Brought up by a mother to whom her son's future had been the only consoling thought in a middle age of singular trials and perplexities, Ludovic Wantley had from childhood realized, to an almost pathetic extent, the pleasant possibilities of life as a British peer. But very soon after he had succeeded his cousin he discovered that much of the glories, and all the pleasures attached to the position would be denied him, partly from want of means, more perhaps from lack of that robustness of outlook induced, not wholly to his spiritual advantage, in the average public school boy.
When abroad Wantley never became, as it were, forgetful of his identity—never affected the incognito so dear, and sometimes so useful, to the travelling English peer. Indeed, young Lord Wantley had soon become the Continental innkeeper's ideal 'milord,' content to pay well for indifferent accommodation, delighted rather than otherwise to meet with those trifling mishaps which annoy so acutely the ordinary tourist, and content to come back, winter after winter, to the same auberge, osteria, or gasthaus.
In yet another matter he differed greatly from the conventional travelled and travelling Englishman: he came and went alone, apparently feeling no need, as did most of his countrymen, of congenial companionship. One day the kindly landlady of one of those stately posting inns, yclept 'Le Tournebride,' which may still be found scattered through provincialFrance, had ventured to suggest that the next time she had the pleasure of seeing him she hoped he would come accompanied by 'une belle milady.' He had smiled as he had answered: 'Jamais! jamais! jamais!' But that particular 'Tournebride' had known him no more.
Wantley had thought much of marriage. What man so situated does not do so? He knew, or thought he knew, that to him money and marriage must be synonymous terms, and the knowledge had angered him. In one of his rare moments of confidence he had said to his cousin: 'Like your eccentric friend who always knew when there was a baronet in the room, I always know when there's an heiress there. And, what is more serious, her presence always induces a feeling of repulsion!'
Penelope had laughed suddenly, and then changed the subject. Any allusion to Wantley's monetary affairs held for her a sharp if small pin-prick of conscience. For a while she had tried, it must be admitted in but a fitful and desultory way, to bring him in contact with the type of English girl, often, let it be said in parenthesis, a not unpleasing type of modern girlhood, who is willing to consider very seriously, and in all good faith, the preliminaries to a bargain in which she and her fortune, a peer and his peerage, are to be the human goods weighed opposite one another in the balance of life.
There had also been periods in Wantley's life when he had found himself in love with love, and ready to weave an ardent romance round every pretty sentimentalist in search of an adventure. But these feelings had never deepened into one so strong as to compel the thought of an enduring tie. His fastidious critical temperament shrank from concrete realities, and as time went on he had felt, over-sensitively, how little he had to offer to a woman of the kind to whom he sometimes felt a strong if temporary attraction.
As he grew older, passed the border-line of thirty, the longing for the stability afforded by a happy marriage appealed to him, for awhile, far more than it had done when he was a younger man. And so for some two years, being then much abroad, he had toyed with the idea of making, in France or in Italy, amariage de convenancewith some well-born, well-dowered girl who should leave her convent-school to become his wife, and with whom he would promise himself, when in the mood, an after-marriage romance not lacking in piquancy.
Unfortunately, Wantley was an Englishman, and by no means as unconventional as he liked to think himself. Accordingly, when he came to consider, and even more when he came to discuss, with some good-natured French or Italian acquaintance, the preliminaries of such a marriage as had appealed to his fancy, his gorge rose at certain sides of the question then closely presented to his notice, and finally he put the idea from him.
This spring Wantley had returned to England, ready, as usual, to spend the summer in half-unwilling attendance on his lovely cousin, and further than he had been for many years from all thought of marriage.
Then, with what seemed at times incredible and disconcerting swiftness, had come over him, in these few days of sunny quietude, a limitless unreasoning tenderness for a young creature utterly unlike his former ideals of womanhood. Even when aghast at the thought of how easily he might have missed her on the way of his life—even when he felt her already so much a part of himself that he could no longer have described her, as he had first seen her, to a stranger—Wantley admitted, nay, forced on himself the knowledge, that she was not beautiful, not even particularly gifted or clever. One reason why he had always displayed so sincere a lack of liking for theheiresses, willing to be peeresses, whom Penelope had thrust upon his notice, had been that to him they had all looked so unaccountably plain; and yet, compared with Cecily Wake, he knew that more than one of these young women might well have been considered a beauty.
Wantley had always been fond of analyzing his own emotions, and now the simplicity, as well as the strength, of his feeling amazed him. When with Cecily Wake he felt that he was journeying through some delicious unknown country, the old Paradise rediscovered by them two, she still a sweet mysterious stranger, whose better acquaintance he was making day by day. But when she was no longer by his side, and there were many hours he could only spend in thinking of her, then Wantley felt as a mother feels about her own little child, as if he had always known her, always loved her with this placid and yet uneasy care, this trusting and yet watchful tenderness.
He had ever deprecated enthusiasm, and had actively disliked philanthropists, as only those who in early youth are constrained to endure the company of enthusiasts and the atmosphere of philanthropy can deprecate the one and dislike the other. Well, now, so the young man whimsically told himself, had come what his old enemies—those who had gathered about his uncle and aunt in days he hated to remember—would doubtless have recognised as a distinct 'call.' It seemed to him that he had made a good beginning that first Sunday afternoon, when he had kept the aunt in play while the niece had accomplished her prosaic errand of mercy.
The same evening, late at night, he had gone into the room which had been the great Lord Wantley's study, and, under the grim eyes of the man who had never judged him fairly, he had pulled out faded Blue-Books, reports, and pamphlets which had been the tools of amighty worker for his kind. Then, lamp in hand, he had wandered on into the studio, and there, oddly out of keeping with their fellows on the pretty quaintly placed white shelves framing the door, he had found newer, more digestible, contributions to the problems to which he was now, half unwillingly, turning his mind.
He took down a slim, ill-printed volume, bearing on the title-page the name of Philip Hammond, and composed of essays which had first appeared in the more serious reviews. Setting down his lamp on Penelope's deal painting-table, he opened the little book with prejudice, read on with increasing attention, and finally placed it back on the shelf with respect.
Even so, his lips curled as he remembered the only time he had seen the writer. The two men had met by accident in Mrs. Robinson's London house, and Wantley had been amused by Hammond's obvious—too obvious—devotion to the beautiful widow of the man whose aims and whose ideals he had known how to describe so well in this very book. For the hundredth time Wantley asked himself in what consisted Penelope's power of attracting such men as had been apparently Melancthon Robinson, as was undoubtedly Philip Hammond, as had become—to give the clinching instance—David Winfrith.
The day before, when driving back to Monk's Eype from the place where he had been spending a few pleasant days, he had passed the two riders, and had seen them so deeply absorbed in one another's conversation that they had ridden by without seeing him.
For a moment, as he had driven by quickly in a dogcart belonging to his late host, and therefore unfamiliar to Penelope and her companion, he had caught a look—an unguarded, unmasked, passionate look—on Winfrith's strong, plain face.
What glance, what word on his companion's part, had brought it there? That Winfrith should allowhimself to be thus moved angered Wantley. He set himself to recall very deliberately certain things that his mother, acting with strange lack of good feeling, had told him, when he was still a boy, concerning Lady Wantley's mother, Penelope's grandmother. He wondered if Penelopeknew. On the whole he thought not. But in any case, who could doubt from whom she had had transmitted to her that uncanny power of bewitching men, of keeping them faithful to herself, while she remained, or at least so he felt persuaded, quite unaffected by the passions she delighted in unloosing?
In his own mind, and not for the first time, he judged his cousin very hardly. And yet, after that evening, Wantley never thought so really ill of her again, for, when he felt tempted to do so, he seemed to hear the words which he had heard said that day for the first, though by no means for the last, time: 'Why are you—what makes you—so unfair to Penelope?'
And even as he walked through the sleeping, silent house he reminded himself, repentantly, that his cousin's love-compelling power extended to what was already to him the best and purest, as it was so soon to be the dearest, thing on earth.
'La Passion, c'est l'ascétisme profâne, aussi rude que ascétisme religieux.'—Anatole France.
'La Passion, c'est l'ascétisme profâne, aussi rude que ascétisme religieux.'—Anatole France.
Within two hours of his curious conversation with his cousin, Wantley saw Mrs. Robinson and Cecily Wake start off, alone, for Shagisham.
With his hands in his pockets, his head slightly thrown back, standing in a characteristic attitude, the young man watched them drive away in the curious low dogcart which had been designed by Penelope for her own use. As he turned back into the hall an unaccountable depression seized on him. The memory of his cousin's words concerning Cecily was far from giving him pleasure. He felt as if in listening he had been treacherous, not so much to the girl as to their own ideal relation to one another.
It is surely a mistake to say, as is so often said, that uncertainty and doubt are the invariable accompaniments of the beginning of a great passion. Wantley had felt, almost from the first, as sure of her as he had felt of himself, and yet his reverence for Cecily was great, and his opinion of his own merits most modest.
Death might come, and now he had become strangely afraid of death, but Cecily, living, he knew would and must belong to him. He was so sure of this, and he loved her so well as she was, that he had no desire, as yet, to do that which would let all the world share his dear mysterious secret, become witness of his deep content. And so, though Penelope had been very gentle—indeed, save at one moment, very delicate in what she had implied rather than said—Wantleywould have been better pleased had the words remained unuttered.
Then his mind went on to wonder why his cousin had seemed so distressed and so unlike her restrained and, with him, always wholly possessed self. What had signified her odd words, her pleading look, so full of unwonted humility? Things were not going well with Wantley to-day, and his vague discontent was suddenly increased by the recollection that George Downing was leaving Monk's Eype.
Since Downing's arrival Wantley had not once been down to the Beach Room. Mrs. Robinson knew how to insure that her wishes, whatever they might be, should be known and respected, and so, partly in obedience to a word said by her regarding her famous guest's dislike of interruption, partly because he had felt Downing's manner become more and more frigid during the brief moments when the two men were obliged to place themselves in the courteous juxtaposition of host and guest, the younger had studiously avoided forcing his company on the elder.
Now, remembering Penelope's words concerning the part he was to play in the matter of introducing Downing to David Winfrith, he felt that he might without indiscretion seek the other out.
Wantley was surprised by the warmth of his welcome. Downing seemed really glad to have his solitude invaded, and a moment later his visitor, sitting with his back to the broad window, at right angles to the older man's powerful figure, was realizing with some amusement and astonishment how carefully Penelope's old play-room had been arranged with a view to its present occupant's convenience and even comfort.
His cool, observant eyes first took note of the camp-bed, only partly hidden by the splendid Chinese screen, never before moved from its place in the great Picture Room of the villa; then of the strips of feltlaid down over the oak floor; of the comfortable chair in which Downing was now leaning back—lastly, his glance rested on the wide writing-table, covered with papers, note-books, and a map held flatly to the wind-swept surface of the table by a small revolver.
Wantley also perceived a pile of rugs, generally kept in the hall of the villa, for which he had searched in vain a day or two before, when he wanted something to wrap about the knees of old Miss Wake. This, then, was where they had been spirited away!
He charitably reminded himself that Persian Downing, in spite of his straight, long figure, his keen eyes, his powerful chin and jaw, was no longer a young man, and with much living alone had doubtless found time to acquire the art of securing for himself the utmost physical comfort. Wantley's admiration for him somewhat unreasonably declined in consequence, and no suspicion that these little arrangements, these little luxuries, might be the sole fruit of another person's intelligent thoughtfulness even crossed his mind.
They were both smoking—Downing an old-fashioned pipe, and his visitor one of the small French cigarettes of which he always carried a store about with him, and which had been the most tangible sign of his release from thraldom, the great Lord Wantley's horror and contempt of smoking and of smokers having been only equalled by his abhorrence of drinking and of drunkards.
The early afternoon light, reflected from the sea and sand outside, flooded the curious cavernous room with radiance, throwing the upper half of Downing's broad, lean figure in high relief. Wantley, himself in shadow, looked at him with renewed interest and curiosity, and as he did so he realized that there must have been a time when the man before him would have been judged singularly handsome. Now thelarge features were thin to attenuation—the brown skin roughened by much exposure to heat and dust; the grey eyes, gleaming under the bushy eyebrows, sunken and tired; while the thick moustache, streaked with white, hid the firm, delicately modelled mouth, and gave an appearance of age to the face.
'If you do not find the farm comfortable,' said Wantley, breaking what had begun to be an oppressive silence, 'I hope you will return here for awhile. There won't be a soul in London yet.'
'Excepting my old friend, Mr. Julius Gumberg,' objected Downing. 'I believe he has not been out of town for years, and I sometimes think that in this, at any rate, he has proved himself wiser than some of his fellows.'
'Mr. Julius Gumberg,' said the other, smiling, 'has always seemed to me, since I first had the honour of his acquaintance, to be the ideal Epicurean—the man who has mastered the art of selecting his pleasures.'
'True!' cried Downing abruptly. 'But you must admit that not the least of his pleasures has always been that of benefiting his friends.'
'But that, after all, is only a refined form of self-indulgence,' objected Wantley, who had never been in a position so to indulge himself.
An amused smile broke over the other's stern mouth and jaw. 'That theory embodies the ethical nihilism of the old Utilitarians. Of course you are not serious; if you were, your position would be akin to that of the Persian mystics who teach the utter renunciation of self, the sinking of the ego in the divine whole. But then,' added Downing, fixing his eyes on his companion, and speaking as if to himself—'but then comes the question, What is renunciation? The Persian philosopher would give an answer very different from that offered by the Christian.'
'Renunciation is surely the carrying out of the ascetic ideal—something more actively painful than the mere doing without.' Wantley spoke diffidently.
'Undoubtedly that is what the Christian means by the word, but is there not the higher degree of perfection involved in the French saint's dictum?' Downing stopped short; then, with very fair, albeit old-fashioned, accent, he uttered the phrase, 'Rien demander et rien refuser.Of course, the greatest difference between the point of view held by the Persian sages and, say, the old monkish theologians is that concerning human love.'
Wantley leaned forward; he threw his cigarette out of the window. 'Ah,' he said, 'that interests me! My own father became a Roman Catholic, an act on his part, by the way, of supreme renunciation. I myself can see no possible hope of finality anywhere else; but I think that, as regards human love, I should be Persian rather than monkish.' He added, smiling a little: 'I suppose the Persian theory of love is summed up by FitzGerald;' and diffidently he quoted the most famous of the quatrains, lingering over the beautiful words, for, as he uttered them, he applied them, quite consciously, to himself and Cecily Wake. What wilderness with her but would be Paradise?
Her face rose up before him as he had seen it for a moment the day before, when, coming suddenly upon her in the little wood, her honest childish eyes had shone out welcome.
Downing looked at him thoughtfully. 'Ah, no; the Persian mystic of to-day would by no means assent to such simplicity of outlook. Jami rather than Omar summed up the national philosophy. The translation is not comparable, but, still, 'twill serve to explain to you the Persian belief that renunciation of self may be acquired through the medium of a merely human love;' and he repeated the lines:
'Though in this world a hundred tasks thou tryest,'Tis love alone which from thyself will save thee;Even from earthly love thy face avert not,Since to the real it may serve to raise thee.'
'Though in this world a hundred tasks thou tryest,'Tis love alone which from thyself will save thee;Even from earthly love thy face avert not,Since to the real it may serve to raise thee.'
'Though in this world a hundred tasks thou tryest,'Tis love alone which from thyself will save thee;Even from earthly love thy face avert not,Since to the real it may serve to raise thee.'
'Though in this world a hundred tasks thou tryest,
'Tis love alone which from thyself will save thee;
Even from earthly love thy face avert not,
Since to the real it may serve to raise thee.'
'That,' cried Wantley eagerly, 'absolutely satisfies me, and strikes me as being the highest truth!'
Downing again smiled—a quick, humorous smile. 'No doubt,' he said rather dryly, 'so thought the student who, seeking a great sage in order to be shown the way of spiritual perfection, received for answer: "If your steps have not yet trod the pathway of love, go hence, seek love, and, having met it, then return to me." The theory that true love, even if ill-bestowed, partakes of the Divine, is an essential part of the Sufi philosophy.'
'And yet,' objected Wantley, 'there are times when love, even if well bestowed, may have to be withdrawn, lest it should injure the creature beloved.'
'So I should once have said,' answered Downing, leaning forward and straightening himself in his chair; 'but now I am inclined to think that that theory has been responsible for much wrong and pain. I myself, as a young man, was greatly injured by holding for a time this very view. I was attracted to a married woman, who soon obtained over me an extraordinary and wholly pure influence. But you know what the world is like; I cannot suppose that in these matters it has altered since my day. It came to my knowledge that our friendship was arousing a certain amount of comment, and so, after much painful thought and discussion with myself, I made up my mind—wrongly, as I now believe—to withdraw myself from the connection.' He added with a certain effort: 'To this determination—come to, I can assure you and myself, from the highest motives—I trace, in looking back, some unhappiness to her, and to me the utter shipwreck of what were then my worldly chances. My withdrawal from this lady's influence brought meinto contact with another and a very evil personality. Now, had I been then, as I now am, a student of Persian philosophy, I might be——'
Downing stopped speaking abruptly. As he threw himself back, his great powerful figure seemed to collapse. Wantley looked at him, surprised and greatly touched by the confidence.
'I will tell you,' resumed Downing, after a long pause, 'of another Persian belief, to which I now fully adhere. The sages say that as God is, of course, wholly lacking inbukhl—that is, stinginess or meanness—it is impossible for him to withhold from any man the thing for which he strives with sufficient earnestness; and this,' he added, looking at his companion, 'I have myself found to be true. If a man devotes all his energies to the pursuit of spiritual knowledge, he becomes in time——'
'Automatically holy,' suggested Wantley, smiling.
'And capable,' concluded Downing, 'of accomplishing what we call miracles.'
'But to such a one surely human love would be denied, even in Persia?'
'Undoubtedly, yes. But the man who has striven successfully on a lower plane, whose object has been to compass worldly power and the defeat of his enemies—to him human love is not only not denied, but may, as we have seen, bring him nearer to the Divine.'
'But meanwhile,' objected Wantley, 'love, and especially the pursuit of the beloved, must surely stay his ambition, and even interfere with his success?'
'Only inasmuch as it may render him more sensitive to physical danger and less defiant of death.'
The young man had expected a very different answer. 'Yes,' he said tentatively; 'you mean that a soldier, if a lover, is less inclined to display reckless bravery than those among his comrades who have not the same motive for self-preservation?'
'No, no!' exclaimed Downing impatiently; 'I do not mean that at all! All history is there to prove the contrary. I was not thinking of straightforward death in any shape, but of treachery, of assassination. The man who loves'—he hesitated, his voice softened, altered in quality—'above all, the man who knows himself to be beloved, is more alive, more sensitive to the fear of annihilation, than he who only lives to accomplish certain objects. The knowledge that this is so might well make a man pause—during the brief moments when pausing is possible—and it has undoubtedly led many a one to put deliberately from himself all thought of love.'
Wantley looked at him with some curiosity, wondering whether his words had a personal application.
'Now, take my own case,' continued Downing gravely. 'I am in quite perpetual danger of assassination, and in this one matter, at any rate, I am a fatalist. But should I have the right to ask a woman to share, not only the actual risk, but also the mental strain? I once should have said no; I now say yes.'
Wantley was too surprised to speak.
There was a pause, then Downing spoke again, but in a different tone: 'Oddly enough, the first time was the most nearly successful. In fact, the person who had me drugged—perhaps I should say poisoned—succeeded in his object, which was to obtain a paper which I had on my person. Papers, letters, documents of every kind, are associated in my mind with mischief, and I always get rid of them as soon as possible. Mr. Gumberg has boxes full of papers I have sent him at intervals from Persia. I have arranged with him that if anything happens to me they are to be sent off to the Foreign Office. Once there'—he threw his head back and laughed grimly—'they would probably never be looked at again. In no case have I everabout me any papers or letters; everything of the kind is locked away.'
'Yes; but you have to carry a key,' objected Wantley.
'There you have me! I do carry a key. One is driven to trust either a human being or a lock. I prefer the lock.'
Wantley, as he left the Beach Room, felt decidedly more cheerful. The conversation had interested and amused him. Above all, he had been moved by the recital of Downing's early romance, and he wondered idly who the lady in question could have been, whether she was still living, and whether Downing ever had news of her.
During the whole of their talk there had been no word, no hint, of the existence of the other's wife, who, as Wantley, by a mere chance word uttered in his presence in the house where he had recently been staying, happened to know, was even now in England, the honoured guest of one of his uncle's old fellow-workers.
He said to himself that there was a fascination about Downing, a something which might even now make him beloved by the type of woman—Wantley imagined the meek, affectionate, and intensely feminine type of woman—who is attracted by that air of physical strength which is so often allied, in Englishmen, to mental power. He felt that the man he had just left, sitting solitary, had in his nature the capacity of enjoying ideal love and companionship, and the young man, regarding himself as so blessed, regretted that this good thing had been denied to the man who had spoken of it with so much comprehension.
Slowly making his way upwards from the shore, Wantley turned aside, and lingered a few moments on the second of the three terraces. Here, in this still, remote place, on this natural ledge of the cliff,guarded by a stone balustrade which terminated at intervals with fantastic urns, now gay with geranium blossoms, gaining intensity of colour by the background of blue sky and bluer waters, he had only the day before, for a delicious hour, read aloud to Cecily Wake.
From his father Wantley had inherited, and as a boy acquired, an exceptional love and knowledge of old English poetry, and, giving but grudging and unwilling praise to modern verse, he had been whimsically pleased to discover that to the girl Chaucer and La Fontaine were more familiar names than Browning and Tennyson, of whose works, indeed, she had been ignorant till she went to the Settlement, where, however, Philip Hammond had soon made her feel terribly ashamed of her ignorance.
Standing there, his thoughts of Cecily, of Downing, of Persian mysticism, chasing one another through his mind, Wantley suddenly remembered Miss Theresa Wake, doubtless still sitting solitary in her hooded chair.
Cecily's aunt, whom he himself already secretly regarded with the not altogether uncritical eye of a relation, was to Wantley a new and amusing variety of old lady. Miss Theresa Wake had the appearance, common to so many women of her generation, of having been petrified in early middle age. A brown hair front lent spurious youth to the thin, delicate face, and her slight, elegant figure was only now becoming bent. It was impossible to imagine her young, but equally difficult to believe that she would ever grow really old.
The young man who aspired to the honour of becoming in due course her kinsman, found a constant source of amusement in the fact that her sincere,unaffected piety was joined to a keen, almost morbid, interest in any worldly matter affecting her acquaintances. When with Miss Wake it was positively difficult for a sympathetic person to keep from mentioning people, and so, 'I think we shall have David Winfrith here in a few minutes,' he said, when, having sought her out, he was anxious to make amends for his neglect. 'Penelope and your niece will probably bring him back. My cousin is very anxious that he should meet Sir George Downing, who is leaving soon.'
'Leaving soon? He will be greatly missed.'
The remark was uttered primly, and yet, as Wantley felt, with some significance. The phrase diverted him, it seemed so absurdly inappropriate; for Downing had stood, and that to a singular degree, apart from the ordinary life of the villa.
But the old spinster lady was pursuing her own line of thought. 'I suppose,' she said hesitatingly, 'that the Settlement would not be affected should Penelope marry again? Of course, I am interested in the matter on account of my niece.'
Wantley looked at her, surprised. 'I don't see why it should make the slightest difference, the more so that David Winfrith has of late years taken a great part in the management of the Melancthon Settlement—in fact, the place has been the great tie between them. I should not care myself to spend the money of a man to whom my wife had once been married, but I am sure Winfrith will feel no such scruple, and the possession of the Robinson fortune might make years of difference to him in attaining what is, I suppose, his supreme ambition. After all, and of course you must not think that I am for a moment comparing the two men, where would Dizzy have been without Mrs. Lewis?'
'But what would Mr. Winfrith have to do with it?' inquired Miss Wake. 'Was he a friend of Penelope'shusband? How could he influence the disposal of the Robinson fortune?'
It was Wantley's turn to look, and to be, astonished. 'I understood we were speaking of Penelope's marrying again,' he said quickly, 'and I thought that you, like myself, had come to the conclusion that she would in time make up her mind to marry Winfrith. He's been devoted to her ever since she can remember. Why, they were once actually engaged, and I should never be surprised any time, any moment—to-day, for instance—were she to tell us that they were to be married.'
The old lady remained silent, but he realized that her silence was not one of consent. 'Surely you were thinking of David Winfrith?' he repeated. 'There has never been, in a serious sense, anyone else.'
A little colour came to Miss Wake's thin, wrinkled cheeks, and she began to look very uncomfortable. 'I was thinking of someone very different,' she said at last, 'but you have made me feel that I was quite wrong.'
An odious suspicion darted into the young man's mind. He suddenly felt both angry and disgusted. After all this constant dwelling on other people and their affairs must often lead to ridiculous and painful mistakes, to unwarrantable suspicions. 'You surely cannot mean——' he began rather sternly, and waited for her to speak.
'I was thinking of Sir George Downing,' she answered, meeting his perturbed look with one of calm confidence. 'Surely, Lord Wantley, now that I have suggested the idea, you must admit that they are greatly interested in one another? At no time of my life have I seen much of lovers; but, though I have not wished in any way to watch Penelope and this gentleman, and though I have, of course, said nothing to my niece Cecily, it has seemed to me quite dear that there is an attachment. In fact'—shespoke with growing courage, emboldened by his silence—'I have no doubt about my cousin's feelings. Would not the marriage be a suitable one? Of course there must be a certain difference of age between them, but she seems, indeed I am sure she is, so very devoted to him.'
'I confess the thought of such a thing never occurred to me.'
Wantley spoke slowly, unwillingly; and even while he uttered the words there came to him, as in an unbroken, confirmatory chain, the memory of little incidents, words spoken by Penelope, others left unsaid, her altered manner to himself—much unwelcomed evidence that Miss Wake had been perhaps clear-sighted when they had all been blind. He felt a sudden pang of pity for his cousin, a feeling as if he had suddenly seen, through an open door, a sight not meant for his eyes. For a moment he deliberated as to whether he should tell Miss Wake of the one fact which made impossible any happy ending to what she believed was true of the relations between Mrs. Robinson and Sir George Downing.
'I think I ought to tell you,' he said at length, 'that a marriage between them is out of the question. Sir George Downing has a wife living. They are separated, but not divorced.' There was a painful moment of silence; then he added hastily: 'I know that my cousin is fully aware of the fact.'
Then, to his relief, Miss Wake spoke as he would have had her speak. 'If that is so,' she cried,' I have been utterly mistaken, and I beg your and Penelope's pardon. It is easy to make mistakes of the kind. You see, I have lived so long out of the world.'
There was a note of appeal in the thin, high voice.
'But indeed,' said Wantley quickly, 'my cousin is very unconventional, and your mistake was a natural one. I myself, had I not known thecircumstances, would probably have come to the same conclusion.'
Their eyes met, and for a brief moment unguarded glances gave the lie to their spoken words.
'On ne choisit pas la femme que l'on doit aimer.'
The Rectory at Shagisham had the great charm of situation. In his study old Mr. Winfrith stood on the same level as the top of his church steeple, and his windows commanded wide views of the valley where lay the scattered houses composing his cure, of the low hills beyond, and of the sea. The best had been done that could be done with the steep, wind-swept garden, and the square, low rooms, which had seen little, if any, alteration in forty years, opened out upon a lawn kept green with constant watering.
To Cecily the old-fashioned house, with its curious air of austere, unfeminine refinement, was very interesting. She had never seen a country clergyman at home, and her imagination had formed a picture of Winfrith's father very different from the small, delicate-looking old man who welcomed her and Mrs. Robinson with great warmth of manner, while Winfrith himself showed almost boyish pleasure at the unexpected visit. 'They must be very lonely here sometimes,' was Cecily's unspoken thought, as the old clergyman ushered her with some ceremony into the drawing-room, which had the curious unlived-in look so often seen in a room associated, to those still living, with a dead woman's presence.
Before passing out on to the lawn Mr. Winfrithdirected Cecily's attention to a portrait which hung over the mantelpiece. It was that of a brilliant-looking girl, dressed more or less gipsy-fashion, the colouring of her red cheeks, so bright as to give the impression that the sitter had rouged, being daringly repeated in a scarf twisted round her dark hair. 'David's mother,' he said proudly. 'Do you not think there is a great likeness between them?'
Cecily looked doubtfully at the picture. 'Of course he is not nearly so handsome'—Mr. Winfrith spoke rather plaintively—' but I assure you he is really very like her. This portrait was painted before our marriage. Lord Wantley—I mean Mrs. Robinson's father—thought it one of the best ever painted by the artist'—Mr. Winfrith looked puzzled—' I forget his name, though at one time I knew him quite well. I'm sure you would know it, for he's a great man. He was often at Monk's Eype, and painted Lady Wantley several times. But this was one of his early efforts, and I myself'—the old man lowered his voice, fearing lest the stricture should be overheard by his other guest—' much prefer his earlier manner.' And then he led her out into the garden, and handed her over to the care of his son, while he himself turned eagerly, confidingly, to Penelope.
David Winfrith at Shagisham, waiting on his old father, acting as courteous host to his own and that dear father's guest, seemed a very different person from the man who acted as mentor to the Melancthon Settlement.
Only the most unemotional, and, intellectually speaking, limited, human being is totally unaffected by environment. Winfrith, when at home, not only appeared another person to his London self, but he behaved, and even felt, differently. At Shagisham he came under the only influence to which he had ever consciously submitted himself—that of his simple and spiritually minded father, a man so mucholder than himself that he seemed a survival from a long-past generation.
Another cause, one known fully to very few beside himself, made him a different man when at home. There, at Shagisham, he never forgot certain facts connected with the early life of his parents—facts made known to him in a letter written by his mother before her death, and handed to him by his father when they had returned, forlornly enough, from her funeral. And after the boy—he was sixteen at the time—had read and burnt the letter, he had looked at the lovely valley, the beautiful old church, and the pretty rectory, with altered, alien eyes.
Had Winfrith followed his instinct he would never have come there again, but he had forced himself to keep this feeling hidden from his father, and many times, both when at college and, later, through his working year, he took long journeys in order to spend a few brief hours with the old man.
But he had no love for the place where he had spent his lonely childhood, and he did not like Shagisham any the better when he perceived that he had become in the opinion of the neighbourhood which had once looked askance at Mr. Winfrith and his only child, an important personage, able to influence the fate of lowly folk seeking a job, and that of younger sons of the great folk, bound, with less excuse, on the same errand.
Walking beside Penelope's young friend, he took pains to make himself pleasant, and, happily inspired, he at last observed: 'And so you have made friends with Lord Wantley? He's a very good fellow, and there's much more in him than Mrs. Robinson is ever willing to admit. He might be very useful to the Settlement.' Cecily said to herself that she had perhaps misjudged her companion, and she determined that she would henceforth listen to his criticisms of her schemes with more submission.
But what mattered to David Winfrith the young girl's good opinion? Penelope's unexpected coming had put him in charity with all the world.
Certain men are instinctive monogamists. For this man the world held no woman but she whom he still thought of as Penelope Wantley. There had been times when he would willingly have let his fancy stray, but, unfortunately for himself, his fancy had ever refused to stray.
Of late years he had been often thrown with beautiful and clever women, some of whom had doubtless felt for him that passing, momentary attraction which to certain kinds of natures holds out so great an allurement. But Winfrith, in these matters, was wholly apart from most of those who composed the world in which he had to spend a certain portion of his time.
Even now, while making conversation with Cecily Wake, he was longing to hear what Penelope could be saying that appeared to interest his father so much. Mrs. Robinson had taken the arm of the little old clergyman; they had turned from the wide lawn and steep garden beyond, and were looking at the house, Penelope talking, the other listening silently. 'No doubt,' said Winfrith to himself, 'they are only discussing what sort of creeper ought to be added to the west wall this autumn!'
At last he and his father changed partners, and when the latter, taking charge of Cecily, had led her off to the sloping kitchen-garden, where stood the well, the boring of which had been the old man's one extravagance since he had first come to Shagisham, unnumbered years before, Mrs. Robinson said abruptly: 'Whenever I see your father, David, I can't help wishing that you were more like him! He is so much broader and more kindly than you are—in fact, there seems very little of him in you at all——'
'If you are so devoted to him,' he said, smiling, butrather nettled, 'I wish you would come and see him oftener. You know how fond he is of you.' He added, but in a tone which destroyed the sentiment conveyed in the phrase: 'In that one matter, at any rate, you must admit that he and I are very much alike!'
Something in the way he said the words displeased Mrs. Robinson. To her Winfrith's deep, voiceless affection was as much her own, to do what she willed with, as were any one of her rare physical attributes. The thought of this deep feeling lessening in depth or in extent was even now intolerable; and, while giving herself every licence, and arrogating every right to go her own way, it incensed her that he should, even to herself, allude lightly to his attachment. She answered obliquely, eager to punish him for the lightest deviation from his usual allegiance.
'I know I ought to come oftener,' she said coolly, 'but then, of course, you yourself hitherto have always been the magnet—not, to be sure, a very powerful magnet, for 'tis a long time since I've been here.'
Winfrith reddened. Try as he would—and as a younger man he had often tried—he could not cure himself of blushing when moved or angered. His mother, to the very end of her life, had been proud of a beautiful complexion.
'I was just telling your father'—she gave him a strange sideway glance—'the story of the traveller who, crossing the border of a strange country, came upon a magnificent building which seemed familiar, though he knew it to be impossible that he had ever seen it before. Then suddenly he realized that it was one of the castles he had built in Spain! Now, there, David,' said Mrs. Robinson, pointing with her parasol to the old-fashioned house before them, 'is the only castle I ever built in Spain, and I never come here without wondering what sort of dwellingI should have found it.' As he made no answer, she turned and drew nearer to him, exclaiming as she did so: 'Ah, que j'étais heureuse, dans ces bons jours où nous étions si malheureux!'
French was to Winfrith not so much a language as a vocabulary for the fashioning of treaties and protocols, a collection of counters on whose painfully considered, often tortuous combinations the fate of men and nations constantly depended. It may be doubted therefore, whether, if uttered by any other voice, he would have understood the significance of the odd phrase in which his companion summed up the later philosophy of so many women's lives. As it was, its meaning found its way straight to his heart. He turned and looked at his companion fixedly—a long, searching look. He opened his lips——
But Penelope had said enough—had said, indeed, more than she had meant to say, and produced a far stronger effect than she had intended to produce.
Mentally and physically she drew back, and as she moved away, not very far, but still so as to be no longer almost touching him, 'You owe my visit to-day,' she cried quickly, and rather nervously, 'to the fact that Sir George Downing, the man they call Persian Downing, is anxious to make your acquaintance. He and Ludovic have made friends, and I think Ludovic wants to bring him over to see you.'
'Do you mean that Sir George Downing is actually staying with you?' he asked, with some astonishment. 'I had no idea that any of you knew him.'
'We met him abroad, and he has just been staying a few days at Monk's Eype. He wanted to finish an important paper or report, and we had the Beach Room arranged as a study for him. But he is rather peculiar, and he fancies he could work better in complete solitude, and so, on our way back from here, Cecily and I are going to see if we can get him lodgings at Kingpole Farm. But, David, he really is mostanxious to meet you. He says you are the only man in the new Government who knows anything about Persia; one of the chapters in your book seems to have impressed him very much, and he wants to talk to you about it.'
As she spoke her eyes dropped. She avoided looking at his face. The bait was a gross one, but then the hand which held it was so delicate, so trusted, and so loved.
'A friend of Wantley's?' he repeated. 'I wish I had known that before.'
'I don't think the acquaintance has been a long one, but they seem to get on very well together.' The words were uttered hurriedly. Penelope was beginning to feel deeply ashamed of the part she was playing.
Winfrith went on, with some eagerness: 'How extraordinary that Persian Downing should find his way down here! He is one of the few people whom I have always wished to meet.'
Her task was becoming almost too easy, and with some perverseness she remarked coldly: 'And yet I believe your present chief—I mean Lord Rashleigh—refused to see him when he was in London?'
'Refused is not quite the word. Of course, such a man as Downing has the faults of his qualities. He arrived in town on a Tuesday, I believe; he requested an interview on the Wednesday; and then, while the chief was humming and hawing, and consulting the people who were up on the whole matter, and who could have told him what to say and how far he could go in meeting Downing—who, of course, has come back to England with his head packed full of schemes and projects—the man suddenly disappeared, leaving no address! Rashleigh was very much put out, the more so that, as you doubtless know, our people distrust Downing.'
Penelope was looking down, digging the point of herparasol into the soft turf at their feet. 'There was some story, wasn't there, when Sir George Downing was a young man? Some woman was mixed up with it. What was the truth of it all?'
He hesitated, then answered unwillingly: 'The draft of an important paper disappeared, and was practically traced from Downing's possession to that of a Russian woman with whom he was known to have been on friendly terms. But it's admitted now that he was very harshly treated over the whole affair. I believe he had actually met the lady at a F.O. reception! He may have been a fool—probably he was a fool—but even at the time no one suspected him of having been anything else. The woman simply and very cleverly stole the paper in question.'
'I am sure he ought to be very much obliged to you for this kind version of what took place.'
'Well,' he said good-humouredly, 'I happen to have taken some trouble to find out the truth, and I'm sorry if the story isn't sensational enough to please you. But the consequences were serious enough for Downing. He was treated with great severity, and finally went on to America. It was there, at Washington, that he became acquainted with my uncle, and, oddly enough, I have in my possession some of the letters written by him when first in Persia. I shall now have the opportunity of giving them back to him.'
'And out there—in Persia, I mean—did you never come across him?'
'Unfortunately, I just missed him. No one here understands the sort of position he has made for himself—and indeed, for us—out there. It was the one country, till he came on the scene, where we were not only lacking in influence, but so lacking in prestige that we were being perpetually outwitted. Downing, as I reminded Rashleigh the other day, has always been pulling our chestnuts out of the fire. Of course,you can't expect such a man to have the virtues of a Sunday-school teacher.'
Penelope still kept her eyes averted from Winfrith's face, still ruthlessly dug holes in her old friend's turf.
'And when in Persia, in Teheran, what sort of life does he lead there?' She tried to speak indifferently, but her heart was beating fast and irregularly.
But Winfrith, seeing nothing, answered willingly enough: 'Oh, a most extraordinary sort of life. One of amazing solitariness. He has always refused to mix with the social life of the Legations. Perhaps that's why he acquired such an influence elsewhere. Of course, I heard a great deal about him, and I'll tell you what impressed me most of the various things I learned. They say that no man—not even out there—has had his life attempted so often, and in such various ways, as has Persian Downing. All sorts of people, native and foreign, have an interest in his disappearance.'
Penelope's hand trembled. The colour left her cheek.
'How does he escape?' she asked. 'Has he any special way of guarding himself from attack?'
'If he has, no one knows what it is. He has never asked for official protection, but it seems that from that point of view his G.C.B. has been quite useful, for now there's a sort of idea that his body and soul possess a British official value, which before they lacked. He's been "minted" so to speak.'
But Mrs. Robinson hardly heard him. She was following her own trend of thought. There was a question she longed, yet feared, to ask, and though desperately ashamed at what she was about to do, she made up her mind that she could not let pass this rare, this unique, opportunity of learning what she craved to know. 'I suppose that he reallyhaslived alone?' she asked insistently. And then, seeing that she must speak yet more plainly: 'I suppose—I mean, wasthere anything against his private character, out there, in Teheran?'
A look of annoyance crossed Winfrith's face. He was old-fashioned enough to consider such questions unseemly, especially when asked by a woman. 'Certainly not,' he replied rather stiffly. 'I heard no whisper of such a thing. Had there been anything of the kind, I should, of course, have heard it. Teheran is full of petty gossip, as are all those sorts of places.'
As they turned to meet old Mr. Winfrith and Cecily Wake, Penelope thought, with mingled feelings of relief and pain, of how easy it had all been, and yet how painful—at moments, how agonizing—to herself.
The father and son were loth to let them go, and even after the old man had parted from his guests David Winfrith walked on by the side of the low cart, leading the pony down the steep, stone-strewn hill which led to the village, set, as is so often the way in Dorset, in an oasis of trees. As they rounded a sharp corner and came in sight of a large house standing within high walls, surrounded on three sides by elms, but on one side bare and very near to the lonely road, he suddenly said 'Good-bye,' and, turning on his heel, did not stay a moment to gaze after them, as Cecily, looking round, had thought he would.
Penelope checked the pony's inclination to gallop along the short, smooth piece of road which lay before them, and, when actually passing the large house which stood at the beginning of the village, she almost brought him to a standstill.
Cecily then saw that the blinds, bright red in colour, of the long row of upper windows—in fact, all those that could be seen above the high wall—were drawn down.
'Look well at that place,' said her companionsuddenly, 'and I will tell you why David Winfrith never willingly passes by here when he is staying at Shagisham.'
Till that moment Mrs. Robinson had had no intention of telling Cecily anything about this place, or of Winfrith's connection with its solitary occupant, but she wished to escape from her own thoughts, to forget for a moment certain passages in a conversation, the memory of which distressed and shamed her.
To attain this end she went further on the road of betrayal, telling that which should not have been told. 'It's a very curious story,' she said, 'and David will never know that I have told it to you.'
As she spoke she shook the reins more loosely through her hand, and gave the pony his head.
'I must begin by telling you that Mrs. Winfrith, David's mother, was much younger than her husband, and in every way utterly unlike him. Before her marriage she had been something of a beauty, a spoilt, headstrong girl, engaged to some man of whom her people had not approved, and who finally jilted her. She came down here on a visit, met Mr. Winfrith, flirted with him, and finally married him. For a time all seemed to go very well: they had no children, and as he was very indulgent she often went away and stayed with her own people, who were rich and of the world worldly. It was from one of them, by the way—from a brother of hers, a diplomatist—that David got his nice little fortune. But at the time I am telling you of there was no thought of David. Not long after Mr. and Mrs. Winfrith's marriage, another couple came to Shagisham, and took Shagisham House, the place we have just passed. Their name was Mason, and they were very well off. But soon it became known that the wife was practically insane—in fact, that she had to have nurses and keepers. One of her crazes was that of having everything about her red; the furniture was allupholstered in bright-red silk, the woodwork was all painted red, and people even said she slept in red linen sheets! Mrs. Winfrith became quite intimate with these people. She was there constantly, and she was supposed to have a soothing effect on Mrs. Mason. In time—in fact, in a very short time—she showed her sympathy with the husband in the most practical manner, for one day they both disappeared from Shagisham together.'
'Together?' repeated Cecily, bewildered. 'How do you mean?'
'I mean'—Penelope was looking straight before her, urging the pony to go yet faster, although they were beginning to mount the interminable hill leading to Kingpole Farm—'I mean that Mrs. Winfrith ran away from her husband, and that Mr. Mason left his mad wife to take care of herself. Of course, as an actual fact, there were plenty of people to look after her, and I don't suppose she ever understood what had taken place. But you can imagine how the affair affected the neighbourhood, and the kind of insulting pity which was lavished on Mr. Winfrith. My father, who at that time only knew him slightly, tried to induce him to leave Shagisham, and even offered to get him another living. But he refused to stir, and so he and Mrs. Mason both stayed on here, while Mrs. Winfrith and Mr. Mason were heard of at intervals as being in Italy, apparently quite happy in each other's society, and quite unrepentant.'
'Poor Mr. Winfrith!' said Cecily slowly. But she was thinking of David, not of the placid old man who seemed so proud of his flowers and of his garden.
'Yes, indeed, poor Mr. Winfrith! But in a way the worst for him was yet to come. One winter day a lawyer's clerk came down to Shagisham House to tell the housekeeper and Mrs. Mason's attendants that their master was dead. He had died of typhoid fever at Pisa, leaving no will, and having made noarrangements either for his own wife, or for the lady who, in Italy, had of course passed as his wife. Well, Mr. Winfrith started off that same night for Pisa, and about a fortnight later he brought Mrs. Winfrith back to Shagisham.'
Penelope waited awhile, but Cecily made no comment.
'For a time,' Mrs. Robinson went on, 'I believe they lived like lepers. The farmers made it an excuse to drop coming to church, and only one woman belonging to their own class ever went near them.'
'I know who that was,' said Cecily, breaking her long silence—'at least, I think it must have been your mother.'
'Yes,' said Penelope, 'yes, it was my mother. How clever of you to guess! Mamma used to go and see her regularly. And one day, finding how unhappy the poor woman seemed to be, she asked my father to allow her to ask her to come and stay at Monk's Eype. Very characteristically, as I think, he let mamma have her way in the matter; but during Mrs. Winfrith's visit he himself went away, otherwise people might have thought that he had condoned her behaviour.'
She paused for a moment.
'Something so strange happened during that first stay of Mrs. Winfrith's at Monk's Eype. Mamma found out, or rather Mrs. Winfrith confided to her, that she had fallen in love, rather late in the day, with Mr. Winfrith, and that she could not bear the gentle, cold, distant way in which he treated her. Then mamma did what I have always thought was a very brave thing. She went over to Shagisham, all by herself, and spoke to him, telling him that if he had really forgiven his wife he ought to treat her differently.'
'And then?' asked Cecily.
'And then'—Penelope very shortly ended thestory—'she—mamma, I mean—persuaded him to go away for six months with Mrs. Winfrith. They spent the time in America, where her brother was living as attaché to the British Legation. After that they came home, and about five years before I made my appearance, David was born.'
'And Mrs. Mason?' asked Cecily.
'Mrs. Mason has lived on all these years in the house we passed just now. I have myself seen her several times peeping out of one of the windows. She has a thin, rather clever-looking face, and long grey curls. She was probably out just now, for she takes a drive every afternoon; but she never leaves her closed carriage, and, though she can walk quite well, they have to carry her out to it. She is intensely interested in weddings and funerals, and, on the very rare occasions when there is anything of the sort going on at Shagisham, her carriage is always drawn up close to the gate of the churchyard. She was there the day Mrs. Winfrith was buried. My father, who came down from London to be present, was very much shocked, and thought someone ought to have told the coachman to drive on; but of course no one liked to do it, and so Mrs. Mason saw the last of the woman who had been her rival.'
'Est-ce qu'une vie de femme se raconte? elle se sent, elle passe, elle apparait.'—Sainte Beuve.
That Sir George Downing should spend the last days of his sojourn in Dorset at Kingpole Farm, a seventeenth-century homestead, where, according to local tradition, Charles II. had spent a night in hiding during his hurried flight after the Battle of Worcester, had been Mrs. Robinson's wish and suggestion. He had welcomed the idea of leaving Monk's Eype with an eagerness which had pained her, though in her heart she was aware that she had thus devised a way out of what had become to them both a most difficult and false situation.
Very soon after Downing's arrival at Monk's Eype Penelope had become acutely conscious of the mistake she had made in asking him to come there. After painful moments spent with him—moments often of embarrassed silence—she had divined, with beating heart and flushed cheek, why all seemed to go ill between them during this time of waiting and of suspense, which she had actually believed would prove a prolongation of the halcyon, dream-like days that had followed their first meeting.
This beautiful, intelligent woman, with her strange half-knowledge of the realities of human life, and the less strange ignorances, which she kept closely hidden from those about her, had often received, especially in her 'Perdita' days, confidences which had inspired her with a deep distaste of those ignoble shifts and ruses which perforce so often surround a passion not in itself ignoble, or in any real sense impure.
She had been glad to assure herself that in this case—that of her own relation to Downing—nothing of the kind need sully the beginnings of what she believed with all her heart would be a noble and lifelong love-story. Accordingly, there had been a tacit pact as to the reserve and restraint which should govern their relations the one to the other during the few weeks of Downing's stay in England.
When the time came they would leave together openly, and with a certain measured dignity, but till then they would be friends, merely friends, not lovers.
But Mrs. Robinson had not considered it essential, or indeed desirable, that there should be no meeting in the interval, and she had seen no reason why her friend's schemes should not have what slender help was possible from the exercise of her woman's wits. Hence she had planned the meeting with David Winfrith; hence she had asked Downing to become one of her guests at Monk's Eype, and after some demur he had reluctantly obeyed.
During the days that had immediately followed his coming, days which saw Downing avoiding rather than seeking his hostess's presence, Penelope often pondered over the words, the first he had uttered when they had found themselves alone: 'I feel like a thief—nay, like a murderer—here!' Extravagant, foolish words, uttered by one whose restraint and wisdom had held for her from the first a curious fascination.
Alas! She knew now how ill-advised she had been to bring him to Monk's Eype, to place him in sharp juxtaposition with her mother, with her cousin Wantley, even with such a girl as Cecily Wake. The very simplicity of the life led by Mrs. Robinson's little circle of unworldly, simple-minded guests made intimate talk between herself and Downing difficult, the more so that feminine instinct kept few her visits to the Beach Room.
Now and again, however, a softened glance from the powerful lined face, a muttered word expressive of deep measureless feeling, the feel of his hand grasping hers, would suddenly seem to prove that everything was indeed as she wished it to be between them, and for a few hours she would feel, if not content, at least at peace.
But even then there was always the haunting thought that some extraneous circumstance—sometimes she wondered if it could have been any foolish, careless word said by Wantley—had modified the close intimacy of their relation.
There had been a week of this strain and strange chill between them, when one night Penelope, feeling intolerably sore and full of vague misgivings, suddenly determined to seek Downing out in the Beach Room. It fell about in this wise. After the quiet evening had at last come to an end, she went upstairs with Cecily and old Miss Wake, dismissed Motey, and then returned to the studio, hoping he would come to her there.
But an hour wore itself away, and he did not come.
Mrs. Robinson went out on to the moonlit terrace, and for awhile paced up and down, watching the lights in the villa being put out one by one. She knew that her old nurse would not go to sleep till she, Penelope, were safe in bed; and she felt, though she could not see them, Mrs. Mote's eyes peering down at her, watching this impatient walking up and down in the bright moonlight. But what would once have so keenly annoyed her no longer had power to touch her. She even smiled when the candle in Mrs. Mote's room was extinguished, and the blind carefully and ostentatiously drawn down. She knew well that the old woman would sit behind it, waiting impatiently, fullof suspicious anger, till she saw her mistress return from the place whither she was now bound.
As she went down the steps leading to the shore, Penelope, her eyes cast down, pitied herself with the frank self-pity of a child deprived of some longed-for happiness; she had so looked forward to these days with Downing, spent in this beloved place, which she was about to give up, perhaps never to see again, for his sake.
At last, when standing on the strip of dry sand heaped above the wet, glittering expanse stretching out to the dark sea, Penelope came upon the circle of bright light, warring with the moonlit shore below, thrown by Downing's lamp through the window of the Beach Room.
The sight affected her curiously. For a moment she felt as if she must turn back; after all, he was engaged upon matters of great moment, perhaps of even greater moment to himself than the question of their relation the one to the other. She suddenly felt ashamed of disturbing him at his work—real work which she knew must be done before he went back to town.
But the window, through which streamed out the shaft of greenish-white light, was wide open, and soon Downing heard, mingling with the surge of the sea, the sound, the unmistakable dragging sound, of a woman's long clinging skirt.
He got up, opened the door, and, coming out took her in his arms and drew her silently back with him into the Beach Room. Then, bending down, his lips met and trembled on hers, and Penelope, her resentment gone, felt her eyes fill with tears.
A kiss, so trifling a gift on the part of some women as to be scarcely worth the moments lost in the giving and receiving, is with other women, indeed with many other women, the forerunner of complete surrender.
In her thirty years of life two men only had kissedPenelope Wantley—the one Winfrith, the other Downing.
To-night there came to her with amazing clearness the vision of a garden, ill-cared for, deserted, but oh! how beautiful, stretching behind a Savoy inn in the mountainous country about Pol les Thermes. There she and Downing, drawn—driven—to one another by a trembling, irresistible impulse, had kissed for the first time, and for a moment, then as now, she had lain in his arms, looking up at him with piteous, questioning eyes. How long ago that morning seemed, and yet how few had been the kisses in between!
Suddenly she felt him loosen his grip of her shoulders; and he held her away from himself, at arms' length, as deliberately, in the tone of one who has a right to an answer, he asked her a certain question regarding herself and Melancthon Robinson.
She was pained and startled, reluctant to tell that which she had always kept secret, and which she believed—so little are we aware that most things concerning us are known to all our world—had never been suspected. But she admitted his right to question her, and found time to whisper to her secret self, 'My answer must surely make him glad'; and so, her eyes lowering before his piercing, insistent gaze, she told him the truth.
But, as he heard her, Downing relaxed his hold on her, and with something like a groan he said: 'Why did I not know this before? Why should I have had to wait till now to learn such a thing from you?' And as she, surprised and distressed, hesitated, not knowing what to say, he to her amazement turned away, and in a preoccupied tone, even with a smile, said suddenly: 'Go. Go now, my dear. It is too late for you to be down here. I have work to finish to-night.' Then he opened the door, and, with no further word or gesture of affection, shut her out in what seemed for the moment utter darkness.
But as she slowly began groping her way up the steps, sick at heart, bewildered by the strangeness, by the coldness, of his manner, the door of the Beach Room again opened, and she heard him calling her back with a hoarse, eager cry.
She hesitated, then turned to see his tall, lean figure filling up the doorway, and outlined for a moment against the bright lamplit room, before he strode across the sand to where she stood, trembling.
Once more he took her in his arms, once more he murmured the words of broken, passionate endearment for which her heart had hungered, only, however, at last again to say, but no longer with a smile: 'Go. Go now, my beloved—for I am only a man after all—only a man as other men are.'
Then for some days Penelope had found him again become strangely cold and alien. She had felt the situation between them intolerable, and suddenly she had suggested the sojourn at Kingpole Farm. And on the eve of his departure Downing again seemed to become instinct with the mysterious ardour he had shown from the first moment they had met, from the flash of time during which their eyes had exchanged their first long, intimate, probing look.
Mrs. Mote had followed, with foreboding, agonizing jealousy, this interlude of days in a drama of which she had seen the first, and of which she was beginning to divine the last, act.
It is not the apparently inevitable sin, so much as the apparently avoidable folly, which most distresses those onlookers who truly love the sinners and the foolish. During those still summer days the old nurse felt she could have borne anything but this strange beguilement of her mistress, by one whom the maid regarded as having outlived the age when men make women happy. The sight of Mrs. Robinson, with whom, to Motey's doting eyes, time had stood still,hanging on his words, having eyes only for this man, who, though no longer young, yet seemed even older than his age, struck the watcher as monstrous because unnatural.