She threw herself on his breast weeping. He had never known her weep. "Oh, Edward, my dear, dear husband," she cried, "I love you and honour you more than I have ever done. Our feet are on the straight path. God will surely guide them."
"Good heavens! What on earth can be the meaning of this?"
Dick was standing in his pyjamas at the window of Virginia's bedroom. They were in a country house on the Yorkshire coast, to which they had come for a few days on their way from Scotland. Letters had just been brought up to them with their morning tea.
"What is it, Dick?" said Virginia from the bed. "Give it to me."
He hesitated for a moment, and then crossed the room to give her the letter he had been reading. As he did so he looked through the other envelopes he held in his hand. "Here is one from the Governor," he said, "which may explain it."
The two letters ran as follows:
DEAR CAPTAIN CLINTON,
I suppose your father has told you of the conversation he and I had together a few days ago, and of his refusal to entertain the request I made of him, to which I had understood him to assent. This is just a friendly note of advice to you to help him to see how absurd his refusal is, and what it will entail, not only to him but to you and all your family. I shall not take any steps for a day or two, so that you may have time to bring him to reason. But if that cannot be done, I shall take the steps of which I warned him.
Yours sincerely,RACHEL AMBERLEY.
MY DEAR DICK,
I want you to come home at once. A very serious trouble has arisen with regard to an action of poor Susan's, of which I have known for some time, but which I was unable to talk to you about. I had thought we should hear no more about it, but I am afraid it must now be known. I wish to consult you about any steps that can be taken; but I fear that none can. In any case I want you to hear the whole story. Your mother sends her love, and wants you and Virginia here. She would like me to tell you the story, but I feel I cannot write it. You must wait until I see you.
Love to Virginia.
Your affectionate father,EDWARD CLINTON.
Dick's face was grave enough when he looked up from this missive, and handed it, without a word, to Virginia.
"Rachel Amberley!" she exclaimed.
"Yes—and Susan," said Dick. "Trouble indeed! Trouble and mystery! I wish the Governor had told me what it is. Just like him to keep us on tenterhooks for hours! We shall have to start early, Virginia."
Virginia was frightened. "But, Dick dear, what does it mean?" she cried.
He went and stood at the window, looking out over the sea. His face was very grave. "It means," he said slowly, "that Susan was concerned, somehow, in that Amberley business; and she has found it out, and is asking for money to keep it dark."
"But how could she have been concerned in it? Oh, how dreadful, Dick!"
"She was at Brummels at the time." He pieced his thoughts together slowly. "Perhaps she knew, and took money to hold her tongue. She wanted money almost as much as the other woman. She did something she ought not to have done; the Governor says so. Something that she could have been punished for, or this Amberley woman wouldn't have any grounds to go on.Shehas been punished, and can't be punished any more—for that. She could for blackmail, though. She says the Governor gave way to her. That would have been extraordinarily foolish. He refused afterwards, though—seems to have told her to go to the devil. I'm glad he did that. Lord, how he must have been rushed! I wish I'd been there to lend him a hand."
"Oh, poor Mr. Clinton! But what can she do, Dick, this woman?"
"If Susan had known——!" He paused. "She can't have been in it...."
"Oh no, Dick!" Virginia said in a frightened whisper.
"No, the Amberley woman would have given her away. I don't think she has found out anything. I think she has waited until she was free of everything herself, and now proposes to let out what she knew all the time about Susan, unless she is paid to keep it to herself. That would be it, or something like it. Well, we shan't know, if we cudgel our brains all day. I must go and dress; and you must get up. I'll tell Finch to look up trains. Don't worry about it, Virginia."
They arrived at Kencote in the late afternoon. Joan was on the platform. Her face was troubled. Virginia kissed her warmly. "What is it, darling?" she asked.
"I don't know," said Joan, as they walked out of the station together. "It is something about Ronald. He is not to come here yet. Oh, what can it be?"
"It isn't anything about Ronald," Virginia said. "We know that much. But it is some great trouble, and I suppose your father has asked him not to come for the present."
"Yes," said Joan. "Mother said she would tell me more after they had talked to you and Dick. Father has been indoors all day. I believe he is ill. Oh, Virginia, I am sure something dreadful is going to happen."
They drove straight to the house, and Dick went in at once to his father's room. The Squire was sitting in his chair, doing nothing. He looked aged and grey.
"Well, Dick," he said, looking up, without a smile. "This is a black home-coming. Ask your mother and Virginia to come in. Virginia must know. I'll tell you the story at once."
He told his story, without the circumlocutions he had used to Mrs. Clinton. His voice was tired as he told it, and his narrative was almost bald. "There it is," he ended up. "I don't know whether I'm right or not. Your dear mother says I am. I hope I am. It means untold misery and disgrace. But I shan't pay her a penny, directly or indirectly."
Virginia looked anxiously at Dick, who had been sitting with downcast eyes, and now looked up at his father.
"You needn't worry yourself about that, father," he said.
The Squire's face brightened a little.
"You mean that you think I'm right," he said. "I suppose I am. But I can't be certain of it."
"I can," said Dick. "She can disguise it as she likes; but it's blackmail. We don't pay blackmail."
There were visible signs of relief at this uncompromising statement. The Squire began to argue against it, not because he was not glad it had been made, but to justify his doubts.
"I know it's a difficult case," said Dick. "It's a most extraordinarily difficult case. The only way through it is to act on a broad principle, and stick to it through thick and thin. That's what you've done, and I'm very glad of it. You couldn't have done anything else, really, though you may think you could. Under no circumstances do we pay money to anybody to keep anything dark."
"Moneywaspaid," said the Squire.
"I had no idea whatever," said Virginia, with frightened eyes.
"Oh, of course not," said Dick. "It wasn't your fault."
His face was clouded. "I can't blame Humphrey," the Squire said, with his eyes on him.
Dick made no reply.
"He came on purpose to ask you," said Virginia. "He didn't try to keep it from you."
"He did keep it from me," said Dick. "I ought to have known."
"What should you have done?" asked the Squire.
Dick did not answer. Mrs. Clinton broke in. "Let us leave that alone," she said. "Humphrey had poor Susan to consider. We have no right to blame him for what he did."
"I say nothing about that, for the present," said Dick. "I must think it over. If I had been there he would not have got the money."
"He wouldn't have told you why he wanted it," Virginia said. "I think you would have paid it—to Gotch—as I did."
"You see how difficult it all is, Dick," said Mrs. Clinton. "At every moment there have been difficulties. Do not think harshly of poor Humphrey."
"He is out of it," said Dick, "at the other side of the world. See what comes of his actions. We couldn't be touched if it were not for that—in any way that will harm us. Susan is dead. Nobody else had done anything they could have been accused of, or made sorry for, up till that time."
"Susan had," said Mrs. Clinton. "She was alive then; and she was Humphrey's wife. And wouldn't it have been terrible for us then if she had been punished?"
Dick's face was hard.
"Dick, supposing it had been me!" said Virginia.
"Oh, my dear!" he exclaimed impatiently.
"No, but you must think of it in that way. He stood by her. Hecouldn'tlet that happen to her."
"Well," said Dick unwillingly, "when you've said that at every stage it has been a difficult question, perhaps you have said all that can be said. The trouble is that it is that payment to Gotch that is coming home to us. That's why, even if father had thought it right, otherwise, to pay her this money now, it would have been the most foolish thing he could have done. He would have been endorsing that transaction. As it is, he can say quite truly that he refused to do it, and we, who did do it, had no idea what it was done for."
"Yes, I see that," said the Squire, "and I never thought of it before. The two things would have hung together."
"She would have made further demands," said Dick. "We should have been under her thumb."
"She said she would satisfy me of that," said the Squire.
"She may have said so. She would have been too clever for you. She would have drawn us in, until we should have had to do something downright dishonourable—that there couldn't have been any doubt about—or defy her and take the consequences, as we've got to do now. We should have been living under the sword, perhaps for years, never knowing when it was going to fall, shelling out money all the time. Oh, it doesn't do to think about! And no better off at the end of it than we are now."
"It's true," said the Squire. "I wish I'd had you to show it all so clearly to me while I was going through that awful time, making up my mind. Oh, Lord!" He wiped his brow, damp with the horror of thinking of it.
"You made up your mind without seeing clearly," said Mrs. Clinton. "You did what was right because it was right."
"And now we've got to take our punishment for it," said the poor Squire, with a wry smile.
"That is what we'd better talk about," said Dick. "The other is all over. We can talk about that later."
"Herbert Birkett is coming down to-morrow," said the Squire. "I wrote and told him he must, and he sent me a wire. He is playing golf at North Berwick. It is her threat of an action for conspiracy that I want to ask him about."
"That's bluff," said Dick. "Who conspired to do what? Humphrey is out of the country. He had better stay there. She can't get at him. Everybody else is blameless. You refused, and you were the only one besides him who knew anything about it."
"I can't prove that, and she won't stick at lies."
"That's true enough. But youcanprove it. She will have to get the Gotches over to prove anything at all, and his evidence will clear you. Besides, you refused her the second time."
"Ican'tprove that. There were only she and I."
"By Jove!" Dick felt in his breast pocket. "She's given herself away there. I've got a letter from her. She says you refused. She isn't as clever as I thought she was."
"It's all bluff," said Dick contemptuously, when the letter had been read. "I don't think she could get the Gotches over, for one thing. And supposing she did succeed in bringing it before a court, you could tell your story in the most public way. Nobody would have a word of blame for you, or for any of us. I'm not certain it wouldn't be the best possible thing that could happen for us."
"I shouldn't like it to come to that," said the Squire.
"Well, I don't think it will. We've got other things to face—perhaps worse things. I shan't answer her letter, though I'll take good care to keep it. When she sees that nothing is coming she'll begin to spread reports. That's when we shall have to be on the lookout."
"We have done nothing wrong," said Mrs. Clinton. "She will only be attacking poor Susan; and anybody whose opinion of us we should value will think that a wicked thing to do, now that Susan is dead."
"But ought we not to defend Susan's memory?" Virginia asked.
All three of them were silent. Dick was the first to speak.
"We have to think straight about it," he said. "You can't defend Susan, alive or dead. It was shielding her that has put us in the wrong, where we are in the wrong. All that we can do is not to admit anything, not to deny anything; let people think what they will. Keep quiet. That's a good deal to do, for if we liked to take the offensive we could clear ourselves once and for all."
"How could we do that?"
"Have her up for slander."
"But what she will say about Susan will be true."
"Do you think she will stick to that? No, she will try to blacken us in every way she can. She'll tell lies about us. It's no good saying people won't believe them. Theywillbelieve them, if we don't defend ourselves. We may have to have her up for slander, after all."
"What can she get out of it all?" asked Virginia in a voice of pain. "It will be horrible. Every right-thinking person must abhor her."
"She will have a right to try and clear herself," said Mrs. Clinton. "It is true that she was accused of doing what Susan really did, and the accusation has never been cleared up."
"Thatistrue," said Dick, "and if she confines herself to truth, we have no right to try and stop her. Under all the circumstances—her trying to get money for her silence, and so on—I don't see that we are under the smallest obligation—of honour or anything else—to help her. If we come out into the open we shan't be able to keep Susan's guilt dark. That's why I think she will drag us into attacking her. We shall see what Herbert Birkett says. All we have to do in the meantime is to live on quietly here as usual, and wait for what comes."
"There are the others to be thought of," said Mrs. Clinton. "Jim and Cicely, Walter and Muriel, Frank, all of them. They must be prepared."
"Yes," said Dick unwillingly. "They are bound to hear of it. We must tell them. Get them down here as soon as possible. I will go over and tell Jim and Cicely to-morrow."
The Squire had been sitting in a blessed state of quiescence. He had done his part. Dick had a clearer head than he. In his bruised state, he was only too ready to let Dick take the lead in whatever had to be done.
"There is my poor little Joan to think of," he said. "Young Inverell—I have put him off. Joan must be told why."
"I will tell her," Mrs. Clinton said. "Poor child, it is hardest for her, just now. But he will not give her up—I am sure of it."
"I don't know," said the Squire. "If the whole country is going to ring with our name—— His stands high. But I won't have him here until the worst has happened that can happen; and then only if he comes of his own accord. We stand on what honour is left to us. It won't be much. We've been talking as if we could all clear ourselves at Susan's expense, if everything comes out. We can't. She was one of us, poor girl. We suffer for her sins."
Brummels,Carchester, Sept. 26th, 19—.
MY DEAR EDWARD,
I have to thank you for your second letter, and for your cheque for £7,000, which I cannot now refuse, but which, upon my soul, I don't know what to do with. If I buy another necklace with it, I publish to the world—or to such part of it as will see the pearls upon my wife's neck—what I intend to keep even from the partner of my joys and sorrows herself. If only a certain young woman had been able to bring herself to consent to the proposal made to her, the difficulty might have been got over by adding toherstock of trinkets. But it is of no use to cry over that, and my little friend Joan will assuredly have considered herself justified in her refusal by the somewhat startling suddenness with which the illustrious Robert consoled himself for her loss. These affairs move too quickly for me in my old age. The young woman whom I now have the honour to call daughter-in-law is all that could be wished from the point of view of health and high spirits, and I have nothing against her. But I do not feel impelled to hang an extra seven thousand pounds' worth of pearls round her neck. If that is a criticism on her, so be it. But she is not Joan. She is very far from being Joan.
I have much news for you, my dear Edward, which only my inveterate habit of procrastination has caused to be left till now.
The woman fastened upon Mary at Harrogate. This must have been after she had given up all idea of getting anything out of you. No doubt she followed her to that invigorating resort, and it is unfortunate that my poor wife should not be able to drink her waters of bitterness without being frightened out of her five wits bythatresurrection. Fortunately I was within hail, and arrived on the scene in time to deal with the situation. I gathered from her account of her interview with you—my poor friend, what you must have gone through!—that you had very loyally exonerated me from all possibility of blame or misunderstanding, and I was pleased to be able in some sort to repay that loyalty. I did not lie, Edward—at least not to her. What fine adjustments of veracity one may have made later, in connubial intimacy, let no man presume to sit in judgment upon. I had received your first letter. I said neither yea nor nay, but rang the changes upon a monotonous charge of her having tried to extort money from you. It was the first line of defence, and I had no other. But she never got behind it. There is a bland but dogged persistency in my nature which ought to have carried me far. It carried me to the point of driving her to uncontrollable rage, which is something of a triumph in itself. To Mary I said before her, "This lady may not have stolen your necklace. You have her word for it. I have the word of my friend, Edward Clinton, that she asked him for money to stop her from spreading the report that his daughter-in-law stole it. She is dead and cannot defend herself. Also, Edward Clinton refused to give her any money. These two facts are enough for me. I recognise this lady's existence for the last time. I do not presume to dictate your actions, but if you are wise I think you will do the same."
We got rid of her, and she left Harrogate the next morning. I let her know, by the bye, that you held a letter from her admitting the fact that she had made demands on you and that you had refused them; and you may tell your son that she probably regrets having written that letter as much as any she ever wrote. It is a master weapon.
Well, that is the attitude I shall take up—my wife too, although she will talk a great deal, and be swayed by whatever opinion may be held by whatever person she talks to. There isboundto be talk, and a great deal of talk. You cannot help that. But it will die down. Deny nothing, admit nothing, except that you refused to pay her money. That is my advice to you.
They say that Colne is going to marry her. Birds of a feather! He is, at any rate, hot—spirituously so—in his defence of her, and in his offence against you and yours. I met him passing through London; for the sins of my youth I still belong to the Bit and Bridle Club, and I went there for the first time for I should think twenty years, and fell upon him imbibing. Rather, he fell upon me, andIfell upon my parrot-cry. "If you have any influence over that lady," I said to him, "I should advise you to advise her to keep quiet. Shewouldhave kept quiet—for money. It is known that she asked for it, and the less it has cause to be stated, the better for what reputation she has."
I left my lord in the maudlin stage, crying out upon the world's iniquity, of which he has considerable first-hand knowledge; but when he comes to what senses he still possesses he will, I hope, remember my advice. Let him marry the lady, by all means. She will have what protection she deserves, and there will be some who will accept her. They will cross neither my path nor yours, for our orbits and those of Colne do not intersect.
Finally, my old friend, set your teeth against what must come, and never lose sight of the fact that it will pass. You have been remarkably tried, and have escaped more pit-falls than could have been expected of any fallible mortal. There are no more in front of you, and all you have to do is to walk straight on with your usual stride.
Ever very sincerely yours,SEDBERGH.
This letter gave the Squire some comfort. It contained almost the first definite news he had had. He had been living in that uncomfortable state in which the mind is wrought up to meet trouble which is bound to come, and the trouble tarries. Every morning he had arisen with the anticipation of the storm breaking; every night he had lain down, having lived through such a day as he might have lived at this season of the year for the last forty years. The storm had not broken yet.
Was it too much to hope that it would, after all, pass over?
He looked up from the letter with that enquiry in his mind. But his face soon clouded again. Though not in the full downpour, he was already caught by it.
Poor little Joan! She knew. She was going about the house, trying hard to be as bright as usual. Sometimes he heard her singing. That was when she passed the door behind which he was sitting. She came in to him much more freely than she had ever done, and sat and talked to him. His daughters had never done that, nor his sons very frequently, with the exception of Dick. It was an empty house now. He and Joan and Mrs. Clinton were a good deal together. Joan had even persuaded him to take her out cubbing. None of the Clinton girls had ever been allowed to ride to hounds; but there were so many horses in the stable, and so few people to ride them now, that he had given way. But he had only been out cubbing twice himself this season. He was getting too old, he said. He had never said that of himself before, about anything, which was why Joan had pressed him to take her. But three times it had happened that she had risen at dawn, and Mrs. Clinton had come in to her and said that her father had not slept all night, but was sleeping now, and had better be allowed to sleep on.
Joan had heard nothing from her young lover since the letter had been written asking him to postpone his visit. She said nothing to anybody about him, but went about the house as usual, singing sometimes.
There had been one day amongst the young birds, in which Sir Herbert Birkett, Jim Graham, and Walter only had assisted from outside Kencote. The Squire could not bring himself to ask his neighbours to shoot, nor to shoot with them. The strain was too great. On his tall horse by the covert-side, in those early meets of the hounds, he had always been on the look-out for suspicion and avoidance, and fancied them when they had not been there. But the news might come at any moment, filtering through any one of a score of channels to this retired backwater of meadow and wood and stream, and darkening it, to him whose whole life had been spent in its pleasant ways, with shameful rumour.
It had been settled that life was to go on as usual at Kencote. But he had lost the spring of his courage. Even if no one outside knew of his dishonour, he knew of it himself. When the trouble came he would face it with what courage he could. In the meantime he kept more and more to the house, where he sat in his room, over the fire, reading the papers, or doing nothing.
His half-brother, the Rector, came often to see him. He was some years the younger of the two, but for years had looked the older, until now. The Squire was ageing under his trial. He had lost his confident, upright bearing, shambled just a very little when he walked, and carried his head a trifle forward. His face was beginning to lose its healthy ruddiness, and his beard was whiter, or seemed so.
The two men had always been good friends, but were as unlike in character and pursuits as possible. The Rector was gentle and retiring, a little bit of a scholar, a little bit of a naturalist, gardener, musician, artist. He had no sporting tastes, but liked the country and lived all the year round in his comfortable Rectory. He was not a Clinton, but had been so long in their atmosphere that their interests were largely his. He had been one of the first to be told of the catastrophe. He had made no comments on it, but had shown his sympathy by many kind but unobtrusive words and acts.
He came in as the Squire was sitting with Lord Sedbergh's letter in his hand.
"Well, my dear Edward," he said, "it is such a lovely morning that I was tempted out of my study. It is my sermon morning, and I shall have a good one to preach to you on Sunday. I was in the vein. I shall go back to it with renewed interest."
"I've had a letter that may interest you," said the Squire. "In a way it seems to shed a gleam of light. But I don't know. Things are black enough. It's this waiting for the blow to fall that is so wretched. I had rather, almost, that everyone knew."
The Rector read through the letter carefully and handed it back.
"If nothing but the truth is to be told...!" he said.
"You mean that won't be so bad for us. It does look as if there might be a chance of her not telling more than the truth, for her own sake. If she is going to marry that creature! Colne! Bah! What mud we're mixed up with! To think it rests with a man like that to keep her quiet!"
"Is he so bad?" enquired the Rector.
"Bad! The sort of man that makes his order a by-word, for all the world to spit upon. I should think even you must have some knowledge of him. His first wife divorced him; his second died because he ill-treated her."
"Is that known?"
"Yes. In the way these thingsareknown."
"He was Hubert Legrange, wasn't he? He was in my tutor's house at Eton—after your time. He wasn't bad then—high-spirited, troublesome, perhaps—that was all. But warm-hearted—merry. I liked him."
"Ah, my dear Tom! That's the sad thing, when you get to our age. To see the men you've known as boys—how some of them turn out! I've sometimes thought lately that I ought to have been more grateful to God Almighty for keeping me free from a good many temptations I might have had. I married young; I settled down here; it was what suited me. But I see now that those tastes were given to me for my good. If it hadn't been for that I might have gone wrong just as well as another. I had money from the moment I came of age. I could have done what I liked. Money's a great temptation to a young fellow."
The Rector hardly knew whether to be pleased or sorry at this vein of moralising that had lately come over his brother. It showed his mind working as he might have wished to see it work, towards humility and a more lively faith; but it also showed him deeply affected by the waves that were passing over his head; and the waves were black and heavy.
"What you say is very true," he said. "God keep us all faithful, as He kept you, Edward. You were tempted, and you were upheld. You see that now, I think."
"I thought," said the poor Squire after a pause, "that God was working to avert this disgrace from me. Everything seemed to have been ordered, in a way that was almost miraculous, to that end. It was just when I was shaking off the last uncomfortable thoughts about it, when everything seemed most bright for the future, that the blow fell. Well, I suppose it was to be, and it will come right for us all in the end; though I don't think I shall know a happy moment again as long as I live. I was living in a fool's paradise. I don't quite understand it, Tom."
The Rector thought he did. A fool's paradise is a paradise that the fool makes for himself, and when he is driven out of it blames a higher power. He was not inclined to think his brother the worse off, in all that really mattered, for having been driven out of his paradise. But it was a little difficult to tell him so.
The necessity was spared him for the moment. Dick came in, and was shown the letter.
"I think that is the way things will work," he said. "She will be repulsed by decent people, and she will come to see that whatever mud she stirs up, more than half of it will stick to her. If she marries Colne—or even if she only clings on to him as her champion—he'll come to see, if he has any sense, that the less she talks the better."
"He would want to see her cleared," said the Rector.
"Yes, and that's our difficulty. Sedbergh is very good; but I don't like it, all the same."
"Don't like what?" asked the Squire.
"I wish to God we could come out into the open." He spoke with strong impatience. "She's in the wrong. Yes. Scandalously in the wrong—a blackmailer, everything you like to say of her. But she's also in the right, and that's just where she can hurt us—where sheishurting us."
"Has anything happened?" asked the Squire anxiously.
"Yes. It's reached us at last. It's creeping like a blight all over the country—above ground, underground. It will crop up where you never could have expected. And what satisfactory answer can we give, without telling the truth, and the whole truth?"
"Tell us what has happened," said the Squire.
"I went into Bathgate, to Brooks, the saddler. I always have a talk with theoldman, if he's in the shop; and he was there alone. He hummed and ha'd a lot, and said there was a story going about that he thought I ought to know of. And what do you think the story was? Humphrey stole the necklace and gave it to Mrs. Amberley. Susan found it out and it killed her. You gave Humphrey money on condition he never showed his face in England again. That's the sort of thing we are up against."
The Squire's face was a sight to see. The Rector relieved the tension by laughing, but not very merrily.
"That story won't hurt us," he said.
"That's all very well, Tom," said Dick. "It wouldn't hurt us if there was nothing behind. But what can you say? It's a lie. Yes. And you say so. What do you look like, when you say it? Brooks didn't believe it, of course. But he knew well enough there wassomething, or he wouldn't have told me. How did it come? Who knows? He heard it in the 'George.' They were talking of us. They'll be talking of us all over Bathgate; then all over the country. Trace that story back, and you'll get something nearer the truth. That will spread into another story. There will be many different stories."
"They will contradict one another," said the Rector.
"Yes. And everyone who hears or tells us of them will want to know exactly where the truth lies. It will all go on behind our backs; but every now and then somebody, out of real consideration to us, as I think old Brooks told me, or out of impudent curiosity, will bring it to our notice. Then what are we to say? Oh, why can't we tell the truth?"
"We can't," said the Squire, rousing himself. "We can only contradict the lies. Well, now it has come, I am ready for it. I'll go to Brooks. I'll talk to him. I'll go and sit on the Bench. I've been sitting here doing nothing—shirking. I'm glad it has come at last."
The rumours grew, and spread everywhere. The story was discussed in all the clubs, in all the drawing-rooms, in every country house. Allusions, carefully calculated to escape the law of libel by the narrowest margin, appeared in many newspapers. All about peaceful Kencote it buzzed hotly, assuming many shapes, showing itself in awkward withholding of eyes, that bore the look of the cut direct, or in still more awkward geniality. It peered out at the Squire wherever he went, and he now went everywhere within the orbit in which he had moved, a respected, honoured figure, all the days of his life.
He fought gamely; his head was once more erect, his step firm. But he fought a losing battle. Dick, with his clear sight, had seen the weak spot from the first. There was no answer to make.
There was, indeed, nothing to answer. In the first flush of his determination to take the field, he had been for going straight to old Brooks the saddler, with whom he had had friendly dealings ever since his schooldays, and asking him, in effect, what he meant by it. But cool-headed Dick had restrained him.
"What can you do more than I did? I laughed, and said, 'That's a pretty story to have told about you'; and he said, 'Yes, Captain, you ought to stop it. I'll tell everybody exactly what you tell me to tell them,' and waited with his head on one side for my version. What's your version going to be when you've told him the story he heard is a lie, which he knows well enough already?"
So the Squire went to Brooks, the saddler, because he always did go in to have a chat with him at the commencement of the hunting season, but said nothing to him at all of what they were both thinking about. The chat was lively on both sides, but when he went out of the shop he knew that Brooks knew why he had come. To brazen it out.
No need to go through the places he went to, and the people he talked to. He went everywhere he had been accustomed to go, and he talked to everybody he had been accustomed to talk to. And because he was unused to playing a part, he overdid this one. He had been a hearty man with his equals. Now he was almost noisy. He had been a cordially condescending man with his inferiors. Now he was effusively patronising. He would have done better to sulk in his tent until the storm of rumour had died down. And he felt every curious look, every unasked question.
It was ominous that none of his friends—for he had many lifelong friends amongst his country neighbours, though no very intimate ones—said to him that ugly rumours were going about, and that they thought he ought to know of them so that he could contradict them. It was obvious that he knew of them, and that they thought he could not contradict them, or they would have spoken. Nobody could tell anybody else that he had heard the truth of these absurd stories from Clinton himself, and it was so and so. Nobody cut him, nobody even avoided him; it was, indeed, difficult to do so, he was so ubiquitous; but the unasked, unanswered questions behind all the surface sociality poisoned the air. The Squire was in torment in all his comings and goings.
Dick fared better, because he took things more naturally. But nobody asked him questions either. He was not an easy man to ask questions of. If they had done so, he would have been ready with his answer: "I can't tell you the truth of the story, because it's a family matter. But I'll tell you this much: Mrs. Amberley tried to blackmail my father, and he told her to go to the devil." It would not have answered much, but it would have made some impression.
But the trouble was, and Dick felt it deeply, that he could take no steps of his own. He could go to nobody and say, "I know there are ugly rumours going about against us. Tell me, as a friend, what they are, and I'll answer them." The answer, in that case, would have had to be different, and must have contained the truth of the story, if it were to be satisfying.
The Squire grew thinner and older, almost noticeably so, every day. Mrs. Clinton was in the deepest distress about him, but could do nothing. He would come home, from hunting, or from Petty Sessions, which he now attended regularly, and keep miserable silence, all his spirit gone. She and Joan were companionable with him, as far as he would let them be, and he liked to have them with him; but he would not talk, or if he roused himself to do so, it was with such painful effort that it was plain that it was only to please them, and brought no relief to himself. He would have no one asked to the house. He was afraid of refusals.
One morning a letter came to him with the stamp of a Government office, franked by the Minister at the head of that office. He opened it in surprise. It ran as follows:
DEAR MR. CLINTON,
My nephew, Inverell, has made a communication to me concerning which I should like to have a conversation with you. If you will do me the honour of calling on me when you are next in London I will do my best to meet you at any hour you may arrange for. But as my time is apt to be occupied a good deal ahead, if you can make it convenient to see me here at 12 o'clock next Tuesday morning, I shall run no risk of disappointment.
Yours very truly,CHEVIOT.
"Now I shall have something to take hold of," said the Squire, brightening.
He dressed that morning in better spirits than he had shown for some time. Poor little Joan! It had hurt him terribly that her happy love story had been cut off short, snuffed out altogether, as it had seemed, by the postponement of her young lover's visit. He had made no sign, and it was now a month ago and more since the letter had been written to him. Joan must have given up hope by this time. She must be sick at heart, poor child! Yet she never showed it. She was tender ofhiswounds, anxious to brighten his life. But what did his life, now almost within sight of its end—broken, dishonoured—matter beside her young life, just opening into full flower, only to be stricken by the same blight of dishonour? He would have given anything—life itself—to lift the weight off her, so tender had his conscience become under the pummelling of fate, so big his heart for those to whom he owed love and shelter. As bitter as death itself it was to feel that he who had surrounded his dear ones—dear all through, though subjugated to his whims and prejudices—with everything that wealth and ease could provide for refuge, should see them stripped of his succour, and himself powerless to protect them.
He shaved himself by the window looking out on to his broad, well-treed park, where his horses were being exercised. He looked at them with some stirring of interest. Somehow, he had not cared to look at them of late, whether it was that the mirth of the stable-lads, subdued by reason of their being in sight of the windows of the house, but none the less patent in its youthful irresponsibility, jarred on his sombre mood; or that such signs of his own wealth as a string of little-used hunters, kept on because he had always kept them, hurt him because of the futility of his wealth to help in the present distress.
What, after all, could young Inverell have done? Mrs. Clinton's letter had, on instructions, been entirely non-committal. He had been asked to postpone his visit. No reason had been given; no future time suggested. He could only have waited—in surprise and dismay—for a renewal of the invitation. He could not, after that letter, have written to Joan. Perhaps he might, after a week or two had elapsed, have written to the Squire himself. But by that time the blight had begun to spread. It must have reached his ears pretty quickly. The higher the rank the fresher the gossip; and the name of Clinton would not have passed him by, if it had been whispered ever so lightly.
Well, what then? The Squire, sensitive now to the very marrow, drooped again. He had held aloof. There was no gainsaying that. Five weeks had passed, and Joan had been left unhappy, to lose some little shred of hope every day. It was natural perhaps. He was almost a young prince—not one of those of his rank who marry lightly to please their fancy of the moment. He would be right to wait for a time if the house from which he had chosen his bride was under a cloud, to see what that cloud was and whether it would pass. If it continued to hang black and threatening over those who made no effort to lift it, he might come to ask himself in time whether he could not snatch his lady from under its dark canopy; but he would not ask it until time had been given for its removal. Oh, the bitterness of the thought that it was Kencote, of all houses, over which the cloud lay thick and heavy—Kencote, which had basked in the mild sunshine of honour and dignity for as long as, or longer than his own house had attracted its more radiant beams!
But now he had moved. This letter must mean that a chance was to be given for the head of the house to clear himself. Whatever came of it, it was the first chance that the Squire had had, and he was eager to take it.
He regarded the letter from all points of view, and was inclined to think favourably of it. It bore a great name—that of a man of the highest honour in the counsels of the nation, known to everyone. It was courteously written. "Dear Mr. Clinton." The Squire could not remember ever having met him. He was of a younger generation than the great men he had foregathered with in his youth and theirs. Dick would probably have some slight acquaintance with him, but even Dick, who had been so much in the swim, had not habitually consorted with Cabinet Ministers of the first rank. The Squire would know many of his friends and relations, of course. His own name would be known to the great man—Clinton of Kencote—there was still virtue in it. It was not as if the young man had gone to his guardian and told him that he wanted to marry the daughter of this or that country gentleman whose status would have to be explained and examined. This was a letter to an equal. It was nothing that he was asked to go up and present himself before the writer. The Squire was quite ready to pay due deference to a man whose claim to deference was founded on distinction of a sort that he did not claim himself. It was hardly to be expected that a Secretary of State in the middle of an Autumn Session should wait upon him. Nothing more could have been desired than that he should put his request with courtesy, which he had done.
Dick, when he showed him the letter, was not so sure. "Of course you would have to go to London to meet him," he said. "But it's really no less than a summons, for a time and place that he doesn't consult you about. However, we won't worry ourselves about that. What are you going to say to him?"
The Squire hadn't thought that out yet. He should know when he got there, and heard what Lord Cheviot wanted of him.
"I think it's pretty plain what he wants," said Dick. "You've got to show my lord that you're a fit and proper person to form an alliance with. That's what we're brought to. It's the most humiliating thing that has happened yet. If it weren't for poor little Joan I should say chuck his letter into the fire, and don't answer it, and don't go."
It was significant of the change that had been wrought in the Squire that it was Dick who should be expressing angry resentment at the hint of a slight to the Kencote dignity, and he who should say, "I don't take it in that way. And in any case I would sink my own feelings for the sake of Joan."
"You'll have to be careful," said Dick. "He will want to overawe you with his position. That's why you are to go and see him at his office. Why couldn't he have asked you to his house or his club, or called on you at yours? This is a private matter, and privately we're as good as he is; or, at any rate, we want nothing from him."
"But we do," said the Squire. "We want Joan's happiness."
"If Inverell wants Joan, he will take her. She's good enough for him, or anybody, not only in herself but in her family."
"She would be if we were not under this cloud."
"She is in any case. Don't lose sight of that when you are talking to him. He has a sort of cold air of immense dignity about him; he is polite and superior at the same time."
"Do you know him?"
"No. At least I've been to his house. We nod in the street. He knows who I am. He came down to Kemsale some years ago. He was a friend of old Cousin Humphrey's. Didn't you meet him then?"
"Perhaps I did," said the Squire. "I don't remember. Ah, if poor old Humphrey Meadshire had been alive, a lot of this wouldn't be happening."
Lord Meadshire, a kinsman of the Squire's, had been Lord Lieutenant of the county, and the leading light in it, for very many years. But he had died, a very old man, two years before, and the grandson who had succeeded him was "no good to anybody."
"Don't let him overawe you," was Dick's final advice, significant enough, as addressed to the Squire, of what had been wrought in him.
There was no attempt made to overawe him, unless by the ceremony that hedges round a great Secretary of State in his inner sanctuary, when the Squire presented himself at the time appointed.
Lord Cheviot rose from his seat and came forward to meet him. "It is good of you, Mr. Clinton," he said, shaking hands, "to come to me here. If you had been in London I should have called on you."
He was a tall, severe-looking man who seldom smiled, and did not smile now. He was so much in the public eye, and had for years played a part of such dignity, that it was impossible for the Squire, bucolic as he was, not to be somewhat impressed, now that he was in his presence.
But his greeting had removed any feeling that had been aroused by Dick's criticism of his letter, and he put the Squire still more at his ease by saying as he took his seat again, "I had the pleasure of meeting you some years ago at Lord Meadshire's. I think he was a relation of yours."
"Yes," said the Squire. "Poor old man, we miss him a great deal in my part of the world."
Lord Cheviot bowed his head. He had finished with the subject of Lord Meadshire.
"As you know, Mr. Clinton," he said, "I was guardian to my nephew during his minority. He was brought up as a member of my own family; I stand as a father to him, more than is the case with most guardians. That will excuse me to you, I hope, for interfering in a matter with which, otherwise, I should have had no concern."
The Squire did not quite like the word "interfering," and made no reply.
"He has told me that he wishes to marry your daughter, that she is everything, in herself, that could be desired as a wife for him, which I have no sort of hesitation in accepting—in believing."
"In herself!" Again the Squire kept silence, though invited by a slight pause to speak.
"He tells me that it was understood that he should go to you immediately after he and this very charming young lady had parted in Scotland, that he had Mrs. Clinton's invitation, and that it was withdrawn, and has not since been renewed."
The Squire had to speak now. He made a gulp at it. "There were reasons," he said, "why I wished the proposal deferred for a time. I needn't say," he added hurriedly, "that they had nothing to do with—with your nephew himself."
"You mean that you would not object to a marriage between him and your daughter?"
Was there a trace of satire in this speech? None was apparent in the tone in which it was uttered, or in Lord Cheviot's face as he uttered it, sitting with his finger tips together, looking straight at his visitor.
If there was satire its sting was removed by the Squire answering simply: "Such a marriage could only have been gratifying to me"; and perhaps it was rebuked by his adding, "I have never met your nephew, but he bears such a character that any father must have been gratified for his daughter's sake."
This gave the word to Lord Cheviot, whose attitude had been that of one waiting for an explanation.
He changed his position, and bent forward. "I think, under the circumstances, Mr. Clinton, we are entitled to ask why you wished the proposal—otherwise gratifying—to be deferred."
There was a tiny prick in each of his speeches. The Squire was made more uncomfortable by them than was due even from the general discomfort of the situation.
He raised troubled eyes to those of his questioner. "I suppose you are not ignorant," he said, "of what is being said of us?"
"Of 'us'?" queried Lord Cheviot.
"Of me and my family. All the world seems to be talking of us."
Lord Cheviot dropped his eyes. He may not have liked to be put into the position of questioned, instead of questioner.
"I am not ignorant of it," he said.
"It was for him," said the Squire, "to come or to keep away. As long as my name was being bandied about in the wicked way it has been, I would not ask him to my house. I have my pride, Lord Cheviot. If your nephew marries my daughter, he marries her as an equal. My family has been before the world as long as his, or your lordship's. It has not reached the distinction, of late, of either; but that is a personal matter. If Lord Inverell takes a bride from Kencote he takes her from a house where men as high in the world as he have taken brides for many generations past."
Dick, if he had heard this speech, might have been relieved of his fear that the Squire would be overawed by the Cabinet Minister. He might also have felt that as an assertion of dignity it would have been more effective if postponed to a point in the conversation when that dignity should have been affronted.
"If that were not so, Mr. Clinton," said Lord Cheviot, "I should not have done myself the honour of seeking an interview with you. Let us come to the point—as equals—and as men of honour. You have said that your name is being bandied about in a wicked way. I take that to mean that accusations are being made which have no truth in them."
"Many accusations are being made," said the Squire, "which have no word of truth in them. They will not be believed by anybody who knows me—who knows where I stand. But mud sticks. Many people do not know me—most people, I may say, who have heard these stories; for they have spread everywhere. I stand as a mark. I shelter myself behind nobody; I draw in nobody, if I can help it. That is why I asked your nephew to put off his visit to my house, and why I have not renewed it since."
"It was the right way to act," said Lord Cheviot, "and I thank you for acting so. But, for my nephew, it does not settle the question; it only postpones it. He loves your daughter, and she, I am assured, loves him. I will not disguise anything from you, Mr. Clinton. Personally, I should prefer that this marriage should not take place. But I cannot dictate, I can only advise. I advised my nephew to wait awhile. He did so. And he is willing to wait no longer. Mr. Clinton, when slanders are circulated, there are ways of stopping them."
"What are they?" cried the Squire. "The slander takes many forms. None of them are brought before me. I know they are being circulated; that is all. I know where they spring from, but I can't trace them back. There is cunning at work, Lord Cheviot, as well as wickedness. There is nothing to take hold of."
"If you had something definite to take hold of, you could meet it; you could disperse these slanders?"
"Yes," said the Squire boldly.
"Then I can be of service to you. I have a letter from Lord Colne, in which he makes certain accusations. It was written in answer to one from me. I had heard that he had been making free with my nephew's name in connection with yours, and I wrote on his behalf for definite statements, which could be acted on. Here is his letter."
The Squire took, and read it.
MY LORD,
In answer to your letter, my accusation against Mr. Clinton is that the theft of a pearl necklace of which Mrs. Amberley was accused last year was committed by a member of his family, that he knew of this, and allowed money to be paid to keep the secret; also that he offered Lord Sedbergh the price of the pearls, which offer was refused.
I am,Your Lordship's Obedient Servant,COLNE.
It was overwhelming. Here was the truth, and nothing but the truth. That it was not the whole truth helped the Squire not at all.
"That letter," said Lord Cheviot, when he had given him time to read it, and his eyes were still bent on the page, "is the strongest possible ground for an action for libel. It is evidently meant to be taken so. Lord Colne has constituted himself Mrs. Amberley's champion. It is to him—or to her through him—that the slanders to which you have referred can be traced back."
"May I take this letter?" asked the Squire. "It is what I have wanted—something tangible to go upon."
"Certainly, Mr. Clinton. I am glad to have done you the service—incidentally."
Again the little prick. It was not on the Squire's behalf that the fire had been drawn.
The prick was left to work in. Lord Cheviot sat and waited.
"This is a most infamous woman," the Squire broke out. "She came herself and tried to trap me. I refused to give her money. This is her revenge."
Still Lord Cheviot waited.
The Squire began to feel that if he had escaped one trap, he was even now in the teeth of another. He wanted time to think it over; he wanted Dick to advise him. But he had no time, and he was alone under the gaze of the cold eyes of the man who was waiting for him to speak.
"I can't decide now exactly what steps I can take about this," he said, speaking hurriedly. "But I suppose you won't be satisfied to wait until I do take steps."
"I shall be quite satisfied, Mr. Clinton," said the chilly voice, "if you tell me that there is no truth in that letter."
Now he was caught in the teeth. He could not think clearly; he had not time to think at all. He could only cling to one determination, that he had not known until now was in his mind. With Humphrey on the other side of the world, and Susan in her grave, he would not exonerate himself by inculpating them.
He rose unsteadily from his chair. "I can only tell you this, my lord," he said. "I have been tried very terribly, and in whatever I have done or left undone, I have followed the path of honour. I can say no more than that now, and I can see that that is not enough. So I will wish you good-morning."
He did not raise his head, or he might have seen the cold, watchful look in Lord Cheviot's eyes after a little fade into a look that was not unsympathetic.
But there was little softening in the voice in which he said, "I must tell my nephew that I have given you the opportunity of denying, not a rumour that cannot be pinned down, but a categorical charge, and that you have not denied it."
The Squire made no reply. Lord Cheviot came forward, as if he would have accompanied him to the door; but he went out without a word, and shut it behind him.
The Squire went home in the afternoon. When he reached the junction at Ganton, where trains were changed for Kencote, he walked across the platform to send a telegram. The station-master, with whom he always exchanged a hearty word, touched his hat to him, and looked after him with concern on his face. He had taken no notice of the salutation, although he had seen it. He walked like an old and broken man.
Mrs. Clinton met him at Kencote with a brougham. He had wired for her to do so. For the first time in all the over forty years of their marriage he was not driving himself from the station. He stepped into the carriage, without so much as a glance at his horses, and took her hand. He had come home to her; not to his little kingdom.
He went straight up to bed. He had no spirit even for the unexacting routine of his own home. He kissed Joan, who met him in the hall, but without a word, and she went away, after a glance at his face. He would not see Dick when he came.
He slept through the evening, awoke to take some food and drink, but took very little, and slept again. If ever a man was ill, with whom no doctor could have found anything the matter, he was ill.
Mrs. Clinton hoped that he would sleep through the night, but soon after she laid herself down beside him, in the silence of the night, he awoke. The heavy sleep that had drugged him into insensibility for a time had also refreshed and strengthened him, and for succeeding hours he cried aloud his despair.
"What have I done?" That was the burden of his cry. "Where have I been wrong? Why am I so beaten down by punishment?"
But by and by, spent with beating against the bars, he began to speak calmly and reasonably, as if he were discussing the case of someone else, searching for the truth of things, impartially.
"When Humphrey came and asked me to do what I might very well have done for Gotch on my own account, I refused. I was right there. When he told me that Virginia had given him the money, what was I to do? It was too late to get it back. I had no right to. I might have told Virginia, perhaps, why the money had been wanted. No, I couldn't do that. I had promised Humphrey. I do think he ought not to have asked me for that promise. But it was given. WhatcouldI have done, Nina, at that stage? I knew about it, that devilish letter says. I allowed money to be paid to keep it secret. Was I to publish it abroad, directly Humphrey told me? Is there a man living who would have done that under the circumstances? Would Cheviot have done it himself? It might just as well have happened to him as to me. Nina, was I bound, by any law of God or man, to do that?"
"Edward dear, you have done no wrong——"
"No, but answer my question. If it had been you instead of me—that mightverywell have happened. Wouldyouhave said—after you had been told under a promise of secrecy, mind—Susan must be shown up? Even that wouldn't have been enough; Humphrey wouldn't have shown her up. You would have had to do it yourself. And how could you have done it? Can you really seriously say it was my duty, when Humphrey told me that story, to go and give information to the police?"
"Oh no, no, Edward."
"But what's the alternative? Upon my soul, Nina, I can't see any half-way house between that and what I did. I kept silence, they say. That was Cheviot's charge, and because I couldn't deny it, I stood condemned before him. I wish I could have put the question tohim, as to what he would have expected of me. Confound him, and his supercilious way! Nina, you haven't answered me. What wouldyouhave done?"
"Exactly what you did, Edward dear. I am not sure that I should even have had the strength to refuse Humphrey's plea, as you so honourably did, without counting the cost in any way. You were ready to take any consequences, to yourself. Oh, you could not have done more."
"But then, why am I put in the wrong? Those are the charges against me. Those, and that I offered Sedbergh the price of the necklace—which he refused. Yes, he did refuse it, and made me feel, too, that I ought not to have asked him to accept it. Why did I feel that? It isn't that he was wrong. He was right, and I should have acted as he did if I had been in his place. But why did I feel ashamed of having offered it to him? What was the alternative? To say nothing about it to him, when Susan had spent thousands of pounds belonging to him, and I knew of it? Can anyone seriously say that that was a more honourable course to take than the one I did take? Nina, help me. Tell me where I was wrong. Imusthave been wrong there, because I felt ashamed."
"It is easy enough now to mark down little errors. In the main, Edward dear, you were right all through—nobly right."
"Little errors! What error was there there? I either offered him the money, or kept from him the fact that a member of my family had spent it. There was no alternative.Wasthere? Do tell me, Nina, if you can see anything that I can't see."
"I think the better way would have been to tell Lord Sedbergh of what had been done, and leave it to him to take steps if he wished to. He would have taken none. You would have been justified. You could not justify yourself any more by paying him back what had been stolen."
"Yes, that is what he said. He would not bear my burden. Why should he have? Yes. I see that, Nina. I was wrong there. I think I was very wrong there."
Oh, how it rent her heart to hear him, who had been so ready with his dictatorial censure of all dependent on him, so impervious to every shaft of censure that might have been attracted to himself, thus baring his breast to blame, accepting it, welcoming it, if it would only help to clear away his bewilderment.
"It came to the same thing, dear, in the end," she reminded him. "You had told Lord Sedbergh."
"Ah, but it wasn't quite the same. I can see that now. If I had gone to him as you said, I could have denied the statement that I kept silence. I should have told the one man that perhaps it was right that I should have told. I am beginning to see a little light, Nina. Nothing more could have been expected of me than that. I should have had a complete answer. Oh, why did I make that mistake? It looked to me, afterwards, such a small one. Sedbergh set me right over it—snubbed me really, though in the kindest possible way—and I deserved it. But that didn't end it. That mistake put everything else wrong. I am beginning to see it. But, oh, how difficult it all is!"
"Edward, youhadtold Lord Sedbergh. You told him before you made any suggestion as to payment. He had thought the matter was ended when he had said you were right to tell him, and there was nothing more to be done. You have told me that whenever you have gone over the conversation you had with him."
He thought over this. His slow-moving mind was made preternaturally acute by long dwelling on the one interminable subject. "Should I have told him anything?" he asked, "if I hadn't wanted to get the debt off my shoulders? No, I think not. Humphrey would not have consented for one thing, and I had given him my word. I suppose I was wrong there too. I ought never to have given him my word. Yet he would not have told me if I had not."
"That is Humphrey's blame. He asked you to keep dishonourable silence. You trusted him there. You would not have promised that."
"Then my silence was dishonourable?"
"You told Lord Sedbergh. I think you would have told him in any case. I think that you would have seen that you must. You would have insisted with Humphrey; and you must have had your way. You have acted so honourably where you did see clearly, that I have no doubt you would have seen clearly here. You had no time to think. You were under the influence of the sudden shock. You went up to London to see Lord Sedbergh the very next morning."
"It was pride," he said slowly. "The wrong pride. I have been very blind to my faults, Nina. Pride of place, pride of wealth, pride of birth! What are they in a crisis like this? I was humiliated to the dust before that man this morning. Oh, I have seen myself in a wrong light all my life. God has sent me this trial to show me how little worth I was in His sight. My pride led me wrong. Why was I thinking then about the money at all? Sedbergh was right. That woman was right, there. It was a base thought, and I have been very heavily punished for it."
She lay by his side, comforting him. She thought that he would now cease his self-examination, since it had led him to a conclusion damaging to himself, but healing too, if he saw a fault and repented of it. But presently he returned to it again.
"Why did I feel beaten and ashamed before Cheviot? Why has he the right to say those damning words to his nephew, 'I shall tell him that I brought you a definite charge made against your honour, and you did not deny it'?"
"Edward dear, you might have denied it, but for one thing. The charge against you was not true."
"But it was true. I knew of Susan's guilt, and money was paid to keep it secret—money that I knew had been paid."
"That you allowed to be paid," she corrected him. "You did not allow it. It was not paid to keep the secret. Virginia paid it, on behalf of Dick, and paid it with quite a different intention."
"Isn't that a mere quibble?"
"No, it is not. A quibble is a half-truth that obscures a whole one. This is not like that. It is because the whole truth is so difficult to disengage here that it looked like the half-truth. I say nothing of Humphrey; but as regards you it is the whole truth. It is not true—it is a lie—to say that you allowed money to be paid to conceal what you knew. You refused to pay money yourself, because you knew it would have the indirect effect of concealing the truth. It was not in your power to stop the money being paid with an innocent object. And when it is said that you knew of Susan's guilt, if that is in itself a charge of keeping silence, the answer is that you did not keep silence. You told Lord Sedbergh. That you offered him the money afterwards is nothing—would, I mean, be considered nothing against you, as coming afterwards. As it is put in that letter it is as untrue as the rest; for it is intended there to look as if you had offered that money too in order to buy silence."
"My dear," he said, "you have a very clever head. I wonder if you are right. That would exonerate me of everything."
"Youareto be exonerated of everything," she said quietly, "except the mistake of thinking it more important that Lord Sedbergh should be told because of the debt that lay heavy on you than because it was right that he should be told in any case. You did tell him, which is all that anyone inclined to criticise you is concerned with, andIknow well enough that you would have told him if there were no question of payment. My dear husband, you have been so cast down by the blows you have received that you are inclined to blame yourself, knowing everything, as others are inclined to blame you, knowing nothing."
This was sweet balm to him, and he lay comforting himself with it for some time. But his doubts came back to him.
"Then why did I feel so ashamed before Cheviot?"
She was ready with her answer at once. "For a reason that does you more honour than anything else. You took the sins of others upon you. You took shame before him, not for your own faults, but for theirs. If you could have told him everything, he would have seen what even you couldn't see at the time—that the apparent truth in that letter was not the truth. The only true thing in it was that Susan was guilty."
"And that I knew it."
"There was no shame in that, to you, unless you kept silence, which you did not do."
"I can't see that quite straight yet, Nina, though I should like to. Why are you so sure that I should have told Sedbergh in any case, or insisted upon Humphrey telling him?"
"Because I see so plainly how your mind has worked all along. It never did work on that point, because you took the right course at once—we will say, if you like, for not quite the right reason—and it was never a matter to be fought out with yourself. It had been done."
"You are very comforting to me, my dearest. I do believe you are right. I say it in all humility; I think I should not have been allowed to go wrong there."
"I am sure you would not; quite sure. Even with your pride to guide you, as you say it did, you could not have consented long to hold back the truth from Lord Sedbergh. Him, at least, you must have told—as you did."
"Well, I give in, Nina. You give me great comfort."