CHAPTER XXIX.
“’TIS NOT THE SAME NOW, NEVER MORE CAN BE.”
Vansittart was the first to break that agony of silence.
“Does this mean the end of love?” he asked. “Is all over and done with between you and me? Is love only a dream that we have dreamed?”
“Yes; it is a dream,” she answered, looking at him with tearless eyes, which had more misery in them than all the tears he had ever seen in the eyes of women. “It is something perhaps to have believed one’s self happy for two blessed years. You have been so good to me—so good to poor Peggy. She loved you almost as much as I did. You have been all goodness,—and you did not know that he was my brother. Yet, yet, when you killed him you must haveknown that some heart would be broken. No, I can never forget how good you have been—or how dear. Don’t think that I can change in an hour from love to hate. No, no; that cannot be. To my dying day I must love you—but I cannot live with the man who killed my brother. I can never be your wife again. That is all over. We must be strangers on this side of the grave.”
“A hard sentence, Eve; it could not be harder if I were a deliberate murderer. And yet perhaps it is no more than I deserve—perhaps even the gallows would be no more than my desert——”
“The gallows! Oh, God, could they kill you because——?”
The words died in her throat, choked by the agony of a great fear.
“But no one knows—no one will ever know,” she cried. “She will never tell”—pointing to the door. “She loves you too dearly.”
“No, she will not tell.”
“Is there any one else who knows?”
“Only her aunt, who may be trusted. No, I don’t think I am in any danger from the law,” he said carelessly, as if that hardly mattered. “But you—you are my supreme judge; and you look upon me as a murderer. Well, perhaps you are right. Let me sophisticate with myself as I will, in that one moment I was in mind and instinct a homicide. When I struck that blow I did not care about consequences. All the savage impulses within me were raging. Yes, I was a murderer. And you say that we must part! That is your sentence?”
She nodded yes.
“Very well; then I must do all I can to make our parting easy and reputable. The world will wonder and talk, but we must bear that. I think I know a way of lessening the scandal. You will live at Merewood, and I will travel. That will make things easy.”
“Live at Merewood without you! Not for all the world. I can go back to Fernhurst to my sisters. What does it matter where I live? The worst is that Imustlive. You will let me give them some of my pin-money, I know, so that I may not be a burden upon them.”
“Let you? Why, your pin-money is your own, to throw in the gutter if you like.”
“No, no; it was meant for your wife. I shall have no claim upon it when we are parted. But I don’t want to be a burden at the Homestead. I should like to give them fifty pounds a year. I shall not cost them so much as that.”
“I dare say not. Why do you torture me with this talk of money? All the money I have is turned to withered leaves. Eve, Eve,” he cried passionately, “you could not do this cruel thing if our child had lived!”
“Could I not? Would that have altered the fact that you killedmy brother? No, for God’s sake don’t come near me,” as he approached her with extended hand, trying to clasp her hand in his, passionately longing for reunion. “There is a ghost between us. I should hate myself if I could forget the dead.”
“Ah, that is the worst sting of death,” he cried bitterly, “the influence of the dead which blights the living. Is there no hope, Eve—no hope? Is your mind made up?”
“Alas! alas! I have no choice.”
“Take time to think, at least, before you act.”
“Time to think? Why, I have been thinking for an eternity. It is ages since that woman put this picture in my hand. Oh, I have thought, Jack. I have thought. If I could shut my eyes and say I forget—if I could say the past is past, and the dead are no better for our tears and our sacrifices, our crape gowns, or the roses we plant on their graves—if I could be like the heathens who said, ‘Let us be happy to-day, for to-morrow we die,’ how gladly would I blot thought and memory from my brain! But you see while I live I must think and remember; and every hour of my life with you would be darkened by one hideous memory. I should see my brother in his blood-stained winding-sheet standing between us. There are some things that cannot be, that heart, and mind, and conscience cry out against, and our marriage is one of those things. Oh, it was wicked, wicked, to marry me, knowing what you knew.”
“Was it wicked? If it was, I don’t repent of that sin. I repent my first crime—the crime of bloodshed—not my second, the crime of making you my wife. I have had two years of bliss. How many men can say as much? Well, since you are resolute—have weighed what you are doing, and still decide against me, I will leave you in peace. If the memory of those years cannot plead for me, all words are idle.”
She heard the strangled sob in his voice as he turned from her and went slowly to the door: but she did not call him back. She stood like a woman of stone till the door closed on him, and the outer door opened and shut again. Then she clasped her hands above her head with a distracted gesture, and rushed out upon the balcony to see the last of him. She leant over the high iron rail to watch him as he sprang into the waiting hansom. She saw him drive away, and did not shriek to him to come back, though her whole being, brain, heart, nerves, yearned after him with despairing love. She watched till the cab vanished from her sight, hidden by the foliage on the Embankment, and then she dragged herself slowly back to the room, as a wounded animal crawls to its lair, and flung herself upon Lisa’s sofa, a broken-hearted woman.
“Could I act otherwise,—could I, could I?” she asked herself.“My brother, my own flesh and blood! Even if I had not loved him, could I live with the man who killed him?”
Lisa crept into the room, while Eve sat sobbing, with her face hidden in the sofa pillow. Lisa crept to her side, and sat on the ground by her, pitying her, and looking up at her with mute doglike tenderness. “What have you done?” she asked at last. “Have you sent him from you—your husband who loves you?”
“Yes, he is gone. It is our fate.”
“Fate!” cried Lisa, contemptuously. “What is fate? It is you, not Fate, that make the parting. If you loved him you would not let him go.”
“If I loved him? Why, my whole being is made up of love for him.”
“What then? And you send him from you for an accident—for something which no one could help. I was there—these eyes saw it. A moment and it was done! There was not time for thought. For that one instant of wrong-doing are you to make his life miserable?”
“He killed my brother. Do you understand that, Lisa? The man who ought to have been your husband was my brother. Did you care nothing for him—you, the mother of his child?”
“Si, si, I cared for him. When first he came to Burano I worshipped him as if he had been St. Mark. And when he said, ‘Come to Venice with me, Lisa, and be my little wife,’ I went. It was wicked, I know. I ought not to have left Burano till I had been to confession, and the priest had married us; but when I said, ‘You will marry me, Signor Inglese,’ he said, ‘Yes, Lisa, by-and-by,’ and that was what he always said till the last—‘by-and-by.’ He was not always kind to me, Si’ora, though he was your brother. He beat me sometimes when the luck had been bad at cards. When he had been sitting up half the night playing cards with his friends, and I crept into the room and begged him to play no more—he was not kind then. He would start up out of his chair, and swear a big English oath, and strike at me with his clenched fist. But am I sorry? Yes, of course I am sorry. It was dreadful to see him fall dead in a moment; but is that to be remembered against your husband years afterwards? He was brutal that night, so brutal that he deserved his death, almost. He flew at the strange Englishman like a tiger. He would not listen, he would not believe that I was not false to him. He was mad with drink and foolish anger. He was like a wild beast. And for an accident like that you would make the noblest of men unhappy. Ah, Si’ora, that is not love. If your husband belonged to me, and he loved me as he loves you, he might kill twenty men, and I would cling to him and love him still. What would their life be to me, or their death, if I had him?”
“You are a semi-civilized savage, and you can’t understand,”said Eve, sternly. “Life and death, good name, and honour, have no meaning for you.”
“Love means more than all,” said Lisa, doggedly.
“There is only one man you have the right to love,” said Eve; “the man who ought to have been your husband. You must be indeed a wretch if you can love the man who killed him.”
“Ah, madonna mia, we do not make our hearts. They are made for us,” Lisa pleaded naively. “TheSignor Inglese was very good to me at Burano in my poverty; but afterwards, at Venice, I had a good deal to suffer. It was a hard life sometimes. One had need be young, and able to laugh, and forgive and forget. But he—Signor Vansittart—he was always kind. His face haunted me after that Shrove Tuesday on the Lido, and when we met again—when la Zia and I were strangers in London, without a friend in the world—oh, how kind and generous he was! All that I have of fame and fortune I owe to him, and though he does not care for me so much as that,” with a contemptuous wave of her fingers, “yet he is always gentle, always good. Do not tell me that I am to care more for the dead man who deceived me and beat me than for the living man who has been my benefactor, my guardian angel, and for whom I say a paternoster and two aves every night of my life. It is sweet to say these for his sake: that his sin may be forgiven.”
“Ah, you do not understand. You do not know what death is,” said Eve, with gloomy anger, getting up from the sofa, and rearranging her loosened hair with trembling hands.
“It must come to all of us,” answered Lisa, with a philosophical shrug. “Better that it should come in a moment as his came, without suffering, without fear, than that we should live to be old and fat and full of maladies. People die of dreadful diseases that one shudders only to hear of, and that is called a natural death. How much better to be stabbed to the heart unawares.”
“I cannot reason with you,” said Eve, haughtily. “I loved my brother. You, his mistress, evidently cared nothing for him.”
And with this verbal stab, she departed. Who shall say whether she was more indignant with the Venetian for loving Harold Marchant too little or for loving John Vansittart too much?
Her carriage was waiting for her; the servants were asleep in the afternoon sun. She was only just able to utter the monosyllabic “Home,” in answer to the footman’s question.
How strange the streets and all their movement of everyday life seemed to her, as she drove along the interminable King’s Road, and by Sloane Street and the Park—how careless the faces of the people. Was there no other trouble in the world but her own? Was everybody else busy, and bustling, and happy? She felt as if she had been driving home from a funeral, wondering to find a worldwhere there were no signs of sorrow. Had she not verily parted from her dead? The dead brother whom she had always pictured to herself as alive and happy in some far-off African wilderness, leading the adventurer’s reckless life, caring for no one he had left in the civilized world, but destined to come back to her hereafter with that wild spirit tamed, and his home affections reviving with mature years. He was dead, and she would see him no more on earth—killed in a tavern brawl, for the sake of a worthless woman. And the husband she adored, he, too, was dead—dead to her for ever. She had renounced him, and he was free to go his own way, and lead his own life, and find consolation and happiness where he could. Her friends of Mayfair had told her that no man laments long for the loss of any woman; that one beautiful face blots out another; that there is no image, however cherished, which does not grow faint, and fade and vanish, as a circle widens and melts away upon still water.
Even the house in Charles Street had a strange aspect when she re-entered it. Should she find him there? Would he plead with her again, in their own house, where she had been so happy with him, where all mute things reminded her of the glad life he had given her? Would he plead with her once more, and renew the struggle between love for the living and loyalty to the dead? No; she was spared that ordeal. The servant who opened the door told her that his master had been summoned hurriedly to Southampton, and had left a letter for her. She caught up the letter eagerly, hungry, in her desolation, for some sign from him, some last link between them.
“I start by the mail for Southampton,” he wrote. “Till nine I shall be within reach of a telegram at the Travellers, if you change your mind. Before to-morrow night I shall be outward bound; but till to-morrow night a wire to the Post Office at Southampton would find me. I have made no plans as yet, but you may think of me as an exile and a wanderer.”
He was gone! She had been obeyed. The wrench was over; and now she had to face life calmly and deliberately without him. She had sacrificed all that was nearest and dearest to her on this earth to the shadow of the dead. She had made her choice between the dead and the living. Could she have chosen otherwise?
That was the question she asked herself when she had locked the door of her room and was alone with her misery, walking to and fro among the familiar surroundings which had been the background of a happy union. How could she have chosen otherwise?
“He killed him!” she repeated to herself with dogged insistency. “He killed my brother. What should I be if I could stay with him—call him husband, love him and obey him for the rest of mylife—the man who killed my brother? Was it murder or not murder, he killed him. It was death. Oh, to think of my poor Harold—to think that he entered that fatal place in all the strength of his manhood; a young man, with a long life before him, perhaps; with all the chances of fortune and happiness which length of years can bring; and there in a moment he was breathing his last breath, stabbed to the heart!”
Memory recalled that fondly loved brother in the flush of his active boyhood—a cricket field shining in the sunlight, the white tents, the village crowd, and that tall, muscular form, the sunburnt face, blue eyes, and auburn hair, the type of English boyhood at its best. One scene after another of her childhood passed before her as in a panorama, and Harold was the central figure in every picture. So strong, so brave, so intelligent, so kind to her always, even when at war with others; loving her to the last, even when an outcast from his home.
How cruelly Fate had used him—an unkind father—a forced exile—an early and a violent death!
For more than an hour—for an eternity of suffering—she paced her room—or knelt beside the bed, not praying, nor yet crying—only thinking, thinking of the life that had been and that was over for ever—her childish life in Yorkshire while her brother was still the cherished son, the honoured heir—the later season of disgrace and parting—her life with the husband of her love.
“And Peggy,” she thought, with a new agony of unavailing love, “oh, how good he was to my poor Peggy; but if she had known that the hand which smoothed her pillow was the hand that killed her brother—if she had known! Does she know now, I wonder, and know what I suffer, and pity me, from the far distance, in the land where there are no tears?”
She refused admittance to her maid at the usual hour of dressing. She told Benson that she had a headache, and would not go down to dinner. Later in the evening she wandered about the house, looking at the rooms in which she had been so happy—remembering the days of her courtship, when those rooms were still new to her, and when they realized all she had ever imagined of luxury and refinement. She went about bidding the rooms good-bye, looking at them for the last time, as she believed, for she meant to depart on her journey early next morning.
To depart whither?
On thinking out the question of her future she rejected the notion of that return to the old home of which she had spoken to Vansittart.
She could not go to her sisters at Fernhurst, the refuge which she would instinctively have chosen, content to hide herself in thehumble home of her girlhood, to live the old unluxurious life, to sit by the cottage hearth, and read the tattered old books, and try to think herself a girl again, a girl who had never seen the face of Jack Vansittart.
Fernhurst would not do. It was too near Lady Hartley; it was not remote enough from Merewood. She had to find some abiding place which should be unknown to all the world except the servant who went with her. She did not feel herself equal to travelling without a servant. The ways of wealth had spoiled her for the ways of penury. She was no longer the same young woman who used to head an early expedition from Haslemere to Waterloo, travelling third class, among soldiers and workmen, to be first in the scramble for bargains at a sale of drapery. She felt herself powerless, in her bruised and broken state, to face the confusion of a crowded railway station, the bewilderment of foreign travel, with its stringent demands upon the traveller’s calmness and intelligence.
She found her good Benson waiting for her in her boudoir dressing-room with a tea-tray, and a meal of cold chicken, fruit and jelly, set out temptingly to beguile her into eating.
“You have had nothing since lunch, ma’am.”
“I can’t eat anything—yes,” as Benson looked distressed, “some bread and butter. You can leave that and the tea—but take away all the rest, please. And then give me Bradshaw—and I want you to pack before you go to bed. It is not very late, is it?”—looking hopelessly at the watch on her chatelaine, but unable to see the quaint old figures with those tired eyes.
“Past eleven, ma’am; but I can pack to-night, if you like. Are we to leave early to-morrow?”
Eve turned the leaves of Bradshaw before she answered, and pored over a page for a few minutes.
“The Continental train leaves Charing Cross at eight,” she said.
“Then I must certainly pack to-night, ma’am. Shall I take many dresses—evening gowns—tea-gowns? Shall you be going out much in the evenings?”
“I shan’t be going out at all. Take my plainest walking gowns, and, yes, a tea-gown or two; one black evening gown will do. Take plenty of things. I shall be abroad a long time.”
“It is very sudden, ma’am,” faltered Benson, who was honestly fond of her mistress.
“Yes, it is very sudden. You must not ask me any questions. You must take it on trust that there is nothing wrong in my life.”
“Oh, ma’am, I should never think that, whatever happened. I know you too well. Are we going to join Mr. Vansittart on the Continent?”
“No, Benson. We are going away from him. Mr. Vansittart and I have parted for ever. Please don’t speak of it to any one downstairs. I want to avoid all talk and scandal. I tell you because you are going with me. You will share in my new life—if you like to go.”
“I would go to the end of the world with you, ma’am. But, dear, dear, dear, to think that you and Mr. Vansittart can be parted—you who have been so happy together, like children almost! It can only be a temporary misunderstanding. I am sure of that.”
“Benson, if you talk about my trouble I shall go alone. Can’t you understand that there are griefs that won’t bear to be spoken of? Mine is one of them. I am going abroad; I hardly know where as yet. To some quiet place in Brittany or Normandy most likely, where I can just exist.”
“Oh, my dear young lady, you will kill yourself with grief,” sobbed Benson, as she poured out tea for her mistress.
While Benson was packing, with all the dexterity and method of an accomplished packer, Eve was employed in writing the most difficult letter she had ever written in her life.
She was writing to her husband’s mother, the woman who had received her at first reluctantly, but afterwards with motherly affection; the woman who had surrendered the son she adored to the wife he had chosen for himself, and who looked to that wife for the happiness of her son’s future years. Penniless, the daughter of a disreputable father, with no social surroundings or family influence to recommend her, she had been accepted by Jack Vansittart’s relations; petted and praised by his sister; lovingly cherished by his mother; and for recompense of their trust in her what was she going to give them?
She was going to spoil her husband’s life in the heyday of youth and love; to leave him bound in wedlock and yet companionless; with a wife and no wife. He could not divorce her; she could not divorce him. His sin was not of the kind which breaks marriage bonds.
What could she say to her mother-in-law which could in any manner explain or justify the parting of husband and wife who until yesterday had been living together in seemingly happiest union? There was no explanation, no justification possible. The mystery of those two broken lives must remain for ever dark to their kindred and the world.
“My husband and I have agreed to part, and our parting must needs be for a lifetime,” she wrote. “We can tell no one our reasons, not even you, mother, who of all people have the strongest right to question us. Unfaithfulness or lessening love has nothing to do with our separation. I never loved my husband better than I love him now; or, at least, I never knew the strength of my lovefor him so well as I know it now. What must be must be. It is Fate, and not our own will, that divides us. Wherever he may go my heart will go with him. Think of me with indulgence if you can; pity me if you can, for I have direst need of your pity.”
She said nothing about her destination. She had not made up her mind yet where she was to go. She sat for an hour or more turning the leaves of the Continental time-table; now thinking she would go by Ostend, and to the Ardennes; and then again deciding upon Brittany. It mattered nothing to her where she went; all places were alike, except for her desire to avoid the people she knew.
Finally she decided upon crossing to St. Malo by the boat that left Southampton at five o’clock next day; and from St. Malo to Dinan or Avranches. She would avoid the seaside, where English visitors would be likely to be met at this season. The Norman and Breton towns she knew by repute as places where people lived quietly and economically, forgotten by the world.
The same post which brought Mrs. Vansittart Eve’s letter from London brought her a letter from her son, written from Southampton.
“You will be surprised at the address from which I write, and still more surprised when I tell you that Southampton is only the first stage on my journey to South Africa. I sail from here to the Cape, and from thence shall make my way to whichever portion of the Dark Continent promises best for health and enjoyment at this time of year. Do not be uneasy about me, my dear mother. I shall take counsel with experienced travellers before I turn my back upon the civilized world; and I shall not go to meet fever, famine, or assassination. You shall hear from me at each stage of my wanderings. I do not go as a scientific explorer, or as a sportsman in quest of big game, though I hope to make good use of my gun. I go with the desire to escape from civilization, monotony, and my own thoughts, which just now are of the saddest.
“A cloud has spread itself between Eve and me, and we two, who were so happy in each other’s affection a little while ago, have agreed to part, I fear never again to live together. I cannot tell you our reasons, for they involve a secret the revelation of which would be disastrous to me—the only secret I ever kept from you. Eve is blameless—chaste and faithful as in the beginning of our wedded lives. I implore you to think of her always with affection; to shelter and cherish her if ever she appeal to your love or claim your protection. She is entitled to your respect and to your pity. The only sinner—never a deliberate sinner—is your son, who in his shattered domestic life pays the forfeit of one unhappy act.”