“On the oppressor’s side was power;
And yet I knew that every wrong,
However old, however strong,
But waited God’s avenging hour.”
Whittier.
At length the day arrived when Christine Greville was to appear. A rehearsal had been called for eleven, and it so happened that Ralph reached the stage door just as the “star” with her maid in attendance drove up. He had naturally been very anxious to see her, and was pleased that their meeting should be in bright sunlight, not in the dreary gloom of the empty theatre. He caught a vision of fair hair beneath a broad black straw hat, and of blush roses that harmonised well with the beautiful but rather grave face. Then it chanced that in alighting, Miss Greville dropped her parasol, and Ralph of course promptly stooped to pick it up for her.
“Thank you,” she said, and her low voice thrilled him. “It was careless of me.” As she spoke her lips smiled, but he thought the brown eyes that for a moment met his fully were the saddest as well as the sweetest he had ever seen.
The doorkeeper having now perceived her hastened forward, and she passed into the building.
It was with some surprise that in glancing round she saw that Ralph also had entered. Something in his manner had pleased her, and she presently turned to the manager with a question.
“Who is that young fellow behind us?” she inquired, lowering her voice.
“He is a pupil of Macneillie’s,” said the manager, “and at present is only ‘walking gentleman,’ but he has the makings of a good actor in him.”
“Introduce him to me,” said Miss Greville.
So Ralph, to his no small delight, was presented to the great lady, who gave him a cordial hand-shake.
“They tell me you are Hugh Macneillie’s pupil,” she said.
Ralph flushed a little.
“He has taught me more than any one else,” he replied, “and it was through him that I got this engagement. In August I am to join his company.”
“Ah!” she said, and Ralph fancied there was a sort of envy in her tone. “You are very fortunate to have such a chance. He is one of a thousand. Where did you come across him?”
“At Callander, soon after Whitsuntide. He has built a house there for his mother.”
“She is still living? I am glad of that. She never liked me, having a rooted aversion to the stage and all connected with it, still she was kind to me in her way, though disapproving all the time.”
“She still disapproves of the stage,” said Ralph. “But she is kindness itself; if you could but have seen the plight I was in when Macneillie found me, and took me home with him!”
At that moment they were interrupted, but when the rehearsal was over, Miss Greville again spoke to him.
“We must finish our talk,” she said. “I like to hear all about my old friends. To-morrow I am driving with my little invalid nephew to Roslin—come and join us, we shall have plenty of room for you.”
Ralph was delighted with the invitation; it was quite impossible to remain a stern judge of Miss Greville now that he had seen her and spoken with her. He had wondered how it could be that Macneillie, after her faithlessness, still for her sake remained single. But he wondered no longer, for it seemed to him, that quite apart from any beauty of feature or form, she was the most inexplicably fascinating woman he had ever met. Her every movement seemed to possess a subtle charm; there was a refinement and delicacy about her manner, a delicious originality about her way of talking, that made all others in comparison with her seem tame and commonplace. There was, moreover, something that specially appealed to Ralph, in the sadness of her face when in repose, and its brilliant beauty when animated.
There was no rehearsal the next day, and Ralph, punctual to the minute, presented himself at the Windsor Hotel, at the time appointed for the drive. He was shown into a private sitting-room where a little lame boy of about nine years old sat by the open window.
“Aunt Christine will be here directly,” he said, greeting the visitor with great friendliness. “She was reading to me and forgot the time. Did you ever hear her read?”
“No,” said Ralph, “what book was it?”
“Oh, only about Roslin, but it doesn’t matter what she reads, she makes everything beautiful—it’s the way she says the words. Mother used to read to me in Ceylon, but I never cared for it—it sounded so droney.”
“Do you come from Ceylon?”
“Yes, I came last year,” said the small invalid. “I live now with Aunt Christine, she’s mother’s sister, and I like her next best to mother in all the world. But Sir Roderick’s a beast. You mustn’t say I said so, but I hate him because he always says horrid, cutting things to Auntie. He’s to meet us here, when Auntie’s engagement is over, and we are to go to the Highlands to stay at a big country house belonging to his cousin.”
It was impossible to check the confidences of this small child, who, with his light brown hair, eager blue eyes and sunburnt face, was by no means the typical invalid of romance, but just a restless, high-spirited boy, brimming over with life and merriment. Perhaps it was as well that at that moment his aunt came into the room.
“So sorry to keep you waiting, Mr. Denmead,” she said, greeting him in her charming way. “I was always a sadly unpunctual mortal, but Charlie has no doubt been entertaining you. Is the carriage at the door? Then we will ring for one of the waiters, Charlie, to take you down.”
“He carries so badly,” said the small invalid, querulously. “I wish Dugald were here.”
“Well, he will come with Sir Roderick on Saturday,” said the aunt. “What does the waiter do?”
“I don’t know, but he hurts,” said Charlie, wriggling in his big chair.
“Will you let me carry you?” said Ralph.
“Yes,” said the child, with the air of a monarch bestowing a favour. “Your hands are so nice and long, not podgy little things like the waiter’s.”
The journey to the Stanhope having been safely accomplished, and the child comfortably installed in the back seat, Christine gathered up the reins, and with Ralph in the front seat beside her, drove off in the direction of Roslin.
“There is nothing I enjoy so much as driving,” she said. “It is the one real pleasure of my life.”
“Greater than such a triumph as you had last night,” said Ralph.
She glanced at him with a sort of surprise.
“Did you really think I cared for that?” she said. “How young you are—how worn andblaséeyou make me feel. I cared nothing at all for that ovation—was thankful when the din ceased and I could go home and be quiet. When one is miserable, there is at any rate some comfort in being miserable alone—you can throw aside your smiling mask, and so get something approaching to ease. It is off now, you see, and I am treating you as if you were a trustworthy, old friend, but then you are trustworthy, I could tell that the moment I saw you. Now tell me candidly, did not Mrs. Macneillie tell you she detested me?”
“No, but I heard something of your first acquaintance with them long ago,” said Ralph; and then he coloured and hesitated, feeling that he had perhaps said too much.
And oddly enough Christine felt that he understood all, and knew that he would soon find out how, having sacrificed everything to ambition, it now profited her nothing.
“Auntie,” cried a small voice from the back seat.
She glanced round with love and tenderness in the face that a moment before had been so sad.
“What is it, darling?”
“Why those two girls were so awfully delighted to see you. I saw one catch hold of the other’s arm and say, ‘There she is!’ just as if you’d been the Queen herself.”
She laughed, but the child’s pride in her, and perhaps the remembrance that the public really loved her, touched her heart for a moment, and brought back a look of youth and gladness to her wistful eyes. She turned again to Ralph.
“Now take up our talk where it was interrupted yesterday. You were telling me what a plight you were in when Hugh Macneillie found you. How had you got into such difficulties? Couldn’t you get an engagement? Tell me your story, for we two must be friends.”
She was sosimpaticathat it was impossible to resist her, and Ralph told her his story; all about the old days at Whinhaven, and his father’s death; all about his adoption by Sir Matthew Mactavish and his final dismissal; all about his search for work, his first engagement, and his experiences at Washington’s Theatre. Christine would have blamed him more for his folly. In relinquishing his position there had she not, with her womanly insight, guessed all that he left untold of his feeling for Evereld, and understood why just at Christmas time he was in such desperate haste to get on in his profession.
With the keen interest of one who had lived the same wandering life, she heard of the adventures of Skoots’ Company, and listened pityingly to the account of what Ralph called his “sixpenny tramp” through the Highlands. But when he told of the friendly shepherd who had met him in the wilds of Gaiek, she made a sudden exclamation.
“Did you say the name was Linklater? Why then I think I can help you to find the lost son—my husband’s man is named Dugald Linklater. He has been with us for a year, and would scarcely have endured it so long, I think, had he not been very fond of Charlie, and anxious too to get a good character. He had been valet to Lord Ederline, but had left him under a cloud, and had been out of a situation for a long while. My husband had had a succession of men, and really took this one in despair.”
“Then there can be no doubt about it,” said Ralph, his face lighting up. “For I know the son was Lord Ederline’s servant. This will be good news for the shepherd and his wife. How odd that one should come across him in this way. The world is but a small place after all. What is he like?”
“A dark-haired Kelt, very well-mannered, and a decidedly clever fellow. I know something of his past life, for he is going to marry my maid as soon as they have each of them saved a little money. Dugald is steady enough now, but he was nearly ruined by betting. We have very little notion, I fancy, of the sort of temptation our servants are often exposed to.”
“Will he be coming to Edinburgh? Can I see him?”
“Certainly. I expect my husband on Saturday evening. Come and call on Sunday afternoon, and I will make some excuse to send Dugald round to your rooms afterwards. Then you can tell him all about his home people. But now tell me about the rest of your journey.”
Ralph told the whole tale, and there were tears in his companion’s eyes as he described the dire struggle of the last day of his wanderings, and his final collapse in the Pass of Leny.
“And it was there Hugh Macneillie found you?” she said tremulously.
“Yes, he is fond of going up and down that path by the river, he says it is good practice to rehearse a part in that roar of many waters. I dreamt I was back again in the theatre with Evereld, then I heard footsteps, and looked up to see his face. You can’t think what a contrast it was to the faces I had seen just before in the road, with their cruel contemptuous stare; it was like looking up into the face of the Christ.”
By the time they had returned from Roslin, Christine had heard all that there was to be heard, with the exception of course of the Richmond Park incident, and she was able fully to realise the sort of life which her old lover was living. She did not presume to pity Hugh Macneillie. She knew indeed that, compared with her lot, his was one to be envied; but she felt intuitively that he would never recover from the wound she had dealt him, and knew that she had deliberately robbed him of all that a man most values. Her heart was very sore that night, and Ralph, now that he knew more of her, understood with how weary an effort she laughed and talked in the green room. He longed to be able to serve her, but there was of course little he could do, beyond showing Charlie the sort of kindness which a small boy best appreciates.
It was with some trepidation that, on the Sunday afternoon at the close of her engagement, he called to take leave of her. Other visitors were in the room. She just introduced him to Sir Roderick—a tall, grey-haired, and decidedly good-looking man, and then left him to make his way as usual to Charlie’s couch.
The child greeted him with delight and eagerly showed him a Kodak which Christine had just given him, and with which he was longing to take snap-shots at the people in Prince’s Street. “But I mustn’t do it, Sir Roderick says, because of the fourth commandment and the Scotch being so particular. Now do you really think that the fourth commandment was meant to forbid Kodaks on Sunday?”
“Well no,” said Ralph smiling. “I don’t think it has much to do with photography or with our Sunday.”
“And you see,” continued the child eagerly, “even if we are not to do any manner of work—and of course, every one really does a good deal—you can’t possibly call it work to take a snap-shot. Why it says, you know, in the advertisement, that it’s no labour at all. ‘Youpress the button,wedo all the rest,’ and one wouldn’t ask them to do the developing to-day. It’s really not so bad as Sir Roderick’s ringing the bell as he’s doing now, for when he rings twice like that, Dugald has to come hurrying upstairs like lightning, and I know he has had hardly any time for his dinner.”
At that moment the servant entered in response to his master’s peremptory summons. Ralph watched him keenly, and had no manner of doubt that this man was the shepherd’s son, for the likeness to Angus Linklater was marked. An expressive little bit of pantomime followed; he could not hear the actual words spoken by Sir Roderick, but the insufferable tone and manner of the master and the expression of long-enduring but sorely tried patience on the face of the man, were quite sufficient to reveal much of their characters. Soon after this the visitors rose to go, and Sir Roderick having taken leave of them in a pleasant and courteous fashion, turned round on his wife the moment the door was closed, and apparently forgetting that they were not alone, hurled at her a torrent of abuse and scathing sarcasm, which made Ralph long to kick him down-stairs. It seemed to be about some salmon flies which had been left behind in London, Dugald having failed to find them in their right place, and imagining that they had been sent by his master with the first instalment of luggage brought to Edinburgh by the rest of the family some weeks ago.
In Lady Fenchurch’s manner of receiving her husband’s anger there was the calmness of long use, but her colour rose a little because of the injustice of the attack, and from a sort of shame that Ralph Denmead should witness the scene.
“I am sorry the mistake was made, but you forget we are not alone,” she said, seizing on a moment when for want of breath he ceased to swear.
He glanced towards the window with annoyance, and with a malice which his hearers perfectly understood, suddenly changed his line.
“Well, if it is not your fault then it must be Dugald’s fault. The d———d scoundrel shall leave the very day. I can get another man. I’m sick of the sight of him. He shall see that I’m not to be imposed upon by an idle fellow who doesn’t know his duties. He shall go, and with the worst character I ever gave to a servant. He came to me with a bad one, and I’ll add a telling bit to it.”
“I only wonder he has endured the situation so long.” said Christine, stung by the unfairness of this retaliation. “But you punish yourself more than you punish him; think what trouble you had before he came. The best servants must now and then make mistakes.”
“The best mistresses are supposed to look to the ways of their household,” he said maliciously, “and to have some regard for their husbands’ comfort. D——— you, say no more. I tell you the man shall go, and if he chooses to bring an action against me for giving him a worse character than he brought with him, I’ll show up his whole past life.”
With that he sauntered out of the room and Ralph, with some presence of mind, picked up the Kodak and began to talk to Charlie about the best position for taking a photograph of the Scott memorial just opposite. In a few minutes Christine slowly crossed the room and sat down in a low chair beside Charlie’s couch. Her white taper fingers played with the child’s light hair, but she was quite silent, sitting there listlessly, with the exhausted look which people wear when they have been battling with a strong wind.
“And she might have been Macneillie’s wife!” thought Ralph. “How can she endure this wretched existence!”
He was made so miserable by the sight of that worst tragedy of life—a mistaken marriage—and by the thought of the grievous pain and sorrow it had entailed, that he was quite unable to perceive how immensely both Christine and Macneillie had been developed by the consequences of that very mistake.
The woman who at seven-and-twenty had sacrificed the entire happiness of another to her own ambition and the worldly arguments of her parents, who had allowed the love in her heart to grow weak for lack of nourishment, who had been capable of utterly deceiving herself and stifling her conscience, had at four-and-thirty grown clear-eyed and humble through much sorrow. And as for Macneillie, his years had been spent to such good purpose that no one with deep insight could have wished that he had married Christine Greville as she had been seven years ago. There had, perhaps, been truth in her assertion in St. James’s Park—she might have dragged him down to a lower level. Undoubtedly, apart, they had each of them climbed a step higher, and she was more worthy of him now than in the old days.
“Auntie,” said the child, breaking the silence at last, “you won’t really let Dugald go, will you?”
She sighed.
“Not if I can help it, dear, but of course he is Sir Roderick’s servant. Say no more about it, though. I know you are fond of him and would be sorry to lose him, but we can’t always have what we like.”
“I should have thought you might,” said the child. “You who earn such lots of money.Can’tyou have all you like?”
She laughed, but there were tears in her eyes.
“I can have you, dear, and you are my chief pleasure now,” she said caressingly. Then, shaking off her cares for awhile, she began to talk to Ralph, who at the end of the call felt more ready than ever to be her devoted servant for the rest of his life.
“How Evereld will like to hear all about her,” he reflected as he went down the stairs, “there will be no end to tell her next time we meet.”
He was unpleasantly roused from these reflections by encountering on the staircase Sir Roderick Fenchurch, who paused to shake hands with him in the most courteous and pleasant way imaginable, as though he had utterly forgotten that Ralph had been a witness of the stormy scene in the private sitting-room. As a matter of fact, it was so entirely his custom to abuse and swear at his wife before the child, before the servants, and before any one staying in the house, that he never for a moment imagined that this young actor would have liked to horse-whip him for daring so to treat a woman.
All the world seemed out of joint to Ralph as he walked away from the hotel through the beautiful city whose noble buildings and grand situation made such an incongruously fair setting to the sad picture he had just looked on. He chafed bitterly against the thought of such a man as Sir Roderick ruining the happiness of his hero Macneillie, and went back to his rooms with a heart full of indignation to write the letter he felt bound to send to Callander after meeting Christine Greville. Having written sundry details as to the play they had been giving during the week, he turned to the subject which he knew would interest Macneillie.
“Miss Greville has been staying at the Windsor Hotel with her small nephew, a boy of nine, to whom she is devoted. I have been there several times, as the child took a fancy to me. He is lame, but likely they say to recover, and it is wonderful to see her care of him. Two or three times we went out driving together. She spoke much of you and of the old days. She looks as young as ever on the stage, but off it her face is careworn and awfully sad. To-day, when I went to take leave of her, Sir Roderick Fenchurch was there. He was decent enough till the other visitors were gone, but then fell into a rage with her about some salmon flies that had been forgotten; he has a tongue that cuts like a sharp razor; there’s not a pin to choose between him and the ordinary, wife-beating ‘pleb,’—in fact, I prefer the latter, for at any rate he can be properly punished, while this polished scoundrel with his sarcasms and his cruelties of the tongue can’t be touched. She was very quiet and dignified all through this scene, but when at last he went out she looked dead tired; this sort of thing at home, and the hard work of professional life, must be more than any one could stand for long, I should think. An odd thing has happened. I have found the son of Linklater, the shepherd who housed me so kindly in the Gaick Forest. He is now Sir Roderick Fenchurch’s man, but will not be with him much longer as the brute has given him warning—chiefly to annoy his wife I believe. Dugald Linklater has just been in to see me, and I told him I had been to his home, and that they were always looking for him to come back. He promises to write to his father at once. So there is one pleasant thing in this day, which Sir Roderick Fenchurch has overclouded. What can be the purpose in creation of such brutes? They are enough to have staggered even your prophet Erskine of Linlathen.”
“Nothing mars or misleads the influence that issues from a pure and humble and unselfish character. A man’s gifts may lack opportunity, his efforts may be misunderstood and resisted; but the spiritual power of a consecrated will needs no opportunity and can enter where the doors are shut.”—Dean Paget.
Macneillie read and re-read this letter with the awful craving of a man whose love has for years been starved of all knowledge of the beloved, except the mere knowledge that she was still in the world. He had, of course, seen her name daily in the papers, and had known what plays she was acting in, but of her real life he had known nothing. He had tried to think that her marriage though necessarily falling below his ideal of married life might at any rate be as happy as the average, might at least be tranquil and not without a certain comfortable respectability. But the brief account given in Ralph’s letter, and the many details which he could so easily read between the lines—filled him with misery. The post had brought him as usual a mass of correspondence; with a sigh of impatience he ran through it, then pushing it aside caught up his hat and hurriedly left the house. He was in no humour to climb the hill-side to the wishing-well; instead, he passed through the village, over Callander Bridge, and taking a little footpath across the meadows, sought out a favourite nook of his beside the river Teith, which wound its peaceful course through the hayfields. A tiny wood had sprung up near this walk at one part, and Macneillie had a special affection for a certain beech-tree which stood just at a bend in the river, and under its shade many of his pleasantest holiday hours were spent. He threw himself down now on the sloping bank beneath it. Everything was curiously still and peaceful; Ben Ledi rose majestically in the distance, framed by soft foliage in the foreground, and the river was emphatically one of those which “glideth at his own sweet will,” a great contrast to the Leny, which dashed and foamed through its rocky pass. It was just this calm peacefulness he longed for in his inward struggle. With all the vividness of one blessed or cursed with a powerful imagination, he realised Christine as she now was. He knew instinctively that her heart had awakened from its sleep, that, with the dead failure of themariage de convenance, her love which had only lain dormant had returned—but had returned of course to torture her. Hitherto he had been able to think of Sir Roderick Fenchurch with a sort of impartiality. He knew so very little about him; and it was Macneillie’s nature to think well of people until they disillusioned him; he had even felt a sort of compassion for the man, because he knew that he could never really possess Christine’s heart as he, for a time at any rate, had possessed it. But Ralph’s picture of what the husband really was behind his society mask had driven out all gentler thoughts, had filled the Scotsman’s heart with loathing, had over-clouded his whole world.
Macneillie was, however, before all things, an honest man. He had not accepted conventionally the first religious truths put before him, he had thought much, he had waited patiently, had learnt by degrees, and the hard training of his life had borne its fruit—it was impossible now, that he should remain for long in darkness. It flashed upon him that his trouble came from having stepped out of the right order; for a time he had lost that absolute trust in God’s education of every human being, which had for many years been his stronghold. The words of Ralph’s letter came back to him—“brutes like Sir Roderick are enough to have staggered even your prophet Erskine of Linlathen.”
The name of Thomas Erskine in itself awakened within him a whole train of memories, for he was one of the many thousands who have been rescued by the writings of that barrister, laird and saint from falling a prey to the spirit of unbelief which is the reaction alike from Calvinism and ceremonialism.
Lying under the shade of the beech-tree, the fresh air from the hills playing softly about his uncovered head, he tried to picture to himself what Erskine would have thought of this mistaken marriage, with its unhappy results, and there came back to his mind a passage in “The Spiritual Order,” in which the writer spoke of the strange difficulty of retaining faith in God’s loving purpose when confronted with the evils of the lanes and closes of great towns which seem to be mere hot-beds of vice and profligacy. How look on those and still believe that education was God’s whole purpose in creation? “It would be impossible,” said Erskine, “did we not also realise thatthere is no haste with God.”
Clearly then it was the imperfection of his own nature, the weakness—not the strength—of his love for Christine, which made him so desperately impatient at the thought of her suffering; for her sake he must learn to be “strong and patient,” learn to love with a diviner love, to wait with a more perfect trust. The letter had come to him like a call to arms, he was perfectly conscious that it marked a fresh turning-point in his life; he had learnt more of Christine and her difficulties than he had known for years, and the only way in which he could interpret the meaning of it all was that he should pray for her in her grievous need more unceasingly than he had yet done.
And so the time passed by, and at the close of the six weeks’ engagement Ralph returned to Callander for the few days that remained before Macneillie’s company was to open at Southbourne with “The Winter’s Tale.”
It felt more like a home-coming than he could have imagined possible. His friend was delighted to have him back again; old Mrs. Macneillie was scarcely less so, and the servants gave him a cordial welcome, for though his illness had given a good deal of trouble in the house, he had the gift of winning hearts, and the forlorn plight in which he had first arrived had awakened all the best sympathies of the hospitable Scottish household. He fancied that Macneillie’s deep-set grey eyes were somewhat graver in expression than before, but his manner, with its touch of quaint, dry humour, was exactly the same as usual, and it was not until the Tuesday morning when they set off early to walk together to the Trossachs, that any allusion was made to the contents of the letter. Then, at last, as they walked along the shores of Loch Vennachar, Macneillie put a direct question about Christine.
“I am glad you got to know Lady Fenchurch,” he said. “Where did she go after leaving Edinburgh?”
“She went up to the Highlands a fortnight ago to a place called Mearn Castle, which belongs to a Mrs. Strathavon-Haigh, a widowed cousin of Sir Roderick’s—a very fast widow, if what I heard in Edinburgh is true. Lady Fenchurch did not want to go there, but said her husband particularly wished her to accept the invitation. So she had given up her original plan of taking Charlie to the sea, and hoped the Highland air would do him as much good.”
“I suppose she was right to try to please her husband,” said Macneillie, “but Mearn Castle is one of the most abominable country houses going.”
“She seemed to know very little about it,” replied Ralph, “only disliked this gay widow, and wanted to go to some quiet place where rest would have been more possible. But she evidently tries to do what can be done for her brute of a husband. Oh! if you could have seen her patience, her dignity, while that scoundrel was abusing her! I wish I could horse-whip him!”
“No need,” said Macneillie, in a low voice, “for every brutal word he will one day have to give account.” Something in his manner, with its deep conviction that every wrong should in the future be righteously avenged, silenced Ralph. He felt ashamed of his vehement impatience, and was not sorry that, as they approached Loch Achray, Macneillie led away from the subject by asking after the shepherd’s son.
They had passed the Hotel, and were walking through the Trossachs, when they overtook a gentleman’s servant laden with a soda-water syphon and a great basket of fruit which he was evidently carrying down to Loch Katrine.
Glancing at the man, Ralph gave an exclamation of astonishment.
“Why, Linklater! is it you? I was speaking to Mr. Macneillie about you only just now.”
The man’s face lighted up as he returned Ralph’s cordial greeting, and he looked searchingly at Macneillie, having very often heard that the actor was one of Lady Fenchurch’s oldest friends.
“I little thought to see you here, sir,” he said, turning to Ralph. “We came this morning from Stronachlachar, for there was a good wind for sailing, and Master Charlie was wanting to set foot on Ellen’s Isle. He’s there now, with her ladyship, and I came on to the Hotel to get these things for lunch.”
“They have left Mearn Castle then?” said Ralph in surprise.
“Well, sir,” said Linklater, with a little hesitation in his manner, “if you’ve not already heard, maybe I had better tell you the whole truth, for all the world must know it as soon as her ladyship sues for a divorce.”
Macneillie made an inarticulate exclamation. Like one in a dream he listened to the man’s brief account. It appeared that Sir Roderick had seduced the young wife of one of the game-keepers on the Castle estate—that the enraged husband discovering him had given him such a castigation that it had been impossible to hush up the affair, and that Lady Fenchurch, on learning the truth, had left Mearn Castle.
There was a pause when the man had ended. Ralph waited for his companion to ask some question, to make some comment, but Macneillie walked on in absolute silence, evidently too deeply engrossed in his own reflections to be even conscious that he was not alone.
This, then, was the meaning of his inward perception of Christine’s grievous need! In this fortnight, during which his whole soul had been absorbed in prayer for her, she had lived through the most awful crisis of her life, and now she was near to him in her forlorn, unprotected, worse than widowed condition. He must at any rate, inquire if she would see him, ask if he could in any way help her, and here in this quiet spot there was fortunately no danger that idle talkers would comment on their meeting. He pencilled a few words in German on one of his cards and turned to Linklater.
“Give this to your mistress,” he said, the title somehow sticking in his throat. “I will take a boat and row out to the island in a few minutes, and you can bring back the answer.”
By this time they had walked through the glen and had reached the picturesque landing-place. Linklater hailed the Stronachlachar boatman, and set off for the island, and the others followed more leisurely, Ralph taking both oars and Macneillie sitting in the stern, though the far-away look in his eyes scarcely qualified him for the duties of steersman.
The story which Linklater had told them had been so entirely unexpected, and was in itself so revolting, that neither of them felt inclined to talk. To Macneillie, moreover, it was as though he had suddenly heard of the death of the man who had saddened his life; to all intents and purposes he considered Sir Roderick as dead to Christine, for he came of a race which for more than three hundred years has always regarded adultery as the dissolution of a marriage. To him there had never been the least question as to the distinct teaching of Christ on this point, he believed that His words clearly sanctioned divorce for infidelity to the marriage bond and gave freedom to the innocent one. Nomancould rightly put asunder those who were married; sin only or death could part them. But proved infidelity was as truly the divider as love was the bond of union; the legal ceremonies, whether of marriage or of divorce, were but the appointed and expedient symbols of spiritual facts—the outward signs of the birth and death of married life.
The seven years of his solitude had taught Macneillie a stern self-control, and whatever he felt as they rowed across the lake was not allowed to appear at all in his face. Ralph glanced at him from time to time and marvelled, perhaps only now realising of what splendid stuff his hero was made, and how nobly he held in check that difficult temperament with which actors, artists and musicians are usually endowed.
“Which side is the best landing-place?” he asked as they drew near to the lovely wooded island.
“To the right in that bit of a creek,” said Macneillie, beginning to pay heed to the steering. “There is the boat, I see, but the men are both out of it.”
As he spoke they glided into the little, rocky cleft with its overhanging trees, its moss-grown boulders, its patches of crimson heather and purple ling. Then came a few minutes of utter silence, as they waited for Linklater’s return; Ralph felt anxious and restless, each minute seemed to him an hour, and he feared that perhaps after all Christine Greville would refuse to see any one. As for Macneillie he just waited like one who is intently listening, but Ralph was not sure that the listening was for Christine’s voice or for the servant’s approaching footsteps, he had a suspicion that it was for something much more inward.
At length, to his great relief, there came a rustling among the boughs and a trampling of feet, and in a minute Linklater was striding down over the rocks towards the boat, bearing a note in his hand. Macneillie thanked him as he took the missive, and unfolding it less deftly than might have been expected of a seasoned actor, read the following words:
“You are the only man I could bear to speak to yet; please come.”
He promptly stepped on shore, but Ralph lingered.
“I will stay in the boat,” he suggested, “and have a pipe.”
“Master Charlie is very anxious you should come and help him with his Kodak, sir,” said Linklater, respectfully. “He’s just up here at the top, and her ladyship is at the further side of the island, sketching.”
“Very well, then, I’ll come,” said Ralph, and he followed his friend up the steep ascent.
In a little clearing at the top they found the small boy, who gave a war-whoop of delight as Ralph emerged from the brushwood.
“If I hadn’t had such an awful longing for gooseberries, Dugald would never have met you!” he said gleefully. “Auntie is over there making a sketch, she’s hidden right away by the trees, but don’t go to her just yet, do stay and help us lay the things out for lunch, Dugald is going to make a fire and boil some water, he thinks Auntie will like some tea, she’s been having such dreadful headaches the last few days.” Macneillie heard no more, he left Ralph and the child, and Dugald Linklater, and made his way straight through the tangle of shrubs, trees, and bushes, in the direction that Charlie had indicated. There was a gleam of white between the green leaves—it was the sun lighting up the sketching-block on her easel; in another moment he had parted the thickly-growing branches and had seen her once more.
She was sitting on a fallen tree—not attempting to sketch, but with her elbows propped on her knees and her face hidden by one of those shapely white hands he had so often kissed; the sun made a dazzling glory of her fair hair; her light grey dress and grey straw hat seemed exactly to harmonise with the green trees and the patches of heather. She had always had that instinct of fitness which makes some women know exactly what to wear, and when to wear it.
Macneillie stood for a minute watching intently the down-bent head, his heart throbbing so fast that he felt half-choked. At last, putting force upon himself, he moved forward. His step recalled her from her sad reverie, and starting to her feet with the nervous alarm of one who has lately undergone some great shock, she looked round as though in terror of pursuit. That startled movement, and the momentary expression he had seen in her pale face, strengthened Macneillie as nothing else could have done; he forgot all about himself, realised only that she wanted his protection.
“You need not be afraid,” he said, taking her hand in his, “of what use are old friends if not to help you in time of need?”
She struggled hard to reply, but her eyes swam with tears, her lips refused to frame a word.
“Let us sit down here and talk things over quietly,” said Macneillie; “as I wrote to you just now, Dugald Linklater told us what had passed at Mearn Castle.”
“He told you what he knew,” said Christine in a broken voice. “He could not tell you of my interview with Sir Roderick.” She paused for a minute, then the pent-up torrent of words broke forth. “I have heard of women, yes, and of men, too, refusing to be separated from a guilty partner; but there must at least be a genuine repentance to make such a plan even moral. There was none with Sir Roderick. He was vexed at the discovery, but he made light of the sin itself. In my presence he laughed over the affair. The house seemed like hell. I could not have stayed in it another hour!”
The look of shrinking horror in her face tortured Macneillie, who could so well understand how her whole being recoiled from the foul atmosphere that had surrounded her. It was because he understood how she felt herself degraded by all she had lived through that he intuitively stretched out his hand for hers, and held it in a strong, firm clasp.
“Do not dwell on all this,” he said, “but tell me how I can help you.”
His quiet, tender voice, the reverence of his manner quickly soothed her. She looked up into his face, and by that mere look seemed to draw in endless stores of strength and comfort.
“Do you know,” she exclaimed with seeming irrelevance, “what Ralph Denmead said about the day you found him in the Pass of Leny, when he was lying there ill and half-starved, and looked up to see you bending over him? He said it was like looking up into the face of the Christ!”
“Poor boy!” said Macneillie. “He was in an awful plight, no one with a grain of kindliness in his nature could have passed him by. He has made me his debtor for life now, though; it is through him that I have met you to-day.”
“We little thought,” said Christine, “that those two children in St. James’s Park, playing with their boat, would have anything to do with our future. How is it, though, that you are grateful to him for bringing about this meeting? It is I who am grateful to him. But you who have so much to forgive—you who have avoided me all these years——?”
“I dared not seek you out,” said Macneillie, “our paths parted naturally, and it was safer so. What could I have done for you then? But now all is different. Are none of your people coming to be with you?”
“There is no one to come. As you heard, I daresay, my father died four years ago.”
“Yes, I saw the notice in the papers,” said Macneillie.
“He lived just long enough,” she resumed, “to see how miserably his scheme had failed. I had married to please him and to help the family. Well, my sister’s husband, with no help at all from me or my position, got an excellent appointment in Ceylon, so there again the scheme proved useless. Three years ago my mother went out to live with her there, she could do nothing to make me less miserable, and it only pained her to see my unhappiness. She realises things less at a distance, and now she is too much of an invalid to bear the return voyage. A year ago they sent me back Charlie, Clara’s little boy, and he has been a great comfort. Except for him I am quite alone.”
“I want you to understand,” said Macneillie, “that it is still my highest happiness to serve you. It is quite possible that in the difficult position you are in you may need the help of a friend.”
“Do I deserve your friendship?” she said questioningly; “you stood aloof all these years—you would not be my friend then, though I asked you.”
“If I had been a worse man I should have accepted the place you offered in your company,” said Macneillie; “or perhaps if I had been a better man, I could entirely have effaced myself and dared to take such a perilous post. But as things were, it seemed best to go right away. Did you not understand?”
“Yes, yes,” she said in a choked voice. “I understood—and honoured you. Is it only seven years since you and I acted together? It seems to me a life-time. All that has gone between has been a sort of dreadful nightmare. And the worst of it was the feeling that I had deserved the misery, had deliberately chosen the low level and fought against you when you tried to drag me up. Oh, it is so long since I had a real friend to talk to—may I tell you all?”
“Of course,” he said, gently. “Why not?”
“After a year of it I had grown almost desperate,” she said, clenching her hands tightly, like one in pain, “and the season’s work had tired me out; it seemed no use to try any longer even to live an honest life. There was only one thing that still held me back. I knew if I sank lower still it would grieve you more than all, and the thought of the pain I had already given you was always with me. Then one Sunday afternoon I happened to be alone. Sir Roderick had gone to stay with some friends for the Ascot week, and there came to me a little girl bringing a note from Lucy Seymour—you remember how soon after you and I were engaged we had been able to help her when she was in great trouble. Well, she wrote that her husband had died abroad and that she had just returned with her child, was herself dying and wanted to see me. I went to her at once and found her in great poverty, and in terror of being turned out of her lodgings before the end. Her life, she said, had been a very happy one, thanks to you and me. Oh, if you could have heard her gratitude for the past. Every word she said seemed to draw me back from the horrible indifference that had paralysed me—she somehow stirred up all my best memories. She had heard that you were in America, or she would have appealed first to you, for the help had been chiefly your doing.”
“Did she die?” asked Macneillie.
“Yes, about ten days after that Sunday. I had promised to send her little girl to school, and to befriend her, if, later on, she went into the profession, and after that Lucy seemed actually to long for death, young as she was. I saw her every day, and the last night they sent word to the theatre that there was a sudden change for the worse. Directly my part was over, I went to her; she died very happily and peacefully, just as day was breaking. I had never seen any one die before, and on the stage death is always made somehow to seem like an end, a grand sort of finale. But Lucy’s death was not like an end at all, it was as quiet and serene as if she had been merely turning a page in a book. I can’t describe to you how it altered all my ideas. Afterwards there was her little girl to care for, and that helped me too, and though I knew everything must still be hard, I tried after that—tried my very best to please Sir Roderick, and as far as I could to make our home life more endurable. We had each of us been much to blame in marrying without any real love, and I knew that I must ‘dree my weird,’ as you used to say. Well, it is over now—over, and I can hardly yet realise things. Last night I wrote to my solicitor.”
“I hope he is a good one,” said Macneillie.
“Yes, Mr. Marriott, of Basinghall Street; but I am half afraid whether he himself is back yet from his voyage.”
“Ralph Denmead may know, he is an old friend of his. I will inquire. But in any case many months are sure to pass before all the legal forms are gone through, and in the meantime you will have to live as quietly and guardedly as possible. Have you realised that?”
“Yes,” she said, with a little shiver. “A fortnight of country-house life, in such a place as Mearn Castle, makes one realise evil more keenly than years on the stage.”
She remembered miserably the people she had met there—men and women so utterly unprincipled that she loathed and despised them. She remembered the callous indifference with which her husband had observed all the annoyances to which she was subjected. She remembered the age-long hours, unoccupied by professional work—barren of all that could be called employment.
And then, turning from the past as from some hideous dream, she thought how restful it was to be here in this little island, with the man whose heart had never faltered from its allegiance, the lover whose self-sacrificing constancy was as untiring as the love of God. Never from his lips would she have heard such words as had filled her with a sense of degradation at Meam Castle. It was the depth of his love, the fineness of his reverence, which kept him now from expressing the passion which she knew filled his heart. He would wait till the law had declared her freedom—would wait and think only of how she could best be shielded from the strife of tongues.
“If you are really at a loss for some quiet place, and for friends who can rightly protect you, why should you not go for a time to the Herefords’ house near Firdale?” said Macneillie.
“I know them very slightly,” she objected. “Besides, is not that meant for people who have no money?”
“Monkton Verney is for all, I think, who are in need—it’s a Cave of Adullam—and though you don’t know Mr. and Mrs. Hereford well, you know Miss Claremont and she is the practical head of things.”
“I will at any rate write to her, she is a wonderful woman for understanding,” said Christine. “I am glad you reminded me of her.”
Macneillie stood up, for he knew that it would be unwise to stay longer, and that he must somehow tear himself away.
“Write and let me know whether you go there,” he said; “and don’t forget that if I can do anything for you in any way, I have at least the right of an old friend. I see the steamer over yonder, and before long a host of people will be at the landing-stage and some of them may be rowing out to visit Ellen’s Isle. Even here, in this paradise, Satan walks you see in the shape of the gossiping British tourist; and your face and mine are public property. I might do harm by staying here.”
“Not even here,” she sighed, “in this lonely place? And it’s so long since I saw you!”
He took her hand in his, and held it for a minute tenderly; looking into his face, the beauty of its expression of strong patience startled her.
“No, not even here,” he said with a quiet smile. “Your reputation is too precious to me. But remember that in any difficulty or danger I have the first right to help you.”
His courage nerved her to face the parting and even to assume an air of cheerfulness.
“I must come back to Charlie,” she said. “He is sure to be hungry, and there will be plenty of time for you to have lunch, too, before any tourists molest us.”
So together they walked to the little encampment, where they found the photographers fraternising over the Kodak, while Dugald had the tea just ready. And since laughter and tears are not far apart, and the very people who have lived through a tragedy are happily the ones most easily moved to see all that is humorous in daily life, there followed a cheerful meal which might have surprised and even shocked a mere superficial observer of life, but contained elements of comfort in it for all who understood the griefs and trials of human-kind.
Crowning it all was the unalloyed happiness of the child, whose beaming face and ringing laughter soothed Christine’s sore heart as nothing else could have done.
“Auf wiederschen!” said Macneillie, when the last moment had come, and Christine said nothing, but all her soul seemed in her eyes as she lifted them to his.