant to let you go?”
“Yes.” Her eyes looked straight into his with the words. She realized that the tension was slackening, but she dared not relax her own vigilance. The danger was not yet past. Not yet had she accomplished her end.
“He has never given you any cause to distrust him?” Arthur said.
She hesitated momentarily. “I am trusting him now,” she said finally.
“Why?” He flung the word with a touch of fierceness. “You are saying this to bluff me. It is not true.”
“It is true,” she said resolutely, paused a second, then very firmly made her position secure. “I am trusting him because—because I have promised to be his wife.”
The declaration fell between them like a bombshell. She did not know how she uttered it, and having done so, there came a mist before her eyes which seemed to fog all her senses, making it impossible for her to gauge the result—to realize in any sense the devastation she had wrought. She thought she heard him draw the breath between his teeth as though he repressed some sign of suffering. But she was not sure even of this, so desperate for the moment was her own extremity.
It could not have lasted for long, that wild tumult of emotion, but when it passed she was trembling from head to foot as though she had merged from some frightful conflict. She wanted to protest for very anguish that she could not endure any more, she could not—she could not! But her voice was gone. She stood waiting, wondering how soon her strength would utterly fail.
Arthur’s voice came to her at last, low, hoarse with restraint. “So that is why you came to town!”
She could not answer him. There was no reproach in his tone, but the pain of it was more agonizing to her than any suffering of her own. As in a vision she saw him beaten and thrust aside—the mighty gladiator to whom, for some mysterious reason, victory was eternally denied. Her whole soul cried out against the fate that dogged him, but she stifled the cry. She could not—dared not—give it utterance.
She yet stood between him and his victim, and she must continue to stand. She clung to that thought before all else. To save him from himself—it was all that counted with her just then.
He spoke again at length, and in his voice was a subtle difference that told her the end was within sight—the battle almost won.
“I am beginning to understand,” he said. “I thought—somehow I thought—I had misjudged you—that night at Tetherstones—you remember? Well, I know better now. I shall never make that mistake again. If he marries you, no doubt you will consider yourself lucky. But—just in case you don’t know—I had better warn you that he doesn’t stick at letting a woman down if it suits his purpose.”
His voice grew harder, colder; it had a steely edge. “You may have heard of a sister of mine who died some years ago—Nan? He ruined her deliberately, intentionally. He never meant to make good. She was young. She didn’t know the world as you know it. She—actually loved him. And she paid the penalty. We all paid to a certain extent. That is why—” his tone suddenly deepened,—“I have sworn to kill him if he ever comes my way again—as I would kill a poisonous reptile. Perhaps it seems unreasonable to you. Your ideas are different. But—the fact remains.”
He ceased to speak, and still she stood between them, past speech, almost past feeling, yet steadfast in her resolve. The battle was nearly over—the end within sight.
Again there fell a silence, and she counted the seconds, asking herself how long—how long? Somewhere within her she seemed to hear the echo of the words that he had spoken on that terrible night at Tetherstones. “I loved you—I—loved you!” And now as then she felt that the fires of hell were very near. But she would not faint this time. O God, she must not faint!
He spoke again—for the last time—and there was a sound of dreadful laughter in his voice.
“It seems I have come on a fool’s errand,” he said. “I can only apologize for my intrusion, and withdraw. No doubt you know best how to play your own game. I only regret that I did not realize sooner what it was.”
That was all. He turned from her with the words, and she knew that the awful battle was over. Because of her, he would let his enemy go free.
But as she stood numbly listening to the heavy tread of his feet as he went away, she knew no sense of conquest or even of relief. The battle was over, but she herself was wounded past all hope. And she thought her heart must die within her, so bitter was the pain.
He was gone. The clang of the outer door spoke of his departure.
He was gone, and the dread struggle was past.
She came to herself like a dazed mariner flung ashore by the breakers, hardly believing that the peril was over. A great weakness was upon her and she knew that she could not stand against it. Of Rotherby’s very existence at the moment she was unaware. Mechanically, gropingly, she made her way to the settee before the stove and sank down upon it. She was shivering violently.
The warmth came about her, and she stretched out her hands to it, seeking its comfort, thankful for the physical relief of it, yet hardly conscious of her surroundings.
“It is dead—it is dead!” she kept saying to herself over and over. “It is quite—quite dead!”
But for a long time she could not bring herself to realize why she said it or what it was that was dead.
At last by slow and painful degrees it began to dawn upon her that there was a meaning to the words. Something was dead. Something had died by her hand in that very room. What was it?
Now it came to her in all its immensity, crushing her down. She had slain his love. She had killed her own romance. From that night onwards he would never think of her again save with reviling and bitterness of soul. She had taken that which was holy and flung it in the dust. She had desecrated the perfect gift, had made a hideous travesty of that high vision which had been vouchsafed to her. More, she had dragged the man she loved down to the very gates of hell, and had made him know the tortures of the damned.
The warmth was beginning to ease her exhausted body, but her spirit found no comfort. Almost she preferred that numbness of all her faculties. For the misery that was taking its place was more than she could bear.
She still sat with her hands outstretched, but hot tears were rolling down her face, unheeded, unchecked, the tears of a great despair.
“It is dead,” she said to herself over and over in the desolation of her soul. “It is dead. It is dead.”
There came a voice behind her—Rotherby’s voice, and she started slightly, remembering him. It was curious how little he counted now.
“Frances,” he said, and with her outer consciousness she noticed an odd embarrassment in his tone and faintly wondered. “I’ve made a pretty poor show of this. Don’t cry! You’re perfectly safe.”
“Am I crying?” she said, and put a hand to her face.
He came and sat beside her. “Listen!” he said “I’ve been a damned cad. And you’re a topper. I never knew you had it in you—or any woman had for the matter of that. There’s nothing I won’t do for you after this. Understand?”
“I don’t want you to do anything,” she said wearily.
He made an odd sound as of some irony suppressed. “You’re nearly dead,” he said. “So am I. Come and have supper! And trust me—will you trust me?”
Something in his tone reached her. She turned slowly and looked at him. His face was very pale, and his eyes looked drawn and strained; but except for this she saw no traces about him of the recent struggle. He met her gaze with a faint smile.
“I’ve had all the nonsense knocked out of me for to-night,” he said. “But I suppose I’m damned lucky to be here at all. That fellow has the strength of an ox. The back of my head is like a jelly, damn him!”
“I thought he meant to kill you,” she said dully.
“He did,” said Rotherby. “You saved my life.”
“Did I?” Her look fell away from him. “It wasn’t for your sake,” she said, after a moment. “It was for his.”
“I gathered that,” said Rotherby. “That’s what makes you so wonderful.”
“I don’t feel wonderful,” she said.
He leaned towards her. “Don’t cry!” he said again. “You are wonderful. And you’ve made me feel a cur of the very first magnitude. That’s something to accomplish, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I wasn’t thinking of you.”
“You’re worn out,” he said. “Have some food, and I’ll take you back. You’re going to trust me, aren’t you? I swear I won’t let you down after this. You’re not afraid of me?”
“Oh no, I am not afraid of you,” she said.
In a detached, impersonal fashion, out of the depths of her despair, she wondered how he could imagine that he or his actions had the slightest importance for her. Could anything in the world really matter after this cataclysm? He might have been a total stranger, ministering to her, so small was his significance now.
But she was in a vague fashion grateful for his kindness, and when he brought her food, she forced herself to eat lest he should think her unappreciative. It revived her also, lifting the awful weight of inertia from her senses, so that after a while she was capable of coherent thought again.
“That’s better,” Rotherby said presently. “Look here! You won’t believe me, but I’m most damnably sorry for all this.”
“I do believe you,” she said, with a wan smile.
“Oh, I don’t mean the hammering,” he said. “I’m actually thinking of you for a change. I’ve been a rotter all my life, and I don’t count. But you—you’re straight. I always knew you were. And I’ve found out something more about you to-night. I’ve found out why you turned me down.”
He got up abruptly, and began to walk about the room.
“I half-guessed it long ago. I know it now. You love this hairy-heeled chap who nearly killed me to-night. You needn’t bother to deny it. You love him and he loves you. And yet—and yet—you let him believe—that of you! Good God! There isn’t another woman on earth would have done it.”
“I had to do it,” Frances said with simplicity. “He would have killed you.”
“Yes, he would have killed me—and swung for it. You didn’t want him to swing. Listen!” He came suddenly to her and knelt by her side. “You told me a little while ago that I was not all beast, that I was a man at heart. And you’re right. I am—I am. Frances, I swear to you—I’ll never let you down after this.”
The earnestness of his tone moved her somewhat. She put out a hand to him. “I know,” she said.
He gripped her hand fast. “You don’t know what a brute I am,” he said. “I’m going to tell you. That fellow—Arthur Dermot as he styles himself—is my cousin. His father is Dr. Rotherby’s brother. We were friends once, he and I—sort of brothers, you understand. He had a sister—a lot of sisters—one in particular—a lovely girl—Nan.” He paused. “Somehow you have always reminded me of Nan, so dainty, so queenly in your ways, so quick of sympathy—so full of charm. Well, I loved her—she loved me. It was a midsummer madness—one of those exquisite dreams that one revels in like a draught of wine, and then forgets.”
“That isn’t love,” said Frances.
He lifted his shoulders. “Isn’t it? Well, perhaps you are right. I never wholly forgot. But we were young. She was only twenty. No one suspected us of falling in love until the thing was done. Then there was an outcry—first cousins—no marriage. We hadn’t even begun to think of marriage, but I swear—I swear—I never meant to let her down. If they had left us alone, the thing would probably have fizzled out, but the fuss somehow worked us up to fever pitch. We met—by stealth—at night. She was young and very ardent. I was a damned cad. I own it. But she—she was like a flame, and in the end—well, you know what happened in the end. We came to our senses very early one summer morning. She was scared, and when I tried to calm her she flew into a passion. I got angry too. We quarrelled and separated. That very day the old Bishop, my trustee he was then, sent for me and told me he had a mission for me to execute in Australia. It was a trumped-up job. I knew it at the time. But I was hot-headed, and there had been talk of foreign travel before. I took it for granted that our dream had come to an end. I accepted and went.”
“How could you?” Frances said.
He raised his shoulders again. “I told you I was a brute. But at the time it seemed the only thing to do. The dream was over. One doesn’t sit over the cards in broad daylight.”
The cynicism habitual to him sounded in the last words. She shrank a little and withdrew her hand.
“Yes, I know,” he said. “You are a woman. You take the woman’s point of view. But I’m not defending myself. I’m just telling you the plain truth. I didn’t know when I went about poor Nan’s trouble. I had a letter from her three months after, telling me. She wanted to run away, to come and join me. It was a wild, hysterical sort of letter. It had taken six weeks to reach me, and it seemed likely she had changed her mind by that time. In any case I was just starting for an expedition into the Blue Mountains. I put her letter on one side to answer, but somehow I never did answer it. I thought she had probably exaggerated the whole thing. So I hoped for the best and let it slide.”
“How wicked!” Frances said. “How contemptible!”
The condemnation in her voice was all the deeper for its quietness. She sat before him cold, impersonal as a judge, her eyes fixed straight before her.
A curious shiver went through the man. He got up to cover it, and resumed his pacing of the room.
“I was away for over two years,” he went on, speaking as one impelled. “I never heard from her during that time. I almost forgot her. Then I came home. I found they had left Oxford. Did I tell you old Dermot Rotherby had held a professorship there, and Arthur was reading for the Bar? No one seemed to know where they were. Old Theodore, the Bishop, had been appointed to Burminster. I went to him, asked him for news. He said Dermot’s health had broken down, and they had taken a farm in the country. They had never been much to one another. He spoke very vaguely of them. It was Aunt Dorothea who let it out. She told me Nan had died mysteriously—that there had been a child—that they had changed their name in consequence—and then she got badly scared and begged me not to let the Bishop know she had told me, and not to dream of going near them as it was more than my life was worth. I must admit I didn’t feel drawn that way, since poor Nan was past help. So I decided to let sleeping dogs lie, and cleared out of the country again. I stayed away for some time, sometimes drifting back to London, but never for long. Then at last I got tired of wandering and came home. I went to Burminster, and met—you. You caught me then. You’ve held me ever since. And I could have won you—I could have won you—” He stopped abruptly. “What’s the good of talking? I’ve lost you now, haven’t I? You’ll never look at me again.”
“Never,” Frances said.
Her hands were clasped as she sat. There was no longer any agitation about her. She might have been a carven image, so still was she, so utterly aloof and removed from all emotion.
He glanced at her once or twice as he walked, and finally came and stood before her.
“I haven’t told you quite everything even now,” he said. “There’s one thing I’m almost afraid to tell you. Shall I go on—or shall I hold my peace?”
“Go on!” she answered in the same dead-level voice.
“You think nothing matters now,” he said. “You think you won’t care. You’re wrong. You will care—horribly.”
“I think I have got to know,” she said, “whatever it is.”
“All right,” he said recklessly. “You shall know. After some damnable fate had taken you to Tetherstones, after they had tried to murder me and failed, after that night at Fordestown when you refused to come with me, the devil entered into me, and I made up my mind I’d get you—at any cost. And so I played you a trick. I lied to you.” He bent down, trying to read her impassive face. “Do you understand? I tricked you—to get you up here.”
She did not flinch or give any sign of feeling. “Do you mean about my sketches?” she said.
“Yes. That’s just what I do mean. I have got them all here. No one has seen them but myself.”
A faint frown drew her forehead. “But you paid for them,” she said.
“I know. That was part of my damned scheme to get you into my power. You were always so independent. I thought when once you realized that you had been living on my money, it would break your spirit.”
“How—odd!” she said.
And that was all. No word of reproach or condemnation; yet the man winced as if he had been struck in the face.
“My God!” he said. “If you would only curse me! Any other woman would.”
“But why?” she said. “The fault was mine. I always knew—in my heart—that you were—that sort of man.”
“My God!” he said again. “You haven’t much mercy.”
She looked up at him. “I am sorry for you,” she said. “But—I don’t blame you. You were made that way.”
He struck his fist into his hand. “Frances, I swear to you—I swear to you—No, what’s the good of swearing? I’ll show you. Look here! We won’t talk any more to-night. We’re both dead beat. I’ll take you back to your hotel. And in a day or two—if you will trust me—I’ll show you that I am not—that sort of man. Will you trust me, Frances? Give me this one chance of making good? I’m a blackguard, I own it; but I can play the game if I try. Will you trust me?”
There was a hint of desperation in his voice, and, because she was a woman, that reached her where mere protestations had failed.
She held out her hand to him mutely, and as he took it she rose to her feet, looking him straight in the eyes. But she did not utter one word. She had spoken her condemnation and there was nothing left to say.
Out of her despair, tragically but fearlessly, she faced him. And to the man in his abasement there came a sense of greatness such as he had never before known.
Not by strength and not by strategy, but by purity of heart, she had conquered the devil in his soul.
London skies and ceaseless rain, and the roar and swish of London traffic over the streaming roads! The tramp of many hurrying feet, the echo of careless voices vaguely heard, and the grey, grim river flowing out to sea! How terrible it was! How inevitable! How—lonely!
She stood—a slim dark, figure—in the recess of the bridge leaning against the stone balustrade while the crowds passed by unheeding, and looked down into the dark-flowing water.
How long would it take, she wondered, how long a struggle in those dreadful depths before the soul rose free? And then—even then—would it be freedom, or slavery of another kind, a striving against yet more awful odds, a sinking into yet more fearful depths? Her tired mind wandered to and fro over the problem. So easy to die, if that were all! But after death—what then? Having shirked the one issue, could she possibly hope to be in any sense better equipped for that which lay beyond? Having failed hopelessly to prove herself in the one life, could there be any possibility of making a better bargain for herself in the next? Her brain recoiled from the thought. No, deliverance did not lie that way.
Perhaps it did not lie anywhere, she told herself drearily. Perhaps there was no deliverance. Like the prisoners of old, shackled to that stone of fate, perhaps it was her lot to wait until it descended upon her. She had sought so desperately for a way of escape, and now every channel was closed to her. Further seeking—further striving—were useless. God alone could help her now.
She looked up at the grey sky and felt the cold rain beating down upon her. Who was it who had once said: “Ask and ye shall receive, seek and ye shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you”? Strange that such words as those could ever be forgotten! They came upon her now almost as if they had been uttered aloud. And with them, very suddenly, came the memory of her prayer from the Tetherstones on the night of her great need. “From all evil and mischief, from sin, from crafts and assaults of the devil, Good Lord deliver us!” And how wonderful—how God-sent—had been her deliverance! The thought of little Ruth shot across her mind like a ray of light. Again the childish fingers seemed to clasp her own, closely, confidingly, lovingly. It was like a message to her soul—the angel of her deliverance!
It was then that the power to pray came to Frances, there on the open crowded bridge between the grey skies and the grey river with the grey stone to support her. She could not have said whence or how it came, but it possessed her for a space to the exclusion of all else. And she prayed—as she had prayed by little Ruth’s death-bed—with a fervour and a depth of faith that amazed herself. Not for deliverance, not for a way of escape, only for strength in her weakness—only for sustenance, lest the journey be too great for her! And when she ceased to pray, when the great moment passed—all too quickly, as such moments always must—when she woke again to physical misery and physical exhaustion, to the dripping skies and the leaden world and the dank uncleanness of the atmosphere, though no sign of any sort came in answer, yet she knew that her prayer was heard.
She turned and left the bridge, still with the feeling of that little hand in hers, and a sense of relief that was almost rejoicing in her heart. Though she had lost everything, though she trod the stones of the wilderness and the way before her was dark and steep and wholly unfamiliar, yet her fear had gone. The burden was lifted. For she knew that she was not alone. She went back through the rain-soaked streets, and still it seemed to her that that angel-presence went with her, guiding her feet. She had come out to seek a cheap lodging, but now that purpose had gone from her. She returned to the great station and the vast hotel as one led.
She passed in under the echoing glass roof where the shrieking of trains mingled with the noise of the scurrying multitudes. Everyone was in a hurry, it seemed, except herself, and she—she moved without haste and without lingering to a destination unknown.
She turned in to the hotel vestibule, leaving the noise and the seething crowds, conscious of a great quietness that came as it were to meet her and folded her round. It was late afternoon, and her intention had been to give up her room, but she had not done so, and she did not now turn to the office. She went instead to a settee in a corner and sat down there as one who waited. A few people passed to and fro, but no one accosted her. The place was dim and restful. She took no interest in them, or they in her.
Somewhere in the distance a page-boy was calling a number in a raucous voice. No one responded to it, and she vaguely wished he would stop; for he intruded upon the peace of the atmosphere like a yapping dog heard in the silent hours of the night. Now he was drawing nearer and becoming more obtrusive. Why did not someone stop him? If he had a message why couldn’t someone take it and send him away? Or if he couldn’t find the person for whom it was intended, where was the use of continuing that untuneful yell?
“Two—four—nine! Two—four—nine!” Now he had left the lounge and was coming down the corridor to the vestibule! The thing was beginning to get upon her nerves. She drew further back into the corner as he approached. Quite a small boy, with the sharp rat-like features of his type, and gleaming brass buttons all down his front that reflected little knobs of light from a distant lamp! His voice was stupendous, shattering the peace, piercing her brain with its insistence, pulverizing the vision that had brought her thither.
“Two—four—nine! Two—four—nine!” He came close to her, paused, yelled the number straight at her so that she shrank, and then passed on to the almost empty vestibule where he continued his intolerable cry without result.
His voice began to pass into the distance, to merge into the vague sounds that penetrated from without. Now she heard it no longer, and she breathed a sigh of thankfulness, and tried to return to the state of quiescent waiting which he had so rudely disturbed. But something had happened. She realized it with almost a sense of calamity. The little fingers no longer clasped her own, the feeling of peace had left her. The vision had fled.
She made a desperate attempt to call it back, to force her mind to grasp afresh the power that had so magically inspired her. But it was gone. The outer darkness came down upon her once more. The blackness of despair entered into her soul.
She sat for a space in blank hopelessness. Then it was all a myth, that strength so wonderfully bestowed, the trick of an overwrought brain—no more! Her prayer had been in vain. She was alone and sinking—sinking! A sound of great waters suddenly filled her ears. She saw again the grim, dark river flowing to the sea—so deep, so cold, so terrible! She lifted her face, gasping, as though those awful waters were overwhelming her. Her heart had ceased to beat. It felt like a stone within her, and she was cold to the very soul of her.
Ah, God, what was that? A cry in the distance—a voice that called! What was it? What was it? She grabbed her failing faculties to listen. It might be even yet the salvation for which she had prayed and waited. It might be—ah, what was it and why did it hold her so?
Breathlessly she listened, and for those moments she was like a prisoner on the very brink of death, hearing afar off the arresting cry that meant—that might mean—a reprieve. Now it grew nearer, it grew louder, it filled the world,—the universe—like a trumpet that could not be ignored. Words came to her through the wild chaos of her mind—three short words flung like a challenge far and wide—now a demand, now a menace—so that all must surely stop to listen!
“Two—four—nine! Two—four—nine!” That page with the fiery buttons was returning!
Along the corridor he came, and she caught back a burst of terrible laughter that rose from her stone-cold heart at the sight. A minute figure with a brazen voice that bawled trumpet-wise, and bearing a brass salver with a telegram upon it. Now he approached her again, and she marvelled at the noise he made. Surely he was made of brass, this messenger whom no one heeded!
“Two—four—nine! Two—four—nine!” He came to her, he stopped again. He shouted his challenge full at her. Then he ceased.
He thrust the salver towards her, and spoke in a husky, confidential undertone. “Ain’t that your number, miss?”
She stared at him, amazed rather by the unexpected cessation of the noise than by the words he spoke.
He thrust the salver a little nearer. “Ain’t that your number?” he said again. “Two—four—nine! Thorold! Ain’t that your name?”
She put out a hand mechanically. “Is it? Can it be? Yes, my name is Thorold.”
Her voice came mechanically too; it had a deadened sound.
The boy’s sharp eyes scanned her with pert curiosity. As she took the telegram, he pursed his lips to a whistle, but no sound issued from them.
She read the message in a sort of suspended silence that was peculiarly intense.