It is intolerable sitting in alone, fuming over her wrongs and acting a drama with her imagination. Philip detests Giddy. She will pay him out and go.
Glad of anything to divert the current of her thoughts, she snatches up a small fur cap in the hall, which rests becomingly on Eleanor's wealth of waving hair. Flinging a long red cloak around her, she slips out of the house, and rings at the widow's door.
"I hope she is alone. I don't feel in the mood to compass Bertie's inane conversation," thinks Mrs. Roche as the flaxen maid shows her in.
The twilight has gathered, but there is no lamp, as Giddy rustles forward in a lavender tea-gown to greet Eleanor.
"You are a very bad child," she says holding up her finger, "but we've found you out, and shown you up most shockingly. What right have you to break hearts, as if they were onlybric-à-brac, and say 'Not at home' when you were probably gourmandising over the huge Buzzard cake we ordered in town?"
Eleanor cannot speak, for Carol Quinton rises, and looks reproachfully into her eyes. She feels like a hunted stag, and yet she is glad—relieved.
"There! now you are in a hole," continues Giddy, laughing, "with no time to invent a plausible excuse. But come and sit down and ask forgiveness. I dare say Carol will get over it."
As yet Eleanor has not spoken. She walks like one in a trance to the quaint old chair Mrs. Mounteagle draws forward. She sits down mechanically and gazes at the colours in the carpet, just as she did once before at the Butterflies' Club.
"What a poor little world it is!" she thinks, "just like a muddy, narrow lane, through which its puppets drive or run, with the dirt thrown up in their faces at every turn."
"Come! do not look so glum over it," coos Giddy, removing Eleanor's cloak. "Carol knows as well as I do what a row you have been in, and how rusty Mr. Roche has turned. We are both most terribly sorry for you. I am sure I don't know how you stand him. It does so remind me of my late husband, from whom I was separated by mutual agreement two years before his death. Our quarrels began much in the same way. I preferred a will of my own, and meant to have it. He would have treated me like the chickens cooped up in the yard—a useful addition to his table, only their part was the most enviable. I should not have minded being cooked and roasted, for there my sorrows would have ceased."
"Death must be very pleasant," says Eleanor slowly, her head turning lightly to the alluring charms of suicide.
"No doubt, when you are old and ugly. But at present life is what you have got to consider, my dear."
"Life and buttered buns," replies Eleanor drily, as Mrs. Mounteagle hands the dish. "No, thank you, Giddy. I don't want any tea."
Her voice trembles with agitation, as Carol, who has never taken his eyes off her, draws a little nearer.
"If you won't eat anything, dear," murmurs Giddy, "at least you must drink something just to settle your nerves. Suction is so much more romantic than mastication."
But Eleanor shakes her head.
"I am going to play peacemaker," declares Mrs. Mounteagle, "and leave you two to make it up. I have an important letter to write, which must catch the half-past five post. You owe Carol an apology, and that is always difficult in the presence of a third party."
Eleanor is about to demur, when she catches Mr. Quinton's expression, and his look withers the words on her tongue, and forces them back.
She only stammers, "Don't be long," and collapses into silence.
Giddy's important letter is addressed to the Fur Store. She orders the muff.
If things have been going badly at "Lyndhurst" before the day on which Philip makes his fatal error, they do not bear comparison with the bad times that follow.
Even Erminie's sweet influence cannot bring peace to the ill-conditioned home. True she does her best, coming frequently, and spending long days in Eleanor's society. But though Mrs. Roche entertains her charmingly, she refuses to discuss Philip, and flees from good advice with the clever tact that can conceal rudeness and yet repel in a breath.
"I don't know why," says Philip one day, in confidence to Erminie, "but though I do all in my power to win back my wife's love, it seems I have lost it for ever."
Erminie knows the reason, and so does he, only he dares not own it.
"She has tried me a good deal at times," he continues, "yet I love her just as madly, and that is what makes me seem to her fiendishly cruel occasionally, when the spirit of jealousy robs me of reason. I can't bear it, Erminie, to see her restless and dissatisfied in my presence, to feel her shudder from my kiss. An insurmountable barrier is rising between us. Can you guess what it is?"
"Yes."
Erminie's answer startles Philip.
"Then, you, too, have noticed—all the world sees it? That man who is trying to steal my wife from me is the curse, the foul fiend, the shadow, the shame. I met him in the City only yesterday. He tried to bow, but I looked him in the face and cut him dead. He paled and shrank away."
"Then, perhaps," suggests Erminie hopefully, "Eleanor has broken with him?"
"Not so long as she is in Giddy Mounteagle's clutches. For a while I let my business alone, I stayed at home day after day to guard and watch her. She divined the reason, and chafed against her cage, like a bird bereft of song, whose wings are cut. Things went badly for me on the Stock Exchange; I found I was losing hundreds, thousands, through my absence. Finally I returned, and Eleanor's face grew brighter—she had seen him again!"
"How do you know?"
"Don't ask me."
Philip turns away and wipes his brow. Erminie's true heart bleeds for him as she thinks of the perfect sympathy and confidence reigning between herself and Nelson.
"Your cloud may lift in time," she says, somewhat lamely seeking to console him.
"It may deepen," he answers lugubriously.
"Supposing you were able to persuade Eleanor to go home for a visit; it would be pleasant at Copthorne now the spring has come. Her parents are good, honest people, the country life a healthy one. It might strengthen her in body and mind, awaking memories of youth and innocence, your courtship, her marriage! There is no tonic for a diseased mind like fresh air and green fields. She said she longed to see the dear old farm again only yesterday. It would put her beyond the reach of Giddy Mounteagle, and you might run up and down several times in the week."
"I will suggest it," says Philip.
The idea delights Mrs. Roche beyond measure when later on her husband mentions it. She has frequently met Carol Quinton of late, and the ardour of his passion and her own overpowering love have frightened her at last.
The thought of escaping to the country to seek forgetfulness and avoid temptation appeals to her.
She puts her arms softly and half timidly round Philip's neck, resting her cheek against his, as she has not done for weeks.
He snatches her to his heart with a cry, smothering her face in kisses. "Eleanor, can't we be better friends?" he whispers.
The tears course down her cheeks, the guilty love she is trying to crush rises before her—jeering, taunting.
"I will try, Philip," she falters. "Only let me go home for a while, and see the old scenes, the familiar faces."
He still holds her to him, his pulses thrilling at her softened tone, as he answers, "Yes."
"I am really going back to the farm, Giddy," she says the following day, "to vegetate, and grow young again among the primroses and violets. The lawn will be yellow with crocus flowers, and I can almost smell the hyacinths. I promised them faithfully I would return when the birds began to sing!"
"You must give me your address," says Giddy. "I should like to write."
Eleanor looks at her shrewdly.
She has never quite forgotten the "Lady MacDonald" or "the party" episode. It is the recollection of this that makes her state, with a certain pride, the pleasure she feels in visiting her people.
"I will give it you on one condition," she replies.
"And that?"
"Promise me faithfully onnoaccount to pass it on to Carol Quinton."
"Why not?"
"Because I have gone too far, Giddy. I want to get away from his influence. You know he dogs my footsteps, tracks, and haunts me. I dare not trust myself. I am going away for a course of discipline, simple living, and country pursuits. I know, if you promise, I can trust you."
She holds out a paper on which her address is written, but keeps her palm over the letter until Giddy shall make the promise.
"I swear," says Mrs. Mounteagle.
Eleanor is superintending her packing, when Giddy Mounteagle enters her room.
"I called and ran straight up, dear," she says, "knowing you were busy. What! are you only taking so small a trunk into the country?"
"Yes, no finery, only two stuff dresses and a felt hat. I want to forget there is such a thing as Society or 'toilettes.' I am going to have a good time with all the farm people, and the school children, and be just as I was before I married. There are some of my clothes still hanging up in my old room, I shall put them on, and grub in the garden, rake, weed, and mow. Our poor machine was dreadfully cranky before I left; I should think it has fallen to pieces by now, but I mean to have a try. Mother's bit of front lawn is the pride of her heart. Black Bess will meet me at the station, and Rover—dear affectionate dog. I shall swing on the gate and whistle, and——"
But Eleanor's prattle breaks off shortly, for her throat feels strangled, and the misery that Giddy clearly sees beneath her smiles overmasters her.
"I think I have got a cold," she falters; "my eyes water so, and I have a little husk here when I speak."
But Giddy knows it is the coldness of desolation that brings the raindrops to shine on Eleanor's lashes.
"Do put in a few dainty gowns, dearest," she implores. "It would be such fun to show them off and astonish the natives. Say that hat from 'Louise,' in case you tea with the vicar's spouse, of whom I have often heard."
Eleanor is too weary to object, and lets Giddy order Sarah hither and thither till the room is in a litter and her head in a whirl.
"Go and fetch me Mrs. Roche's Roumanian jacket, the one from Liberty," says Giddy to Sarah. "I want to borrow it as a pattern. I am sure that nice little dressmaker at Twickenham could make me one exactly like it," turning to Eleanor, as Sarah quits the room. "You don't mind, dear?"
"Oh, no."
"Did I tell you I met Lady MacDonald yesterday, and she actually asked after you? I was quite surprised. She is in great trouble, poor thing, having lost her favourite maid—a regular right hand in the household. The woman had a very good figure, and has gone to the Empire, and gets £4 a week for standing in the front row of a ballet or chorus or something. Lady MacDonald feels sure she must have been in the trade before she entered her service. She gets that excellent pay because she just matches another girl, like a horse, you know. It must be vastly more entertaining than fastening Lady MacDonald's back hooks. The worst of it is shewilltell all the other servants about it, and make them envious. The scullery maid, who is short and broad, and stout, is fired to go, and dreams of nothing else."
"I wonder the beautiful Lady MacDonald has time to trouble about the dreams of a menial," says Eleanor, with the touch of sarcasm that always accompanies any mention of Giddy's friend.
Sarah returns, and the subject drops.
"Is it not a pity Philip is dreadfully busy this week, or he was to have come with me to-day," continues Eleanor. "I doubt now if he will be able to get to Copthorne at all."
"How like a husband to be busy when you want him. I am sure you are much too young and pretty to travel alone."
"Shall we leave Sarah to finish the packing, and come down? I must have an early lunch."
Giddy follows her to the dining-room.
"I saw Carol Quinton yesterday," she says. "I told him you were going away, but was true to my word, and did not divulge the address."
"I wish you had said nothing about my movements," replies Eleanor uneasily, starting at the sound of Carol's name.
"I could not help it, he asked me all about you directly; he never talks of anything else, which seems rather absurd to another woman."
"Yes, you must grow horribly tired of the subject."
"You remember that dance at the 'Star and Garter' that you didn't go to? Well, I only heard the other day from those 'Bennett-Jones' girls that he asked them if you would be there, and they said 'yes,' just because they wanted him to make their party complete; they took three men and three girls. They knew really that you had a previous engagement, but kept buoying him up all the evening by expecting your momentary appearance. Later on, Addie, the eldest, broke it to him that you had never intended going. He was so offended he went straight home, and has not called on them since. It was rather mean you know to lure him there under false pretences."
"When did they tell you that?"
"Oh! the next day Addie called about ten in the morning, before I was down. She was really quite funny about it."
Eleanor bites her lips.
"It seems that my name is coupled with Mr. Quinton's," she mutters.
"Well, people will talk, whatever you do. Little Mrs. Hope saw you walking with him in the park one day, and she told Addie, and Addie told——"
"Oh! don't," cries Eleanor impatiently, putting her hands to her racking head, and stamping her foot impatiently. "I would rather not hear. It is all so petty, so stupid, so mean. What have I or Carol Quinton to do with them?"
"You have flirted with him, my dear, so openly at the Richmond parties, you can scarcely expect to escape observation."
"I hate the people here—I hate everybody!" declares Eleanor passionately. "I shall be thankful to get away. There are no gossiping fools to drive me crazy at Copthorne."
"How delightful! Fancy wandering about with a cow for your chaperon and the birds for critics, a rural pasture for your ball-room, a buttercup meadow for your lounge! How long shall you stay in 'Happy Arcadia'?"
"As long as I can," replies Eleanor. "I should like never to come back, and when I do I will take good care I am not seen with Mr. Quinton. It is all this silly girls' talk that eventually reaches Philip's ears, and makes our home unbearable."
"Yes, Eleanor. The breath of scandal permeates through the stolidest walls, or perhaps it comes in by the keyhole. It is a germ that is spread by chattering tongues, like some deadly disease. It nearly ruined my life when I was young."
"What a pity it cannot be taxed," sighs Eleanor. "By the way, the last thing I heard was that you had broken your engagement with Bertie. Of course, I did not believe it."
"Which was distinctly wrong of you under the circumstances. I am disappointed in him. We have decided to go our separate paths—apart."
"Oh! Giddy, I am so sorry. But why?"
"When I marry (which I shall do some day again), I want a rising man, clever, pushing, ambitious, like Lord MacDonald, in fact. Someone who will improve my position, lift me, instead of being a burden. Bertie's intellect was very weak, and I do hate a fool!"
"I should have thought that would be rather an advantage in a husband," remarks Eleanor.
"Really Bertie was too expensive, he wanted so much pocket money, I could not afford the luxury of afiancéon his terms. Of course, he is broken-hearted, dear boy, and naturally I wept a few poetical tears, and said I should always think of him as a friend."
"The carriage is at the door," she replies, "they are getting the luggage down."
Eleanor and Giddy go into the hall together.
As Sarah carries the dressing bag out, it flies open, and something falls at Mrs. Mounteagle's feet.
She picks it up.
It is a photograph of Carol Quinton.
"You must have that lock secured," she says laughing, "or buy a strap."
Eleanor colours, and hides the photograph in her muff.
"Good-bye, Giddy."
"Take care of yourself, my sweet," returning Eleanor's caress. "I have no doubt it will be very merry and jolly in the country," with a little grimace that means it won't.
But Mrs. Roche cares not to what corner of the globe she is travelling as the train bears her to Copthorne. She is too utterly miserable to notice places or seasons. She just sits by the window, and stares at the picture she has drawn from her muff, from which the eyes of Carol Quinton look pleadingly in hers.
"I wish I could bury myself," she thinks, her mind turning to Africa—America—Asia—any of the far-off worlds she has read of in geography books and fiction. "I wish I were someone else, or even the old Eleanor that Philip stole from Copthorne Farm. Why did he not leave me there? It would have been far better for us both!"
An elderly woman seated opposite glances at Eleanor over her paper, struck by the strange pallor of the young face, the nervous twitching of the mouth, and tear-dimmed eyes.
The stranger leans forward suddenly with an abrupt question:
"May I see that photograph?"
"May I see that photograph?""May I see that photograph?"
"May I see that photograph?""May I see that photograph?"
Eleanor starts in trepidation; her thoughts have been so far away that they are brought back to the present with an effort.
She sees before her a face lined more deeply with sorrow than time, a woman who might still have considerable beauty had she not dyed her hair in her youth and ruined her complexion with cosmetics.
The request does not offend Eleanor, for Mrs. Roche is easily won by a kind look or a smile.
She hands the photograph across, watching the stranger's expression.
"What a handsome face!" she exclaims, with a little gasp of admiration.
"Yes," sighs Eleanor.
"I never saw such mesmeric eyes, and yet they are soft, though powerful. I should say that man must have broken many a heart with those eyes."
She looks shrewdly at Mrs. Roche as she speaks.
"If he lovesyou," she continues, "he will be true."
Eleanor's head droops.
"You love him," said the stranger, reading the tell-tale blush. "Are you going to marry him, my dear?"
"No," falters Eleanor, "I wish I could."
"Ah! I thought so. Forgive me for my curiosity, but your face interested me, and I am not conventional. I always speak if I wish, though it offends some people. To me the fashion of introducing seems absurd. Here we are all jumbled up together in the same little world, yet everyone is a mass of reserve, a mind in armour, they never say what they mean, seldom speak from the heart. One is in the dust, and another on the throne, and they all die in like manner, to be buried most probably by a man they would not have dared address without an introduction, measured by an undertaker they could not have been seen walking with in the street, and to mix with thousands of spirits whose ancestors and pedigree are unknown."
Eleanor listens in surprise.
"Are you uncertain about your future?" the stranger asks.
"A little," falters Eleanor nervously.
"Then let me look at your hand, I may be able to help you. No, the left hand please," as Mrs. Roche tremblingly unbuttons her right glove. "Ah!" as the gold wedding-ring is revealed, "I was afraid so. I see it all now; this (pointing to the photograph) isnotyour husband."
Eleanor tries to speak, but her throat is parched, and dry. She only bends her head and gazes at the lines in her pink palm.
"You are going on a journey very soon," vouchsafes the stranger. "I wish it could be prevented, for it brings more pain than pleasure—misery, desolation."
Eleanor snatches away her hand.
"I don't want to know any more," she says, almost fiercely, pulling on her glove.
"I did not mean to frighten you," replies the woman penitently. "But I want to warn you. Whatever you do wrong in this world, my friend, is always repaid. There may be a heaven and a hell in the hereafter, I know not, I am not in a position to say, but of one thing I am certain, there is the hell here on earth, which measures out the allotted punishment to its victims."
"I don't understand you," exclaims Eleanor, "You talk to me as if I were a criminal."
"No," shaking her head sadly; "only as to a young and beautiful wife, who dreams and cries over another man's picture. You have the fatal, dangerous gift of fascination, Mrs. Roche."
"How did you know my name?"
"It is by me on the label of your bag."
Eleanor is silent. She waits for the stranger to continue.
"In my youth, Mrs. Roche, I was as fair as you—I was unhappily married. I looked lightly on the bonds that meant so much until they fettered me—held me down, as I then imagined. Between me and my husband the sentiment ofcamaraderienever existed. When I was not coquetting with him I was quarrelling. I tell you this because I shall never see you again. You do not know me—or care. I may be dead to-morrow—you would never hear. We are only just passing in life, and have paused to speak. The man I married was by necessity a preoccupied breadwinner, and during his daily absences in hot pursuit of the staff of life I met—well, we will say this man," taking up the photograph of Carol Quinton.
Eleanor snatches it from her.
"Ah! yes, just what I should have done then. I was hot-headed, and reckless, I had a good life in my hands and I ruined, spoiled, destroyed it! The cruel thongs of public opinion lashed my quivering flesh, the galling retribution broke my spirit, I cried to God, but He hid his face, I was an outcast, lost, I could only lie and moan for death which never came."
The stranger covers her face with her hands, and shudders visibly.
The wedding-ring to which she has no right is still on her wasted fingers, hot tears, forced from her eyes through recollection, pour down her drawn cheeks, making little rivulets through some coarse powder of the cheaper kind.
Eleanor's ever-ready pity rises up to crush the anger previously felt, for she sees now the effort that this brief confession has cost her fellow traveller. She knows, too, the reason for which these words were spoken, and horror stops the beating of her heart, it checks her throbbing pulses.
Mrs. Roche leans forward, and takes the stranger's hands.
"Thank you," she murmurs simply.
The woman clasps the little fingers gratefully.
"You understand?" she asks.
Eleanor whispers, "Yes."
"Do you know what I saw in your eyes?"
"No."
"Three long words that kept repeating themselves. All the same words, and the worst, the most heartbreaking. 'To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow!' They will drive a soul to perdition quicker than any in the English language. I am going to have them engraved on my tombstone, because I can only conquer them in death."
"You are right. I was looking on, living in fancy the worthless days and hours."
"Crush that tendency, Mrs. Roche. Think of me when your life seems worthless, and remember all that I have lost. Your face is so sweet, so pure, so beautiful, it was made for the good love that crowns spotless womanhood. But this is my station, and I shall never know what you do with your future."
"Shall I show you?" says Eleanor hastily, for she is easily swayed, and the stranger has worked upon her emotion.
"Yes."
"See!" and the soft, enticing eyes of Carol Quinton are torn asunder—the photograph is reduced to a handful of scraps scattered on the carriage cushion.
"You are a good woman," says the other, rising and looking down tenderly, lovingly at Eleanor.
Again they clasp hands, then a cloud of towzled hair under a black crape bonnet vanishes down the platform, and Mrs. Roche is left alone, with the pieces of torn cardboard and the scent of patchouli on the opposite seat.
"Have I changed, or has everything changed?" Eleanor asks herself, as the days slip by in the old farmhouse.
Mr. and Mrs. Grebby are just the same warm-hearted, genial couple as of yore; they crack the same jokes at their knife-and-fork tea, while Rover wags his tail as pleasantly as ever, and Black Bess trots to market.
The school children have not forgotten "Teacher," and, greet her in demonstrative fashion, flinging their small arms round her neck when she stoops to kiss them.
Yet Mrs. Roche finds that their mouths are sticky, and the little hands she clasps in hers hot and unpleasant to the touch.
She rises early, and on churning morning helps her mother even more industriously than in past days, yet her heart is heavy, and the old songs never pass her lips without a stifled sob. She tries to hum the "Miller of Dee," as for the sake of happy recollections she polishes afresh the pewter service on the parlour table, yet all the while her eyes are scrutinising the inartistic arrangement of the room. Why should the horsehair sofa be placed straight against the wall, and those ghastly wax flowers under glass covers adorn the stiff chimneypiece, which might be made so pretty? The memorial cards, that are framed and hung on the wall—how gruesome they appear in the spring sunshine! She longs to pull them down, and burn them, but to do so would be to violate poor Mrs. Grebby's most sacred feelings.
She looks in the old family Bible, standing in its accustomed place on a table by the window. There are the births, deaths, and marriages of the Grebby family for generations. Oh, if her marriage could be blotted out, and a date of death mark her name. She envies the twins that died in their infancy, when she—Eleanor—was only two years old.
The pewter pots tire her arm, unaccustomed, now to rubbing anything but diamond trinkets. The service she so admired once does not attract her now. She puts it away half clean, and longs for a novel.
Vegetating was not very soothing after all. The poisoned arrows had followed her even to Copthorne, and their wounds could not heal. The thoughts she struggled to suppress, here in the dead calm, proclaimed themselves more loudly, worked fiercer havoc. She longs, pines, sickens for a sight of one she must never see, for a voice it would be death to hear, the touch of a hand it were sin to clasp.
So she wanders about in her strange state of depression, pretending to enjoy the glorious green of the spring, and seeing only light and darkness, cold and desolation, in primrose banks and rippling streams.
Mr. Grebby is too preoccupied with his cattle and his land to notice the change in Eleanor, while Mrs. Grebby takes infinite pains to give her married daughter the best their house affords, and only remarks on her lack of appetite, at which she loudly laments.
"You ain't eatin' anything, dearie," she says one morning at breakfast. "Try a tumbler of new milk to put some strength into you. It's them towns as makes you pale and spiritless. I knows 'em. We was that done up after our visit to you and cousin Harriett it was quite surprisin'. But law, how Pa did make me walk in London. Up them Monument steps, and down again before I'd got my breath, with poor Rover in charge of a policeman below, and everyone a laughing 'cause I was puffing so."
Eleanor forces a smile. She was watching for the post.
The moment the man's tread is heard on the gravel she starts up and runs to the door, dreading every day that Giddy may divulge her address.
She longs to write to Carol Quinton, but dare not. She knows she is too weak to run the risk.
There are two letters for her, one from Philip, the other from Mrs. Mounteagle.
She reads Giddy's first.
It is amusing and frivolous as usual. The last half, however, amazes Eleanor.
"I am going to be married," it says in the middle of a description of a new bonnet. "My future husband is a wealthy man and a general. Congratulate me! It will not be a long engagement, as he is seventy-five to-morrow, but loves with the ardour of a seventeen year old! Talking of boys, I am asking Bertie to be best man. By this you will see all arrangements for the ceremony are being left entirely to my management. It will be costly and elaborate. My gown alone would have swallowed up dear Bertie's income. I have given him a splendid new watch to console him, as his was snatched last year at Epsom. I met my General at Lady MacDonald's. He moves in a very good set—gout permitting. Excuse my humour.—Your elated and strong-minded GIDDY.
"P.S.—Don't you think I am a noble woman? He is one eye short, which is rather a recommendation, buthasbeen one of the handsomest men about town."
"How strange," thinks Eleanor. Then she throws the letter aside in disgust. "And very loathsome!" she adds, tearing open Philip's envelope.
She reads it slowly at the breakfast table.
"Philip is coming this evening," she says.
Mr. and Mrs. Grebby clap their hands.
"Well, now, I'm right glad," they exclaim together. "We could see 'ow you missed 'im, dearie."
Eleanor feels uncomfortably guilty. Whatifthey knew that her every thought was wandering to another!
Already she has begun to try and piece the photograph together again, regretting her hasty action in the railway carriage. Before reaching Copthorne she had hidden the fragments safely in a corner of her dressing-bag. She hardly knew whether to be glad or sorry that Philip is coming. It will break the dull monotony of the day. At any rate she will get herself up to look as much like the old Eleanor as possible, though the thought of wandering with him through the haunts of past days is distasteful.
She knows it will please him, however; so, crushing her own feelings, she dons an old dress made by the village dressmaker, one which has hung in her wardrobe ever since she left home, then proceeds to search for the long disused sun bonnet.
The day is almost bright enough to excuse the picturesque headgear, eventually unearthed from the bottom of a tin trunk, and ironed by Eleanor's own hands.
She feels as if she were dressed up for amateur theatricals, and even denies herself the fashionable manner in which her hair is now arranged, going back to the simple style before she knew London or Giddy Mounteagle.
"It certainlyisbecoming," she says; "beauty unadorned," viewing her charms in this rustic guise before a cracked mirror. "Yet I wonder what the Richmond girls would think of me if I walked on the Terrace, Sunday morning after church, dressed like this?"
She looks so pretty that her heart sinks at the thought that it is Philip, not Carol, for whom she has prepared.
As she comes down the stairs Mrs. Grebby meets her pale and trembling.
"What is the matter, mammy?" asks Eleanor, seeing that her mother is trying to gain breath for speech.
Mrs. Grebby puts her hand to her heart.
"There, there, child!" she says, "don't be frightened," while her legs seem sinking under her, and she grasps Eleanor's arm for support. "But the man from the post-office, 'e—e's brought a telegram for you."
"Anything wrong at home?" asks Mrs. Roche.
"Not that I know of—yet," continues the shaking woman; "it hasn't been opened."
Eleanor bursts out laughing, and the amused peal reassures Mrs. Grebby.
"Why, Ma, I get them nearly every day at Richmond, there is nothing to be alarmed at in a wire. Philip was going to let me know his train. I thought I told you."
She opens the message, and as she scans it her face falls.
"He is not coming," she says. "Too busy, and won't be able to manage it now. How like Philip! To let you get all ready for him and then fail."
It is more the annoyance of having dressed herself in vain than disappointment at not seeing him which vexes Eleanor.
"I dislike people throwing you over at the last moment; it is very inconsiderate and unkind. But I suppose he can't help it, poor fellow," with a touch of regret for her petulance. "I am very extravagant, Ma. I spend no end on clothes, though you wouldn't think it to look at me now. Philip just trots off to the City and makes the money, so it does not matter a bit."
Mr. Grebby expresses lavish sorrow at Mr. Roche's non-appearance, while Eleanor wanders out down the budding lanes towards the station, just as if Philip were coming after all, only there is neither tumult of sorrow nor joy in her heart. She feels just indifferent to everything and everybody. The hedges are sprouting with young green. Surely the world is fair to all eyes but Eleanor's!
Her head is bent, she is gazing on the ground.
Suddenly a shadow crosses her path—the shadow of a man.
She looks up slowly, standing still, rooted to the spot.
A cold chill creeps through her veins, gradually changing to burning fire. She can neither speak nor move, the hedges seem to fly round, the trees spin, the twittering birds shriek!
"Carol!"
The word breaks from her lips at last like a cry.
Why has Philip failed her, why is he not here to save?
Someone is holding her hand in a passionate clasp, someone presses her cheeks, her lips! Is it a dream or reality, life or death?
The spring bursts suddenly into smiles. Nature laughs loudly, all the world is one wide pleasure field, a place to love, to die in for joy!
"Why did you run away?" he whispers, still holding her in his arms. "Why did you hide yourself from me, shut out the light from my days? It was cruel, Eleanor. Surely you knew I would have gone to the end of the world to find you, and you thought to evade me here."
"Fate has willed it otherwise. How did you discover me?"
"Giddy Mounteagle gave me your address. I never gave her a moment's peace till she divulged it, poor woman."
A spark of anger flashes in Eleanor's love-laden eyes.
"The traitress!" she murmurs under her breath.
"Ah! do not say that. She is happy herself, and I was so miserable,youwere so miserable."
"How do you know?"
"I have read your heart like a book—it is mine and no other's. I mean to take it—cherish it—keep it—always!"
"You stole it from Philip—you stole it from me!" she cries, her voice shaken by fear and dread. "You see me as I am—weak, defenceless—loving you to my shame—my destruction. I am in your power body and soul—you have got my will as well—it is yours—all yours. Think for a moment, Carol, before you keep these stolen goods—what they cost—you and me. Pity me in this hopeless moment of surrender—make it less hard to part. Are we to lose everything? Think of your soul—and my soul. I believe that we both have them now in the palms of our hands—to cast into Hell—to lift up to Heaven! You should be the stronger. Remember what it is to be a man!"
"What is your ideal of poor mankind?" he asks hoarsely.
"To give—not take," replies Eleanor, in the words of Charles Kingsley, which rise suddenly as an inspiration to her tortured mind. "To serve—not rule. To nourish—not devour. To help—not crush. If need, to die—not live!"
"Then I will rise to your standard," he said boldly. "Eleanor, I will kill myself."
"How?" she asks.
"I care not; but to-day—this same hour—you will have driven me to my death!"
"Oh, Carol, you are cruel!" she sighs.
Then the words well into her brain, with fierce, upbraiding, horrible reality: "To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow." She sees the faded towzled hair of the woman in the train, the dusty crape of her bonnet, the red upon her lips.
A cry escapes her, and sinking on the green bank by the roadside, Eleanor buries her face in the grass and sobs in uncontrollable anguish.
Carol cannot bear to watch her misery. He stoops down and gathers the little figure in his arms, straining it to his heart. He kisses dry the liquid eyes, and soothes the low deep sobs.
"I have decided," he says.
"And your choice, our fate, the end?" she asks breathlessly.
"To take," he replies, holding her fast, "not give back that which is mine, now and for ever. To rule (if that is the harsh term you give my love), to devour, to crush, to live, Eleanor, not die."
The words sound like a shout of victory on the still air. They kindle a mad delight in the woman's stricken heart.
"We will leave this miserable country, where you are a captive to a man who cannot hold your love, yet calls himself 'husband.' We will go away, no matter where, since we shall be together. We have only our two selves to live for now. The world was created for us alone, we need remember nothing else, an Eden to love in and be happy. Oh! my darling, how bright I will make your life, as it never was before."
"You are right," says Eleanor slowly. "I have never known true happiness. I was very fond of Philip when I married him—the lukewarm affection that grows cold instantly in the chill air of disagreement or mistrust. The love which you have kindled in me is something I did not know or dream of. It is worth all else!"
Carol takes her wedding finger, holds it to his lips a moment, then places an embossed gold ring below the knuckle, with "Kismet" engraved upon it.
Eleanor gazes on the ring wistfully. The words are full of meaning to her just now.
"'Kismet,'" she murmurs. "Only a true Mahommedan should use that expression."
She draws a cat's eye stone, that Philip gave her, from her hand, and offers it to Carol.
This is the last, the supreme act of surrender—that, more than all else, renounces for ever and ever Philip, honour, wifehood, and lays her low in the dust.
They walk through the green fields hand in hand; they talk of things to be. The children coming home from school stare at Eleanor, and think how beautiful she is, wondering at the handsome stranger who gazes in her eyes, and whispers so low they cannot catch the words.
Yes, she looks just the same, as the evening tints fall with a rosy glow on her rich hair and simple sun-bonnet. How innocent she appears in the plain, homely attire, and that strange but glorious smile parting her lips. There are daisies under her feet, and blue sky over her head; love is in her heart, but hell is in her eyes.
Her eyes droop. The children cannot see—Hell!