"Clinton. On the 16th inst. the Lady Susan Clinton, aged 28."
How could such an announcement, to the Squire reading it in the obituary column of his paper, cause any emotion stronger than the feeling that all was for the best?
For one thing, although the direct cause of Susan's death had been pneumonia, there was little doubt, to him who knew the state of mind she had been in when her illness had first attacked her, that she had succumbed to that, and not to any ailment of the body, which, otherwise, she could have shaken off. She had paid the price, poor girl! The account as against her was closed, her name dropped from the ledger.
That she had died in full repentance, and would therefore escape the ultimate fate of branded sinners, his easy creed allowed him to take for granted. The very fact that shehaddied seemed to make her state in the hereafter secure. For her it was well.
And not less so for those whom she had, in the phrase that came readily to his lips, left behind. Humphrey—poor Humphrey—who was overwhelmed with grief, as it was only natural he should be, would come to feel in time that her death had been, if not a blessing in disguise—which would be a harsh way of putting it—then a merciful dispensation of Providence. He had nothing to reproach himself with. He had cloven to his wife at a time when he might, justifiably, have played a very different part; had been prepared to share with her such of the punishment for her crime as could not be avoided; had even accepted—quixotically, as the Squire thought—part responsibility for it; and in short had fulfilled his duty towards her with a fine loyalty such as his father, remembering certain episodes in his career, had hardly thought to be in him. He had been tried as by fire, and had come well out of the ordeal, a better man in every way.
No, Humphrey had nothing to reproach himself with. Indeed, it would comfort him in the future to think that he had been tender to the poor girl in her disgrace, comforted her, been ready to throw over the life that suited him, so as to help her to recover herself, stood up for her, when she could not with reason be defended, been with her at the last, broken down when it was all over. His thoughts ran smoothly into the worn phrases apt to these sad occasions, when grief is subdued to not unpleasing melancholy, and melancholy is the shade of the tree of death, in which we are sitting for a time, but with the sunshine of life still before us.
Humphrey was still young. He could travel for a time, if he wanted to, or, perhaps better still, stay quietly at Kencote, until he had got over his loss; and then he could take up his life as before. When time had healed his wound he might even marry again. But that was to look too far ahead, with poor Susan not yet under the ground, and the Squire checked the thought at once. If she had lived he would certainly have had a very difficult time with her. A high resolve is one thing; the power to carry it out, day by day, when the exaltation in which it was made has faded away, is another. Humphrey was not trained to such efforts. He might have tired of it. Susan might have "broken out" again. All sorts of trouble might have arisen, which—well, which, by the mercy of Providence, it was not necessary now to conjecture. For Humphrey, all was for the best.
The Squire was glad, on his own account, that he had withdrawn his embargo upon Susan's visiting Kencote, before this had happened. He had been very near to imposing it again after his interview with Lord Sedbergh; but Susan had even then been dangerously ill; and the absorption caused by the rapid progress of her illness, and the contingent comings and goings, had fortunately taken his mind off the details of her past misdemeanour. He had been preserved—mercifully—from dealing his son that extra blow.
And yet he doubted whether he would have been able to play his part with her. It was plain now, whatever it had been when he had walked down the steps of Lord Sedbergh's club, that strong reproaches would not have helped matters; that nothing he had had it in his mind, then, to do or say to ease himself of the burden, whose weight his old friend had made him compute by refusing to touch it, would have lightened it; and that the effect of his knowledge would only have been to make things more difficult alike for himself and for Humphrey. His anger against the poor girl would be buried in her grave. It would not be difficult to speak of her now with that regretful affection that would be expected of him.
And her death made him less vulnerable. He perceived now, not without a shudder, that his safety depended upon the silence of a woman who, wherever the responsibility lay, had been bought, and might be bought again; or, if that were unlikely, might lightly let loose the hint which, gathering other hints to itself, would grow into the avalanche that would involve him in the disgrace he so much feared. But an accusation against a dead woman—if it were made it would be less readily believed, more reprehensible, easier to cast off. And Susan would not be there, a possible weakness to her own defence.
Here again he checked his thoughts. He was not ready to face a situation in which he would either have to deny untruthfully, or to keep damaging silence. But, certainly, for him, all was for the best.
Dick came in, as he was sitting with the paper on his knee. He wore a black tie, but was otherwise dressed as usual. His face was becomingly grave. They talked over details of the funeral. Susan was to be buried at Kencote, in the churchyard where so many generations of Clintons had been buried, her own distant ancestors among them, but none within living memory who had not lived out the full tale of their years. Her body would lie in the church that night, and the house would fill up with many of those who would follow her to the grave on the morrow, including some members of her own family, all of whom the Squire disliked or was prepared to dislike. He ardently wished himself done with the painful ordeal. He doubted whether he would be able to acquit himself unremittingly in the manner that would be expected of him. He would have to wear a face of gloom, when he was already itching to be rid of these cheerless trailing postscripts to the message of death, and commit himself once more to the warm current of life. He would have to say so many things that he did not feel, and do so much that he hated doing.
The shadow, not of grief but of the adjuncts of grief, lay over the house, and darkened the bright June sunshine, or such of it as was allowed to filter through the blinded windows. Not for fifty years or more had such an assemblage been made at Kencote. The successive funerals of the Squire's six aunts, who had lived since his marriage at the Dower House, and the last of whom had died at another house in the village only two years ago, had been untroublous, not to say brisk, ceremonies, occasions of meeting between seldom-seen relations, and of hospitality almost festive, but tempered by affectionate reminiscence of the departed, and the feeling that one might talk naturally and freely, so long as one did not actually laugh. Ripe age had fallen on the rest laid up for it; there had been no occasion to feign deep sorrow.
But—"the Lady Susan Clinton, aged 28"!—there was material for sharp sorrow there; and the Squire was disturbed by the fear that he might not be able to show it; might even, if he were off his guard, show that he did not feel it.
"Did you hear from mother this morning?" asked Dick, when they had disposed of the details he had come to discuss.
"Yes. Humphrey is bearing up; but, of course, poor fellow, he can't get used to the idea yet. We must keep him here for a bit, after we rid the house of all these people; and he'll soon come round to himself."
"Was there any trouble between them latterly?" Dick asked, in a matter-of-fact voice, but gave the Squire time to collect his thoughts by going on immediately, "I don't want to pry into your affairs or his, but I had an idea that that business of Gotch's wasn't all he came to see you about the other day."
"Why do you think that?" asked the Squire with undiplomatic directness.
"Well—your going up to town with him the next day, for one thing. I only wanted to say that if it's a question of money again, which hasn't been put right by poor Susan's death, you can count on me for help if there's any difficulty in raising it."
What a good son this was—safe, level-headed, coolly and responsibly generous! The Squire would have given a good deal to have been released from his promise, and able to take him into full confidence then and there.
"Well," he said, "therewastrouble about money, and I was prepared to find it, without interfering with estate affairs. That's why I didn't come to you. But the necessity is over now."
He mentally patted himself on the back for this masterpiece of statement, transgressing the strict truth by no more than perfectly allowable omission.
"Her settlement falls in, I suppose," said Dick. "I'm glad you were spared the worry, although the way out of it is sad enough. I've been sorry for Humphrey for some time. He had come to see that he had always played the fool about money, and was beginning to get his ideas straight; but poor Susan—well, one doesn't want to think about her in that way now—but there's no doubt she was a terrible drag on him. I'd seen it coming for some time, and when he talked to me at Christmas about settling down, I was pretty sure that he didn't know everything, and would be coming with another story soon."
"Why did you think that?" asked the Squire, with the sensation of treading on very thin ice.
"Oh, it was common talk of how she was going on—hadbeen, I should say, for she did seem to have calmed down within the last year. Otherwise, I think I should have made up my mind to give Humphrey a hint, disagreeable as it would have been. Things were being hinted at about a year ago that made me think we might find ourselves involved in some bad scandal before we were much older."
"Oh, Dick," the Squire broke out, "we mustn't talk like this about a dead woman. Humphrey told me everything. It's all wiped out and done with now, for her, poor girl."
"Yes," said Dick. "But I'm not going to pretend that I think her death is a calamity. I don't; although any feeling one may have had against her is wiped out, as you say. In fact, if she had begun to pull herself up, as I think she had, and had got it all off her mind before she died, as I suppose she did, it's possible to feel kindly towards her. Still, I think she had made too big a mess of things. It would have come between them. As it is, he'll be able to think of her without bitterness. He'll get over the shock in time."
This was all so much what the Squire felt himself, summed up as it might have been in the comfortable phrase, "all for the best," that its effect upon him was much the same as if he had had the relief of telling Dick everything. He cheered up palpably, until he remembered what lay immediately in front of him; but faced even that with more equanimity, upheld by Dick's sympathetic support, and relieved of some doubt as to whether his thoughts about poor Susan were quite of the right colour.
The afternoon train, which in the course of these histories we have so often met at Kencote Station, brought the coffin and the mourners. Humphrey looked pale and worn, but collected. He stood with his mother's arm in his while the coffin, covered with flowers, was taken out of the purple-lined van, and lifted on to a hand bier. The church was much nearer to the station than the house, and the little procession walked there, past the cottages with blinds all drawn, and the villagers standing by them, mostly in black, which only served to heighten the bright colours of the flowers with which the gardens were full. The sky was of the purest blue, and larks trilled unseen in its translucent vapours, as if to draw the thoughts of the mourners away from the earth in which they were presently to see these mortal remains laid. The elms and chestnuts whispered of life going on and renewing itself year by year until the end. The rich springing growth of early summer in this quiet country village spoke of life and of hope; and the black line of mourners moving slowly along was not incongruous with it, if the poor clay they were escorting was really only the husk from which new life had already sprung.
The Squire, sobered to becoming gravity by the sight of the coffin, yet felt his thoughts tuned to the beauty of the sky and the familiar surroundings. It was he who had planned this walking escort. There would be carriages, and a state suitable to the occasion on the morrow. This was to be a home-coming, a token of his forgiveness of her for the trouble she had caused him, a sort of last taste of the everyday life of Kencote, into the intimacy of which she was finally to be received as a daughter of the house. It appealed also to that sense of common human life, which is the fine flower of squiredom. Death levels all; he had no feeling that the cottagers standing at their garden gates were intruding their curiosity, as was felt by Susan's mother for one, who thought this public tramp between a station and a church an outrage on her nobility. The cottagers were his friends on an occasion like this, had a right to share mourning as well as festival with the family in whose interests they were hereditarily bound up. He took comfort from seeing them there. They were his people; without them this quiet home-coming would have been incomplete.
The coffin was taken into the chancel of the ancient church, and set down over the brass of a knightly Clinton who had died and been buried there five centuries before. Almost without exception those who followed it were his direct descendants, and the same stones surrounded them as had sheltered the mourners at his funeral. So many years, so little change! Christening, marriage, burial—the renewal of life in the same stock had gone on through the centuries. This new burial was only a ripple in the steady, pauseless flow, and would have been no more if the head of the house himself had lain where this poor, foolish, erring girl, now hardly regretted, and soon to be forgotten, was laid.
A few prayers were said, and a hymn sung, and then she was left to lie there alone. Shafts of sunlight would slant across the stones, and fading, give place to twilight, then to dusk, then to darkness. The church would be very still. Dawn would come, with the sweet twittering of birds, and the sun would once more strike through the armorial glass of the East window, and paint stone and timber with bright colour; and still she would be lying there, dead to the glory of a new day as she had been dead to the darkness of the night. Nothing would matter to her any more. In a little while her dust would mingle with that of long generations of Clintons forgotten, and her memory would pass away as theirs had passed. Her life had been everything to her, her wants and hopes and regrets the centre of her being. Now it was as if it had never been—for her, lying in the still church.
But her acts lived. The ripples she had caused in the pond of life would spread, intersecting other ripples caused by other acts, until they reached the border.
When they had returned to the house Nancy went up with Joan into her room—the room in which they had slept side by side for all but a few nights in their lives until Nancy's marriage. There was only one bed in the room now.
"How odd it looks!" said Nancy. "Do you miss me, my precious old Joan?"
"Of course I do," said Joan. "I had to make them take your bed out. It made me feel so horribly lonely."
"If John is ever unkind to me," said Nancy, "I shall come here and have it put back."
She checked herself. No vestige of a joke was to be allowed until after to-morrow. She thought herself unfeeling for even inclining to light speech. To her and Joan the death of someone not much older than themselves was a startling thing; and the death of anyone so close to them, in their inexperience of death, would have subdued them for a time.
"Let's go and talk in the schoolroom," Nancy said. "Nobody will come there."
They sat together on the old comfortable sofa, arms entwined. The absence of sentiment with which they had been accustomed to treat one another had given place to frequent signs of affection. They had hardly been more together during their childhood than since Nancy had come to Kencote after her honeymoon the day before. Their stream of talk flowed unceasingly. Oceans of separate experience had to be bridged.
Now they put aside for a time their own affairs of the past and future, and talked about the immediate present.
"Did you speak to Humphrey?" Joan asked. "I didn't; but I thought he looked awful."
"He kissed me when we came in," said Nancy, "and said he was glad I had come back in time. He spoke much the same as usual, but went away directly. Joan, how awful he must be feeling! Just think what John would feel if he were to lose me!"
"You haven't been married so long," said Joan; but immediately added, "I suppose that wouldn't make any difference, though. I do feel frightfully sorry for Humphrey. I almost think it would have been better if the funeral had been at once, instead of making it like two. It must be awful for him to think of her lying there all alone in the church. You know, Uncle Tom wanted to have tapers and somebody to watch; but father wouldn't."
"No; I didn't know that. Why?"
"He said candles were Roman Catholic; and that there would be nobody who wanted to watch. I think he was right there. You know, Nancy, I think the saddest thing about it is that there is nobody who is very sorry for poor Susan's death—except Humphrey. I don't think her own people are. None of them looked it."
"Lady Aldeburgh cried."
"She pretended to. Her eyes were quite dry."
"I liked Susan. So did you."
"Yes, in a way. Perhaps not very much. I wish I had liked her more, now. Iamsorry, of course. But I feel much more glad at having you again, than sorry because she is dead."
Nancy gave her a squeeze. "I can't realise that she is dead," she said, "that she was in that coffin. I felt just a little bit like choking when Uncle Tom read that part about a place of rest and peace. It was so dreadful to think of her being dead; but that seemed to alter it all. If she is somewhere alive still—and happy!"
"Yes," said Joan seriously. "I hope Humphrey is thinking about that."
On the morrow there was a difficult time to get through before the funeral, at twelve o'clock. The Squire took the "Times" into his room when it came, but only glanced over it, standing up. He made occasion to go to the Rectory, and to the Dower House, and spent some little time at each; and the hour came round.
It was over quickly. The large company walked and drove back to the house, which stood once more normally unshuttered, and ate and drank. There was a buzz of conversation in the crowded dining-room, which at times swelled beyond the limits of strict propriety, and suddenly subsided, only to rise and sink again.
Departures began to be taken. This was the hardest time for the Squire to go through, for he had to say something in answer to the words of each. The end came with a rush, when most of those who had been staying in the house, with those who had come down that morning, left to take the special train back to London.
When the last carriage had departed the Squire turned back into the hall with a great sigh of relief. He went into his room and stood by the open window, breathing deeply of the soft summer air, as if his lungs had been cleared of some obstacle. "Well, that's over," he said aloud as he turned away.
The sound of his words checked him. He went to the window again, and looked across the garden and the park to where the church tower showed between the trees. "Poor girl!" he said slowly. And then, after a pause, "Poor dear girl!"
This satisfied him, and he went briskly to the table where the newspapers were laid in order.
The Squire shut to the gate in the garden wall of the Dower House and stepped out across the park. His face was lit up with gratification, his step was as light as that of an elderly man of seventeen stone very well could be.
He had been to see Virginia, and she had given him the news that had caused this elation.
She had just come down from Scotland, where John Spence had taken a moor, leaving Dick amongst the grouse. Mrs. Clinton was there too, and Joan, and a large house-party besides. The Squire had been asked, but it was many years since the twelfth had caused a stir in his movements, and he had refused. Didn't care much about it; might come to them later, when they moved down, for the pheasants. It was a not unpleasant change for him to have the house entirely to himself. But he had got a little tired of his solitary condition after a fortnight, and had been extremely glad to see Virginia, who had come South to meet a friend on her way from America to Switzerland.
It seemed that young Inverell—the Earl of Inverell, twenty-seven years of age, master of mines as well as acres, handsome and amiable as well as high-principled—in fact the very type and picture of young Earls—whose Highland property marched with that which John Spence had rented, had been constantly of their party, even to the extent of putting off one of his own.
The attraction? Joan.
There could be no doubt about it, Virginia had said. He was head over ears. And Joan was as gay as a lark. It was the sweetest thing to see them together—a picture of adorable youth, and love, unspoken as yet, but shining out of their eyes and ringing in their laughter for everyone to see and hear.
She had enlarged on the enchanting spectacle, and the Squire had listened to her tale, not so much because he "cared about that sort of thing," but so as to assure himself that it was undoubtedly a true one, on both sides, and that Joan, especially, would not be likely to rebel a second time.
How providentially things worked out! Young Inverell was apartibeside whom the eligibility of Bobby Trench paled perceptibly. Bobby Trench, socially and financially, would have been a good match. This would be a great one. If it would not "lift" the Clintons of Kencote, which the Squire was persuaded no marriage whatever could do, it would at least point their retiring worth. It would bring them into that prominence in which, to speak truth, they had always been somewhat lacking.
And he was a nice young fellow too, so the Squire had always heard; already beginning modestly to play the part in public affairs which was expected of the head of his house; untouched as yet by the staleness of the world, which had touched Bobby Trench so much to the Squire's disgust, until he had closed his senses to it; and a fitting mate in point of youth and good looks for a beautiful young girl like Joan, which Bobby Trench could hardly have been said to be, in spite of his ever youthful behaviour.
Really, it was highly gratifying. It just showed that there was no need to hurry these things. If Joan had taken the first person that came along—a young fellow he had never thought much of himself, but had allowed to take his chances out of old friendship to his father—she would have missed this. The child was a good child. She would do credit to any station. Countess of Inverell! Nothing in that, of course, but—well, really the whole thing was highly gratifying.
Why hadn't his wife written about it?
There was nothing in that. She always left out of her letters the things she might have known he would like to hear. Virginia was quite certain; and she could be trusted on such a subject, or indeed on any.
Well, one got through one's troubles. It was extraordinary how sunshine came after rain, or would be if one didn't believe in a wise Providence overruling everything for our good. A few months ago there had been that terrible affair, now buried and forgotten——
The brightness left his face as his thoughts touched on that subject. It was buried, sadly, though perhaps mercifully, enough; but it was not forgotten. It was thought of as little as possible, but the debt still rankled—the debt that could not be paid. It came up at nights, when sleep tarried, which fortunately happened seldom. But time was adjusting the burden. It would not be felt much longer.
The thought of it now came only as a passing shadow to heighten the sunshine of the present. In fact this gleam of sunshine seemed to remove the shadow finally. He had done, all that he could do, had kept back nothing, had satisfied his honour. An obligation to so old a friend as Sedbergh need not weigh on any man.
It would be ungrateful not to recognise how plainly things had been "ordered." Apart from the curious accidents of the problem—the fact that "the woman" had not been condemned forthatcrime; that she had already paid her penalty; that the other woman had been connected in such a way that it had been possible to silence her by a perfectly innocent transaction, carried out by perfectly innocent people—facts surely beyond coincidence, and of themselves demanding belief in an overruling Providence—apart from all this there had been poor Susan's death, no longer demanding the least pretence of lamentation, but to be regarded as a clear sign that the account had been squared and no further penalty would be exacted.
And now there was this new satisfaction, as a further most bountiful token of favour. How was it possible that there could be those who did not believe in a God above, when signs were so plain to those who could read them? It would be churlish now not to throw off all disagreeable thoughts of the past, and not to take full pleasure in the brightness of present and future.
As the Squire came round a group of shrubs that masked the lawn from the carriage drive he saw a woman approaching the house. As he caught sight of her she caught sight of him, changed her course, and came towards him.
He stopped short with a gasp of dismay. It was Mrs. Amberley.
"Mr. Clinton," she said, "I have never had the pleasure of meeting you, but I expect you know who I am. I have come down from London on purpose to have a little talk with you."
She had altered in no way that he could have described. She was fashionably dressed, in a manner suitable for the country, her wonderful hair had not lost its lustre, her face was still the beautiful mask of whatever lurked in secret behind it. Yet she seemed to him a thing of horror, degraded and stained for all the world to see. And even the world might have been aware of some subtle change. Whether it was that her neat boots were slightly filmed with dust, or that her clothes, smart as they were, were not of the very latest; or that it was no outward sign, but the consciousness of disgrace affecting her bearing, however she might try to conceal it—whatever it was, it was there. This was a woman who had come down very low, knew that the world was against her, and would fight the world with no shame for what it could still withhold from her.
He stared at her open-mouthed, unable for the moment either to speak or think.
She laughed at him elaborately. "You don't seem very pleased to see me," she said. "May we go into the house and sit down? I have walked from the station, and am rather tired."
"No," he said quickly, reacting to his immediate impulse. "You will not enter my house."
She looked at him with careful insolence. "Shall we go into the churchyard?" she said, "and talk over Susan Clinton's grave?"
The infamous taunt brought him to himself. "Come this way," he said, and turned his back on her to stride off along a path between the shrubs.
She followed him for a few steps, and then, feeling probably that this rapid progress in his wake did not accord with her dignity, stopped and said, "Where are you taking me to, please? I haven't come here to look at your garden."
He turned sharply and faced her. "I am taking you to where we can be neither seen nor heard," he said, and waited for her to speak.
"Very well," she said. "That will suit me very well—for afirstconversation—as long as it is not too far, and I am not expected to race there."
He turned his back on her and went on again, but at a slower pace. They went through a thick shrubbery and out on to a little sloping lawn at the edge of the lake, which was entirely surrounded by great rhododendrons. There was a boat-house here, and a garden seat, to which he motioned her.
She sat down, and looked up at him. "I am not going to talk to you standing over me like that," she said. "It will be giving you an unfair advantage."
He sat down on the same seat, as far away from her as possible.
"Well, what have you got to say for yourself?" she asked him, in much the same tone as a schoolmaster might have asked the question of an errant schoolboy.
He said nothing. He had nothing to say. His thoughts were still in a turmoil.
Perhaps silence was the best retort to her air of insolence. She had to find another opening.
"You call yourself a man of honour!" she said in a slow contemptuous voice. "You pay hush-money, so that the innocent may suffer, and the guilty go free."
"It's a lie," he said. "I paid no money. I refused to pay money."
"Ah, then you did know everything. It was what I could not be quite certain about. The story was confused. Thank you for clearing it up."
He felt himself trapped at the first opening of his mouth. He would need all his wits to cope with this shameless, cunning woman. He tried to break through her deliberate artifices. "What do you want?" he asked. "What have you come here for?"
"You didn't pay the money yourself?" she went on. "That would hardly have done, would it? You let somebody else pay it, and washed your hands of it, I suppose."
It had been his own phrase. Her chance lighting on it seemed to make her uncannily aware of everything that had passed. How had she got hold of her information? He had not had time to think about that yet.
"I refused to pay anything," he repeated. "Nothing was paid to anybody who had anything to do with you. I refuse to discuss these affairs with you."
"Oh, do you?" she taunted him. "Will you refuse to discuss them when you are brought up on a charge of conspiracy? You will be allowed to do it through Counsel, of course. They allowed me Counsel, when I was brought up on a charge of stealing something that a member of your family stole. I wish I could have done without him. I should have liked to defend myself. But it will suityou. You can shelter behind him. You seem rather good at that."
"What do you want?" he asked her again. "What have you come here for?"
"To talk it over quietly," she said, with the same mocking intonation. "Do you want to know how I found out about it all? You seem to have forgotten entirely that Iknewthat somebody staying in the house at the same time that I was must have stolen the things. It wasn't very difficult, afterwards, to decide on the thief. I have a few friends still, Mr. Clinton, and I heard that your precious Susan, whom every one knew to have been head over ears in debt, had suddenly and miraculously become out of debt, and had money to throw about. I had enquiries made, and heard that the woman whom you bought—I beg your pardon, whom you made somebody else a cat's-paw to buy, so as to save your own skin, had been sent over to the other side of the water, to get her out of the way. It was the finger of Providence, I think, that led me to follow her up. I expect you have been thinking that Providence had been specially engaged in your interests; and it certainly did look like it—for a time."
Again the uncanny cognisance of his very thoughts! But this was only a very clever woman, who knew her man, and his type.
"I went over myself, and found her," she went on. "She was going West to make a start on the money that her poor fool of a husband thought had been given him for his own sweet sake. She didn't intend to undeceive him. At one time I had had an idea of going 'West' myself. You see I had been hounded out of London for the crime that one of you Clintons had committed, and as you had so chivalrously left me to bear the burden of it, and hushed up the truth, instead of clearing my name, I didn't know then that I should be able to come back again. I wanted to get away as far as possible."
He was unendurably taunted. "Your name couldn't have been cleared," he said. "You were not condemned for that; it was for stealing the other thing; and that will stick to you still."
She affected bewilderment, and then enlightenment seemed to come to her, and she laughed. "Oh, that's it, is it?" she said. "Your mind seems to run so much in twists and curves that anyone who expects a straight sense of right and wrong in honourable men must be pardoned for being a little slow in following them. But I didn't steal that either, you know. The sainted Susan stole it as well as the necklace—she was an expert in such things—and this woman Clark toldmywoman about it—the one who committed perjury at my trial, and is now going to suffer for it, if I can find her."
The sneer at the dead girl pierced something in him which set his brain clear. This was a wicked woman, and she was lying to him. "That's a likely story!" he said with rough contempt, and she winced for the first time, although, with his eyes on the ground, he did not mark it.
"It is one that will keep for the present," she said, instantly recovering her coolness. "Well, fortunately I was able to make friends with Susan's maid. It is a way I have with that sort of person, although it is true that my own brute of a woman gave me away."
"Yes, she gave you away," said the Squire, more quick-witted than ordinarily.
"Lied about me, I ought to have said," she corrected herself, with a blink of the eyelids. "I see I must be careful to choose my words. Words mean so much with you, don't they? Acts so little. If you can say you haven't paid a bribe, it doesn't in the least matter that you have let it be done and taken advantage of it. Well, I made friends with her to begin with. She had just heard of Susan's death and wanted to talk about it. She couldn't keep her foolish mind off the connection between me and Susan, and spoke in such a way that I soon knew I had been right to follow her up. I drew her on—I have always been considered rather clever, you know—and before she knew she had done it she had let out her story. You may be sure I frightened her, when I could safely do so, into telling me the whole of it. I heard what a fright dear Humphrey was in—a nice young man that—came to my trial, I believe, jingling the stolen money in his pocket."
"That's not true," said the Squire. "He knew nothing of it whatever."
"He may have told you so. But six or seven thousand pounds! To repeat your own words: 'That's a likely story, isn't it?'"
"He didn't know. You can go on."
"Thank you. I heard how he came posting down here, to get the hush-money; and how it came by return of post—telegraph, I believe; I think he telegraphed to the woman, 'Blackmail will be paid,' I suppose, 'on condition do not say from father.'"
She laughed at her jest. The Squire kept miserable silence.
"Well, there it is," she said. "To use my words more carefully this time—she gave you away. You never thought you could be given away, did you? You thought you were safe. Your conscience hasn't troubled you much, I should think, to judge by your healthy appearance. Conscience never does trouble cowards much, when they can once assure themselves they won't be found out."
In the turbulent confusion of his mind, the Squire still clung to certain fixities. He had acted for the best; he had acted so that the innocent should not suffer; and if he himself had been amongst the innocent who were to escape suffering, his own safety had not been his chief thought. And if his actions, or his refraining from action, had added to the burden justly borne by the guilty, that had been inevitable if the innocent were to be saved; in any case it had added so little that he could not be blamed for ignoring it. Cowardice at least, he had thought, was no crime that could ever be laid to his charge, and he had not shown it when he had braved all consequences in refusing to lift a finger to avert the disaster that was now, in spite of all, threatening him.
But she was dragging from him all his armour, piece by piece. He let it go, and clung to his naked manhood.
"You may say what you like," he said, squaring himself and looking out over the water in front of him. "I simply stood aside. What could you—no, not you, what could anyone—have expected me to do? Publish the truth—overwhelm the innocent with the guilty; and all for what? For nothing. You were free. You——"
"Free! Yes. They had let me out of prison, that's quite true. Wouldyouconsider yourself free with that taint hanging over you? Was I free to come back to my friends? Was I free even to settle down anywhere where my story was known? Susan, the thief, was to be sheltered, because she bore the honoured name of Clinton.Shewas to go free. Yes. ButI, who had taken her punishment, was to be left to bear the bitter results of it all my life. What meanness! What base cowardice!"
He hardened himself, but said nothing.
"Susan had stolen this necklace, worth thousands of pounds," she went on. "She had——"
"But not the jewel that you were imprisoned for stealing," he put in again.
"I have already told you that she did; and I can prove it by that woman's evidence."
He wavered, but stuck to his point. "I don't believe it," he said, "and you can leave it out."
"I will, because it doesn't really matter whether you believe it or not. You will believe it when you see her in the witness-box."
"You won't get her into the witness-box, to swear to that."
"Well, we shall see. There's no sense in haggling with you over that. We will leave it out, as you advised. I was talking about Susan. She and your precious Humphrey had spent the money that they had got from the sale, or pawning, or whatever it was, of the pearls she had stolen."
"I have already said," he interposed quietly, "that Humphrey knew nothing of it."
"And I have already said, 'That's a likely story!' However, we need not press the point now. Say she had had all the money if you like, and that he—dear innocent—never noticed that she was spending some thousands of pounds more than he allowed her. If you like to believe that it's your affair; we shall have plenty of opportunities of judging what view other people will take of it, by and by. At any rate, the money was spent—the stolen money—and you, a rich man, can sit down quietly and let somebody else bear the loss of it."
He knew he was giving himself into her hands, but he could not help himself. "That's not true," he said.
She looked at him, her lip curling. "Oh! you sent it back—anonymously perhaps. You did have that much honesty."
"You can make what use of the admission you like," he said. "I told Lord Sedbergh the story, and offered him the money."
This set her a little aback. "Heknows the truth, then," she exclaimed. "Another man of honour!Helets me lie under the stigma of having stolen something that he's got the price of in his pocket all the time. Upon my word! You're a pretty pair! I'm not certain that he's not worse than you are."
He struggled with himself, but only for a moment, and then said, "He refused to take the money."
She was quick to take that up. "Oh! I see. Dear me, how I should have enjoyed being present at that interview. You go to him with the delightful proposal that he shall make himself party to your meanness, and he refuses. Yes. I suppose he would. I've no reason to suppose there are two men of supposed honour who could act quite as vilely as you have done. Come now, Mr. Clinton, I've given you a piece of gratuitous information. Supposing you return it by telling me what he said to you. Did he tell you what he really thought of you, or only hint it?"
"Oh, let's have an end of this," he said, with agonised impatience. "What have you come here for? What do you want?"
Her manner changed. "Yes, we will have an end of it," she said, with quick scorn. "It's useless to tell you what I think of your meanness, and how I despise your cowardice. I should have respected you much more if you had paid your blackmail down like a man, and then kept quiet about it, instead of running snivelling about trying to salve your own conscience. But a man who can believe as you have has no shame. You can't touch him by showing him up to himself. You can, though, by making him pay for it. And I'm going to makeyoupay—to the last rag of reputation you've got left."
She clenched her fist, and bent towards him fiercely. On his fathomless trouble her change of attitude made no new impression. What mattered it whether she sneered or stormed? The truth would be known; the pit of disgrace was already yawning for him.
"I can't touch Susan," she went on. "If I could, I'd drag her out of her grave and set her up for all the world to mock at."
The intensity with which she said this affected him not merely to horror. He began to see dimly what an adversary he had to cope with, and the burning rage against circumstance that must consume her. Even if all he had comforted himself with was true—if she was guilty of stealing the diamonds, and had suffered for that alone—still, she had suffered for Susan's crime. For if Susan had been found out, she would, or might, have gone undetected. How that knowledge must smoulder or blaze in her mind, night and day—all the worse if she was partly guilty! He might expect no mercy from her.
"Iwillmake her name a mockery," she cried, "and I'll make yours stink in the nostrils of every decent honest man and woman in the country. I've only to tell my story. You can't deny it; you won't be allowed to. But I'll do more than that. I'll make you stand where I stood; first in the police court, then in the dock—you and Humphrey together, and your other son too and his wife, who paid the money. Tell your storythen, and see what's thought of you! Some of them may get off—butyouwon't. You'll go where I went—to a vile and horrible prison, where you'll be with the scum of the earth; where you'll have plenty of time to think it all over, and whether it wouldn't have been better for you, after all, to tell the truth and shame the devil,—you dastardly coward!"
Her voice had risen almost to a shriek. He looked round him, in fear that it would bring someone to the scene. But the lake was retired, and seldom visited. They were quite alone.
"Yes, I suppose you would like to move away," she said in a voice more controlled, but still quivering with rage. "You can't run away. You'll have to face it now; you and your whole family, guilty and innocent. I'll make you suffer through them, as well as in yourself. You'll never wipe off the blot, never in all your life, not even when you come out of prison and come back here—a man that nobody will speak to again, for all your wealth and position. You can think of that when you're in your cell. They give you plenty of time to think. It's not more thanIsuffered; it's not so much, because I was innocent. But I'd no children and grandchildren to make it worse. You have. It's yournameyou've blackened. Clinton will mean thief, and conspirator, and everything that's vile long afteryouare dead."
He had heard enough. He got up, turned his back on her, and began to walk very slowly across the little lawn, his head bent. She watched him with a look of hate, which gradually faded to scorn, then to cunning, then to expectation. But it became dismay when, having crossed the grass, he did not turn, but kept on between the shrubs, as if he had forgotten her, and were going to leave her there alone.
She had to call to him. "Where are you going?"
He turned at once, and the look on his face might have made her pity him, if she had had any pity in her.
"You must do what you will," he said. "There is nothing more to be said."
Then he turned from her again, and pursued his slow, contemplative walk along the path, his shoulders bent, his steps dragging a little, like those of an old man.
She forced a laugh. "Oh, there's a lot more to be said," she called after him, in a voice almost gay. "Please come back."
He took no notice of her, but went on.
She sprang up, a look of alarm on her face, and took a few quick steps across the grass.
"Mr. Clinton!" she said. "Mr. Clinton! I have a proposal to make to you."
He stopped and turned then. She expected him to come back on to the lawn; but he stood still, and she had to go up the path to him.
She lifted her face, that some men, but not he, would have called beautiful, to his, and smiled.
"It needn't happen, you know," she said.
He did not understand in the least, and looked his puzzlement—and his disgust of her. She dropped her eyes, and her seductive manner at the same time. "Come and sit down again," she said, "and let us talk sensibly. I have worked off my anger. Now let us see what can be done."
A slight gleam of hope came to him. Perhaps—now Susan was dead—she would see ... she could gain nothing....
He followed her to the seat obediently, and sat down.
"I have told you what I think of you," she said, speaking now coolly and evenly. "I had to do that to clear my mind. You have treated me with the meanest cruelty, and I mean every word I have said to you. I have suffered bitterly, and perhaps I have succeeded in showing you that I have it in my power to make you suffer in the same way. Revenge is very sweet, and I have tasted a little of it. But, after all, it can't do away with the past; and its savour soon goes. I shan't gain much by punishing you, though you ought to be punished."
"No," he said eagerly. "You can gain nothing. And look at the terrible—awful suffering you would bring upon those who are innocent of any offence against you."
"Quite so," she said coolly. "I am glad you realise that. I meant you to."
"It would be inhuman," he went on. "You would never be forgiven for it—in this world or the next."
She laughed, this time without affectation. "You are really rather funny," she said. "Well now, what do you suggest? That I shall hold my tongue and go away? Back to America, for instance, and settle down there for good, perhaps under another name?"
He could hardly believe his ears. "You would do that?" he cried.
"I think perhaps I might be persuaded to. I am not unreasonable."
"If you did that," he broke out, his face aflame, "the blessing of the innocent would be yours to the end of your life. You would be their saviour; you——"
"I suppose I should," she interrupted dryly. "I should like that. But the trouble is, you see, that one can't live on the blessing of the innocent. It isn't sustaining enough. And I have very little to live on."
The light died slowly out of his face as he listened to her.
"You must help me," she said. "You are a rich man, and you can do it. You allowed money to be paid before, to hush up this scandal; you offered a very large sum of money to free yourself of a mere disagreeable feeling of indebtedness, and took some risk in doing it too—I give you that much justice. I am glad Lord Sedbergh refused that money. Now you can lend it to me—I will pay you back some day—and a few thousands more. Let me have ten thousand pounds, Mr. Clinton. You can ease your conscience of the wrong you have done me, and save your innocents at the same time—yourself, who are not innocent, into the bargain."
Perhaps she had mistaken the motives which had led him to refuse to pay money to Gotch, and really thought that he had done it only to save his own skin, knowing that it would be paid elsewhere; in which case nothing in this proposal would shock him. Or perhaps she relied overmuch on having frightened him into acquiescence with any proposal. Otherwise, with all her powers of finesse, she would hardly have plumped out her demand in this careless fashion.
She had restored him in some degree to himself. "What!" he cried, his brows terrifically together. "After all you have said, you now want me to pay blackmail toyou. It's an impudent proposal; and I refuse it."
She was quick to see her error. If he wanted his susceptibilities soothed, she was quite ready to do that.
"Oh, don't be absurd," she said. "I never really thought that you had looked on that transaction as blackmail; I only said so because I wanted to make you smart. Is it likely that I should be fool enough to suggest such a thing to you? Besides, whatever you may think of me, I am not a blackmailer; it wouldn't suit my book. You are not very clever, you know, Mr. Clinton. I will tell you what I want, and why I think you ought to help me to get it, as carefully as I can; and you must listen to me and try and understand it."
Poor man! How could he help listening to her, with so much at stake!
"The mischief is done," she said. "I am innocent, but I am smirched—poor me!—and although I could make you suffer, and would, I tell you frankly, if I could do it without hurting myself, I don't believe I could ever get back—not all the way. I don't know that I want to try; I am not young now, whatever I look, and I have no heart for the struggle. I am young enough, at any rate, to enjoy my life, if I can begin it again, in quite new surroundings, and not dogged by poverty. It isn't much I want. What is ten thousand pounds for life to a woman like me, who has spent that in a year? I have something of my own, but not much. This would make me secure against that horrible wolf at the door, which frightens me more than anything."
He was about to speak, but she silenced him with a lift of the hand, and said, "Let me go on, please. Why shouldyougive it to me? you were going to ask—I drop the pretence of a loan, though you can call it that if you like. Because you are the only person I can ask it of. It is compensation; and nobody but you—except Humphrey, of course—has offended against me. SedberghthinksI stole the star, and so does Mary Sedbergh, and it is true that that is all I was actually found guilty of. Under the circumstances they are not to be blamed. The coincidences—and the perjury—were too strong for me. They owe me nothing—except out of kindness to an old friend whom they had done injustice to."
"If you want me to listen to you in patience," said the Squire angrily, "you'll drop that impudent pretence of not having stolen the star. My daughter saw you at the cupboard; and you would have stolen the necklace if you could. You hardly take the trouble to hide that you're lying. You must take me for a fool."
"Shall I drop it?" she asked. "I think perhaps I will, with you. It is quite safe. I can take it up again if you drive me to action; and nobody will believe that I could have been such a fool as to admit to you that I had stolen it."
"You infamous creature!" he cried. "That was the plea you used before. It didn't save you, and it won't save you this time."
She saw that she had made a mistake, but answered, "Well, no; perhaps it wouldn't save me. But you see the question wouldn't arise. If I did take it, I couldn't be punished for taking it twice. I could confess it to all the world now, and nothing further would happen. Besides, you see, it will beyouwho will be standing in the dock, for an offence into which the question of the star wouldn't come."
His eyes dropped. Her specious reasoning—before she had made the mistake of interrupting it with her insolent cynicism—had made some way with him, and allowed his mind to detach itself ever so little from that frightful picture.
"Oh, you can't be prepared to face that," she said, pursuing her recovered advantage; "and it would be too absurd—quixotic. The same reasons hold good here as they did before, when you allowed silence to be kept, and were prepared to pay not much less than I ask for. You save your children as well as yourself. Think what it would mean for that young girl of yours, when the time came for her to be married."
Ah! That was a sharper pang than she knew. Oh, for the sunny satisfaction of that walk across the park back again! And the sun shining now on his black misery had only shifted a point or two.
"And the other one," went on the cool voice, "who was married the other day. Their father in the dock! in prison!"
He rallied again. "You can drop that nonsense too," he said. "It's a bogy that doesn't frighten me."
"Not the dock? I admit that youmightescape the prison—though Humphrey couldn't very well."
"Whatever mistake I may have made—and I'm not yet prepared to admit that I made any—I did nothing that I could be even asked to justify in a court of law."
"Well, I think you're wrong there. But in any case you would fear the court of your friends and neighbours and the whole public opinion of England hardly less than a court of law, wouldn't you?"
This was so true that he showed his sense of it in his face.
"Oh, my dear good man, how can you be so foolish as to run the risk of it? Look here, Mr. Clinton, supposing I admit the theft of the star, and say that I have deserved what I got for that, do Ireallysuffer nothing whatever by bearing the burden of Susan's far bigger theft all my life? Be honest now. Take it as a woman's weakness. Wouldn't it mean a good deal to me to be cleared of that?"
She waited for his answer, which was slow in coming. He fought hard against his inclination to give an evasive one. "Yes—it might—it would," he said.
"Then I bear it, and save her name, now she is dead; and your name. I save the honour of you Clintons, who think so much of yourselves. If I do that, and allow the shame you have fastened on to me to rest where it is, don't I deserve some little kindness from you—some help in the life I shall have to live, right away from all that has ever made my life worth living to me before, right away from all my friends? I should getsomeof them back, you know, if it were known thatthat, at least, wasn't true of me."
Her voice was pleading. It affected him no more than by the sense of the words it carried. Perhaps if this had been her tone from the first it might have done so.
But the words themselves did affect him. They were true. If it could be regarded as only help that she wanted!
"This time," she said, "you wouldn't be doing injury to a living soul. You would only be doing something towards setting right a wrong. You wouldn't even be doing anything that the law would blame you for. Susan is dead. There is nobody who could be prosecuted."
"I could pay Sedbergh his money," he said slowly.
"Yes, you could do that," she took him up eagerly. "Honourably, now. He could take it without any scruple. The Sedberghs would be sorry for me, I think. They would be glad that I had been helped.Theycouldn't blame you. And who else could?"
The Squire knitted his brows hard, and tried to think, but couldn't. He could only feel. Release might be in view from the chains that already seemed to have begun to rust on him.
"I can't see my way," he said. "I must think it over."
With her eyes fixed sharply and anxiously on him, she had seemed to be reading his very thoughts. She had influenced him; she could do nothing more by repetition of her plea; he must have time to think it over—andwouldhave time, whatever she might say; he was that sort of man.
She rose from the seat. "I know you must have time," she said. "I know that the sum I ask for is a large one, especially if you are going to add another seven thousand on to it; but I can't take less. I won't take less. But remember what it buys you, Mr. Clinton, when you think it over. If you refuse me this money which you owe me for what you have done to me, if ever man owed woman anything, I shall speak out and bring it home to you. I would rather have peace for the rest of my days, and ease, than perpetual fighting. But I shall be ready to fight, if you refuse me, for I shall getsomethingout of that."
He rose too. "You needn't go over all that again," he said. "If I consider it right to do this I will do it. If not, no threats will weigh with me."
"Very well," she said. "If you accept, as of course you will, for itisright to do it, you will want to see me again to settle details. Probably you won't want to pay the money all at once, and we can arrange that. You will want to be assured that I shan't come down on you again, that my silence will be absolutely unbroken. I can satisfy you as to that too; I have thought out a way. There will be other details to settle. You won't want to see me down here again. You must come to see me in London. I will help you in every way I can."
She gave him an address.
"Now I will go," she said. "Show me a way out without my passing the house."
They walked round the lower end of the lake together, neither of them speaking a word. He took her to a gate leading into a lane. "If you follow that to the left," he said, "you will come to the village."
She went through the gate which he held open for her. Then she turned and looked at him out of level eyes, and said before she walked away: "If you do what I ask, you will hear nothing more of me after we have settled matters. If you don't, I will punish you somehow—in addition—for not receiving me into your house."
"Mr. Clinton has had to go to Bathgate, ma'am. He told me to say he would dine at the club and might be late home. He partic'ly asked that you and Miss Joan—Miss Clinton—shouldn't sit up for him."
The old butler gave his message as if there was more behind it than appeared from his words. Mrs. Clinton, standing in the hall, in her travelling cloak, looked puzzled and a little anxious. It was unlike her husband not to be at home to meet her, especially when she and Joan were returning from so comparatively long a visit—and there was something so very interesting to talk about. And, although he frequently lunched at the County Club in Bathgate, he had not dined there half a dozen times since their marriage.
"Is Mr. Clinton quite well?" she asked, preparing to move away.
"Well, ma'am, I don't think he is quite well. We've all noticed it. Or it seems more as if he was worried about something. But he's not eating well, ma'am, and not sleeping well."
"Poor father!" said Joan, standing by her mother. "We've been too long away from him. We'll cheer him up, and soon put him right, mother."
Mrs. Clinton went to bed at half-past ten, as usual. The Squire came home at eleven o'clock. It was the hour when he expected her to have her light out, if he should come up then.
He went straight to her room. It was in darkness. "Well, Nina," he said from the door, "you're back safely. Sorry I had to be out when you arrived. I'll come to you in a few minutes."
He went along to his dressing-room. Just outside it, in the broad carpeted corridor was Joan. She was in a white dressing-gown, her hair in a thick plait down her back. She looked hardly older than the child she had been five years before.
"Father dear!" she said. "How naughty of you to be away when we came home! Have you heard about it?"
Her beautiful eyes, swimming with tender happiness, looked up into his. She had come close for his embrace.
"My dear child!" he said, kissing her. "My little Joan!"
"I thought you'd be glad," she said, nestling to him. "I'm so frightfully happy, father."
"Well, run along to bed now," he said. "We'll talk about it to-morrow. You ought to have been in bed long ago."
"I know. But I had to stop up and tell you. Good-night, father."
He strained her to him. "Good-night, my darling!"
He was not a man of endearments; he had not called her that since she was a tiny child. She flitted along the passage, and he went into his room and shut the door.
The old butler came up to put out the lamps in the corridor. He had performed this duty nightly since he had been a very young butler, and had often thought, as he passed the closed doors, of those who were behind them. For many years there had been somebody behind most of the doors, except in the rooms reserved for visitors. Now there were only three left out of all the big family in whose service he had grown old. He had seen all the children, who had crowded the nursery wing, with their nurses and governess, grow up and leave the nest one by one. It had been such a warm, protected nest for them. He had always liked to go up to the floor on which the nurseries were, and think of all the little white-robed sleepers behind those doors as he passed them. They were so safe, tucked up for the night, and so well-off in that great guarded house, where nothing that might affright other less fortunate children could touch them.
The nursery wing was empty now. Joan had come down to another room on the first floor; he only had one broad passage to see to upstairs. And soon she would have flown. He thought of her with the affection of an old servant as he put out the light outside her room. Little Miss Joan! She was in there with her happiness. He smiled as he turned from that door.
Outside his master's dressing-room his face became solicitous. Mr. Clinton was not well—worried-like. Well, he was apt to worry over-much about trifles. The old butler knew him by this time. He had seen him weather many storms, and they had never, after all, been more than mere breezes. Whatever was going on behind the door of that room couldn't be very serious. Its occupant was shielded from all real worries, except those he made for himself. He was one of the lucky ones.
Outside the big room of state, in which so many generations of Clintons had been born to the easy lot awaiting them, and so many heads of that fortunate house had died after enjoying their appointed years of honour and invulnerable well-being, his face cleared. Mrs. Clinton had come home; she would put right whatever little thing was wrong. His master couldn't really do without her, though he thought he could. Behind that door she was lying, waiting for him. He put out the lamp.
The house was now dark and silent, though behind two of the three doors there were lights.
The Squire went along the passage in his dressing-gown, carrying his bedroom candlestick. He blew out the light directly he got inside the room.
When he had given his wife greeting, he said, "I'm tired to-night. We must talk over this affair of Joan's to-morrow."
"You are pleased, Edward, are you not?" she asked. "He is such a dear boy; and they are very much in love with one another."
"I must hear all about it to-morrow," he said, composing himself for sleep. His usual habit was to go to sleep the moment he got into bed; but he was always ready to talk, if there was anything he wanted to talk about. He would freely express irritation if he was upset about anything, and it sometimes seemed as if he were ready to talk all night. But he would suddenly leave off and say, "Well, good night, Nina. God bless you!" and be fast asleep five minutes later. He never omitted this nightly benediction. Until he said "God bless you, Nina," it was permitted to her to speak to him. When he had said it, he was officially asleep, and not to be disturbed.
He did not say it to-night after his postponement of discussion, but his movement showed that "good-night" was considered to have been said. The omission was ominous.
For a very long time there was complete silence. Then the Squire turned in bed, with a sound that might have been a half-stifled groan, but also an involuntary murmur. Again there was a long silence. Mrs. Clinton lay quite still, in the darkness. Then he turned again, gently, so as not to wake her if she were asleep, and moaned.
Her voice, fully awake, broke through the silence, "Edward, you are not asleep. Porter said you were not well."
He made no reply for a moment. Then he turned towards her and said, "Inverell—he is coming to see me here?"
"Yes. He is coming on Friday."
"You must put him off, Nina. You must put off the whole thing for a time."
He must have expected an expression of surprise, or a question. But none came.
"There are reasons why I can't consider it for the present," he said. "What to say to him I don't quite know. By and by, perhaps. Joan is very young yet.... I don't know what to say; we must think it over."
"Edward," she said, after a pause, "if there is trouble hanging over us, let me know of it. Let me be prepared."
This reply, so different from any that he could have expected, kept him silent for a time. Then he took her hand in his and said, "I don't know why you say that; I had meant to keep it to myself till the trouble came; but I suppose you can always see through me. Nina, there is dreadful trouble coming to us. I hardly know how to tell you about it—how to begin. There is such trouble as I sometimes think nobody ever had to bear before. Oh, my God! how shall I break it to you!"
It was a cry of agony, the first cry he had uttered. It rang through the room. Joan caught the echo of it, and lifted her head from the pillow, but dropped it again and closed her eyes on her happy thoughts.
"Oh, Edward!" Mrs. Clinton cried, clinging to him, "I can't bear to see you suffer like this. My dear husband, there is no need to break anything to me. I know."
"What!" His voice was low and alarmed. "She has already——"
"Poor Susan told me," she said. "She told me on her death-bed."
He sighed momentary relief. "You have known for all these weeks!" he said. "Oh, why didn't you speak?"
"What could I have said? How could I have helped matters? What was there to do?" Her usually calm, slow speech was agitated, and told him more of what she had gone through than words could have done. "I saw you anxious and troubled, and I longed for you to confide in me; but until you did——"
"I couldn't," he said. "I gave Humphrey my promise. He had his reasons, but whether he ought to have——"
"Oh, I am glad you have told me that," she said in a calmer voice. "No, I think he was wrong—to ask that I should be shut out. I can help you—I have helped you—sometimes, Edward."
He pressed her hand, which was lying in his. "My dear," he said, "I want your help now very much."
"We needn't talk more about the past," she said. "It is known now, is it? You have heard something while I have been away."
He told her, up to the point where Mrs. Amberley had left him. His story was often interrupted by exclamations of pain and disgust, as the intolerable things that had been said to him through that long drawn-out hour of his torture were brought to light. He went off into by-paths of explanation, of self-justification, of appeal.
She soothed him, helped him to tell his story, was patient and loving with him, while all the time almost insupportably anxious to come to the end of it, and know the best or the worst. But when he came to Mrs. Amberley's plea for help, stumbling through the specious arguments she had used, as if for the thousandth time he were balancing them, defending them, inclining towards them, she kept silence. She trembled, as she followed the workings of his mind, groping towards a decision, with so little light to help him, or rather with lights so crossed that none shone out clearly above the rest. She thought—she hoped—she knew what his decision had been. But he must tell her of it himself. She could not cut him short with a question. The decision was his. Whatever it had been, he had already made it. If it had been right, a question from her must have expressed doubt; if wrong, censure, or at least criticism.
"I think, when she had left me," he said quietly, "I felt no doubt about what I was going to do. Everything she had said seemed to be true. It seems to be true now, when I repeat it. Shehadsuffered wrongfully, and would, to the end of her days. If I had let it be kept dark before, and thought myself right, it wouldn't be less right to keep it dark now. I could pay Sedbergh his money, which was the only thing that had worried me badly, after the rest had been done, and not done by me. The disgrace would be sharper still if it came out, because it had been hidden before, and certain things might have been misunderstood, or misrepresented. I knew she would do the worst she could, and wouldn't stick at lies. There was this marriage of Joan's to make or mar—— Oh, I don't know; I can't think straight about it even now. I thought it over for two days and nights. I prayed to God about it. Before Him, I don't know whether I've done right or wrong. I'm bringing misery on you, and everybody I love in the world. I'm dragging the name of Clinton, that has stood high for five hundred years, down in the dust. But I couldn't do it, Nina. I couldn't do it."