"SHE HAS A SWEET, STRONG SOUL."
"There was never another man in my world but Max. There never could
have been another. Some women are made that way. They can only give
their best once."
"But--I would take--the second best. I would be thankful even for the
crumbs from the rich man's table. Only let me have the right to take
care of you, to give you----"
"To give me everything, and to receive nothing in return? No, Rupert,
I could not let you do that, even if----"
"Even if?" he repeated after her, his eyes fastened hungrily on her
face, his voice deep and appealing. "Can't you understand that I don't
want to worry you for anything in return. I only want to be near you,
to do all that man can do for you."
"And I am grateful, more grateful than I can ever express in words.
Sometimes I am sorry you ever chanced to meet me, on that oasis in the
desert. I think I have been a hindrance in your life, not the help I
should like to have been. No--wait--don't contradict me for a minute,"
and Margaret held up her hand with a smile, as the man on the low chair
beside her couch, bent forward in eager disclaimer. "Because of me,
you have never married, when you ought to have had a wife, and a home,
and children of your own."
"Do you think I could look at another woman, after I had once seen
you?" he exclaimed vehemently, and she answered gently--
"Some day, I hope you will have a woman in your life, a woman who will
bring you all the happiness you have missed, who----"
"I want no woman but you," he cried, a note of sullen passion in his
voice. "Margaret--you say--he--was the only man in your world. Can't
I make you understand that you are--what you have been ever since I
first saw you--the only woman in mine?"
She put out her hand to him, the transparent hand, whose only ornament
was its heavy wedding ring, and he stooped down and kissed it, with a
curiously reverent gesture that made her eyes misty.
"You have been such a good friend," she said; "but believe me, there
cannot ever be anything but friendship between us two and--there is
such a little time now left for anything."
"What do you mean?" he asked, with a sudden catch in his breath, his
eyes fixed on her thin face, which seemed all at once to have become so
ethereal in its whiteness; "why do you speak as if----"
"As if--an end were coming? Because--the end is very near." His eyes
did not leave her face, but a look of pain leapt into them, a look of
such intolerable pain, that Margaret exclaimed quickly--
"I cannot bear to hurt you, but it is better to tell you just the plain
truth, even if it hurts you. The end is going to be very soon. Dr.
Fergusson thinks it can't be far off now, and I am glad, Rupert. I
don't think I can tell you how glad."
He made some inarticulate sound, dropping his head into his hands, and
her soft voice went on, with soothing monotony--
"There was a great deal of hardship and trouble in my early married
life, and I never managed to get over it all. I have been ill almost
ever since you knew me, and--in the last few months--I have come to the
end of my tether. When Max--went away,"--her voice broke--"all that
was left of my life and vitality seemed to go, too. I have tried to
live, and I wanted to live, but the disease has got the better of me,
and--I am glad the end is in sight."
"Did you send for me because"--he lifted his head and looked at her.
"I sent for you because I wanted to make everything clear to you, and
because I did not want to go right away for ever, without seeing my
friend again. And--I wanted to help you--about your own future, if I
could."
"My own future," Rupert laughed drearily. "Do you think my own future,
and anything about me, matters two straws, when you--when you"--his
voice trailed away into silence. He sat very still, his face turned
towards the window, through which the trees in the wood beyond the
house, were already showing a veil of delicate green.
"My friendship will have been a very poor thing if it spoils your
life," Margaret said gently, her gaze following his to the April trees,
and the dappled April sky.
"A poor thing?" He turned back to her, a great light in his eyes. "Do
you think I regret loving you? Do you think I regret for a single
second, having known and loved you? When I first met you, I had the
sort of contemptuous tolerance for women, which I had found in other
men. It was you who taught me what a good woman can be to a man. Even
now, I am not fit to touch the hem of your gown, but since I knew you,
I have at least lived straight. I can look you in the face, and say
that my hands and heart are clean."
"I am glad," she said simply, her deep eyes shining. "You don't know
how glad I am, if I have helped you ever so little. And, some day--I
am speaking very plainly because I am a dying woman, and dying people
can speak the direct truth--some day I want you to give a woman your
heart; I want you to take her hands in your hands; I want you to find
the happiness, which, for my sake, you have missed in all these years."
"Impossible," he said passionately. "You are asking too much. How
could I ever think of another woman, when I have been your friend?"
"Some day," she answered, her wonderful smile flashing over her face;
"and--I am developing into a matchmaker, Rupert," she added lightly.
"I have even chosen the woman. You did not credit me with gifts as a
matchmaker, did you?"
"Don't talk of such things in such a way," he exclaimed almost roughly.
"How can you laugh and talk lightly, when----"
"When I ought to be thinking only of 'graves and epitaphs'?" she quoted
whimsically. "No, don't look so hurt and sorry. Let me still be
whimsical, even if I am going to die. Leave me my sense of humour to
the end. And--let me match-make for you. It pleases me to picture
you--happy--with--a wife I have chosen for you."
"Don't," he said, actual anger in his voice, but once again her hand
touched his hand, and the touch quieted him.
"You must not be hurt or angry with me," she said. "I asked you to
come to see me, because I wanted to thank you for your loyal friendship
and a sort of instinct made me long to tell you--of someone--who some
day I think will comfort you."
"Comfort me?" he exclaimed bitterly.
"Yes, comfort you," eyes and voice were very steady. "Rupert, you
know--of course you know--all about my little niece, my dear little
niece Christina? You know by what a strange coincidence I discovered
who she was, and you know how Arthur found all the proofs of identity,
and showed beyond the possibility of doubt, that she is the daughter of
my own sister Helen? You know all that?"
"Yes, I know all that. I have often seen Miss Moore; she is a very
charming girl, and I liked her for insisting on staying with Baba for
the present, so that Cicely should not be left stranded. It seemed to
show grit, and a fine character."
"She has grit, and a fine character. She has more; she has a most
lovable character; and, Rupert, she would make a man who cared for her,
a most tender and loving wife."
"A man who cared for her," Rupert repeated with emphasis; "not a man
whose whole heart was given to another woman."
"Some day--when the other woman--has gone--right away--remember what I
said. That is all. It is not a thing to be discussed, even between
two friends. Only--remember that my little Christina is worthy to be
loved. She has a sweet and a strong soul."
More than once on that April afternoon, Rupert tried to take Margaret's
conversation back to his own deep love for her; but, just as her
brother Arthur had found, four months earlier, so he found now, that
some dominating force in her personality kept him at bay--mastered him,
in spite of himself. It was she who finally gave him a gentle word of
dismissal, so gentle, that he could not be hurt, even though the
parting from her seemed to him to tear his heart in two.
"I may come again?" he said, his speech sounding terse and abrupt,
because of his very excess of feeling; and she smiled into his face, a
strange smile, which he could not understand.
"Yes," she answered; "you may--come again; and, Rupert, forgive me if
by being your friend I have only hurt you. I have done nothing for
you, excepting give you pain. I think----"--she paused, and her eyes
turned to the soft sky behind the delicate April leaves--"I think I
have done so little, so terribly little with my life."
"But you have _been_ so much," he answered, his hand holding hers
closely, in a long warm clasp; "and it is what you are that matters,
and that influences your fellow beings--what you are, so much more than
what you do. And what you are lives for ever," he added, in a burst of
inspiration very rare in the man, who so seldom gave expression to his
thoughts. "There is no end to a good influence; it never dies; it
could not ever die. What you are has helped everyone who knows--and
loves you."
"But this is not good-bye," he said a moment later, before he left the
room. "You say I may come again; this is only _au revoir_."
"_Au revoir_, then," she answered, that inexplicable smile breaking
over her face again. "But," she whispered under her breath, as the
door closed behind him, "it will be _au revoir_ in a land where there
will not be any more heart-breaks or good-byes--the land--that is
not--very far off--but--near--so very near."
She had known the truth when she told Rupert he might come again,
knowing that her days were actually numbered, that the end of which she
had told him, was very close at hand.
And so it was, that when Rupert Mernside next journeyed down to the
lonely house in the valley, where the touch of spring lay on woodland
and copse, where primroses lifted starry eyes under the hazels, and
wind flowers swung in the April breeze, he came to follow Margaret to
the quiet churchyard on the hill-side.
Christina had chosen the place where her grave should be--Christina,
who had been with her at the end, who had seen the amazing radiance of
her face, when the end came. All night she had lain in a state of
profound unconsciousness, from which they had not thought she would
ever rally. But as morning broke, as the sunlight shone in through the
uncurtained window, Margaret's eyes opened, and that amazing radiance
flashed into them, the smile on her face making the girl who watched
her, draw a swift breath of wonder. It was evident that the dying
woman knew nothing of what passed in the room about her; her eyes
looked, not at surrounding objects, but at something beyond, and away
from them all--something that was coming towards her, or towards which
she was going.
"Max," she said, her voice grown suddenly strong. "Ah! Max--I
knew--you would wait for me. I--knew--you would be there," and with
that wonderful radiance in her eyes, that wonderful smile upon her
face, she had passed out into the Rest, that lies about our restless
world.
"I think she would like to lie just here," Christina said, when,
walking round the churchyard with Sir Arthur and Dr. Fergusson, they
came to a halt under a low wall, from which the ground sloped abruptly
away, in a series of terraces. In that sunny corner, violets nestled
against the grey stones, their fragrance drifting out upon the April
breeze, and on the wall itself, a robin sat and sang, of spring-time,
of resurrection, of life.
"She would like this place," the girl repeated softly. "It is so still
and sunny, and the great view is so beautiful--like herself, so
beautiful and restful," she added under her breath, so that only
Fergusson heard the words.
Sir Arthur, a more quiet and subdued Sir Arthur, looked across the
sloping churchyard to the great sweep of country, whose horizon was
bounded by far blue hills, and perhaps some faint perception of
Christina's meaning filtered into his narrow soul, although he only
said:--
"I wonder why she wished to be buried here. I should have thought she
would have liked to be near her husband."
"I don't think she felt she was ever far away from him," Christina
answered, carried out of herself for the moment, and forgetting her
usual awe of her grim uncle. "She knew that wherever their bodies
might be, she and he would be together. She knew they could not ever
be really apart--he and she."
Sir Arthur looked at her without replying. His silence was a strange
testimony to Margaret's power, for he was kept silent by the
unaccustomed feeling (a feeling experienced for the first time in his
self-sufficient existence)--that in his sister, and in the new niece
who looked at him with such certainty in her eyes, he had come face to
face with forces of which he was ignorant. Perhaps he could not, or
would not, have put this feeling into words, nevertheless, it was
there, far down in his heart, a new factor to be reckoned with, if ever
he chose to reckon with it. The day of Margaret's funeral was one of
those perfect spring days, which come to us sometimes as a foretaste of
summer. Beyond the little churchyard, the wide expanse of moorland lay
flooded with sunshine, spikes of young bracken showing vividly green
amongst the brown of the heather, clumps of gorse shining golden in the
sunlight, a soft mist of green upon the hazel copses at the moorland's
foot. Larks sprang singing to the April sky, and upon the stone wall
close against the open grave, a robin sat once more, and sang his song,
of resurrection, of life, of love.
The group that gathered in that sunny corner, fragrant with the
sweetness of violets, was a very small one. Sir Arthur and Christina,
Rupert Mernside, Lady Cicely, Dr. Fergusson, and Elizabeth--these were
the six mourners who followed Margaret to her last resting-place, and
as Christina's eyes wandered round the little group, she felt that she
knew upon which of the six the beautiful woman's death had fallen as
the most heavy blow.
Her heart contracted when her fleeting glance rested for a second on
Rupert's stricken face; and she glanced away again quickly, feeling
that to look into his face, meant also to look into his stricken soul,
and that she had no right to read so much of the inmost being of
another human creature. Cicely had insisted upon coming to Graystone
for the funeral.
"Although I never knew your sister," she said to Sir Arthur, "I want to
do this one small thing, to show how much I reverenced her. Christina
has told me of her, and I know how beautiful she was, body and soul."
Thus it came about that Cicely sat next to Denis Fergusson in the tiny
village church, where the first part of the funeral service was said,
stood next to Fergusson beside the grave by the sunny wall, and, when
all was over, moved away down the steep churchyard path, by Fergusson's
side.
He looked down at her tiny form with a delicious sense of having a
right at least, in this moment, to protect and watch over her, and, as
they went out of the lych-gate, she turned to him with a grateful look
in her eyes.
"Thank you for taking care of me," she said, with that pretty
impulsiveness that constituted one of her greatest charms. "I am glad
I came to-day--even though--it has made me remember----" she hesitated,
and Fergusson saw that her eyes swam with tears.
They were walking slowly along the upland road, in the wake of the rest
of the party, and Fergusson slackened his pace a little, to give her
time to recover her composure, whilst he said gently:--
"I understand. I quite understand."
"I think you are a very understanding person," she answered, the falter
in her voice making his heart contract with an almost unbearable
longing to comfort her. "I--have not heard--that service we have just
heard, since it was said--over--John--my husband. It has made me
remember--that day--and all it meant to me."
Fergusson looked away from her sweet face, aquiver with emotion, out
across the wide moorland, where the larks sang in the sunshine, to the
far line of blue hills, then he said slowly--
"The words hold wonderful comfort. The triumphant sense of a sure and
certain hope, always seems to me to be the keynote of the whole."
"Those were the words that stayed in my mind, penetrating through
everything else," she said softly, "and though--John had gone away into
what seemed unbreakable silence, I knew--that--he had not really gone.
I had the sure and certain hope--oh! and more than hope--that he
was--very safe, and very near me all the time."
The naive expression, the simplicity of the words, spoken from the
depths of a simple and sincere heart, flooded Fergusson's heart again
with a sense of reverent love, that almost amounted to adoration; but
no opportunity to answer her was given him, for Sir Arthur turned back
to join Cicely, and a few minutes' further walk brought them to the inn
at Graystone, where they were to lunch, before their drive to the
railway station. Rupert parted from the rest at the door of the inn.
Perhaps Christina was the only member of the party, who realised that
he had come to the end of his tether, that an imperative necessity for
solitude was upon him, that his power of endurance was nearly at an
end. She was standing behind Sir Arthur, when Rupert bade them all
good-bye; it was with her that he shook hands last of all, and as she
looked up into his face, her eyes held some strange comfort for him.
He did not put it into words; he could not have explained even to
himself, had he tried to do so, why it was that the glance of those
sweet eyes sent a little restful feeling into his troubled heart; but
as he went away, some of the tension of misery seemed to relax, the
numbness of his pain grew less; in some dim way his hurt had been
salved.
"Your cousin seems to have been a most devoted friend to my poor
sister," Sir Arthur said, after lunch, when he and the two ladies and
Fergusson were seated in the small sitting-room of the inn awaiting
their carriage. "I cannot conceive why, in the world she could not
have married a man like that, instead of the poor miserable fellow who
made her life and his own, a burden to them both."
"She loved her husband very much," Christina put in gently.
"Oh! she loved him--she loved him far too much," Sir Arthur answered
testily. "I cannot understand, I never shall be able to understand,
how a woman can throw away all her heart and life, on a man who is
totally unworthy of her."
Back into Christina's mind flashed the remembrance of words Margaret
had spoken long before: "You don't know what it is to care so much for
a man, that no matter what he is or does, he is your world, your whole
world," but it was Cicely, not she who answered sagely--
"I don't believe a man can ever really understand the way a woman
loves. A woman's love is made up of so many ingredients, she herself
can hardly analyse it, and no man could ever begin to get near its true
analysis."
Sir Arthur looked at her with the kindly smile of one who listens to
the prattling of a child, then resumed his own train of thought and
words, as if she had not spoken at all.
"My brother-in-law was a perpetual source of anxiety to me," he said;
"not that I knew him. I only saw him once, and I was not favourably
impressed on that occasion; but I can honestly say that until I heard
he was in his grave, I had no really quiet moments."
"I know nothing of the story," Cicely said; "I have only heard you
speak of your brother-in-law, as if the subject was a painful one. I
do not even know his name."
"He was a Russian by birth--no, don't go, there need be no secret about
the matter, certainly not from you, who were so good to my poor
sister," Sir Arthur said, as Fergusson showed signs of leaving the
room. "Max Petrovitch was his real name, and my sister originally met
him at the house of friends in town. He was then closely connected
with the Young Russia movement--or rather, to call things by their true
names, he was a red-hot Nihilist. Margaret--went with him to Siberia,
you know."
Cicely uttered an exclamation, but Sir Arthur went on without pause.
"Yes, she went to Siberia with him. I don't know on what precise count
he was exiled, but he was always on the side of revolutionary methods,
as against those of law and order, and although I believe--I do firmly
believe--that he never had a hand in any scheme of assassination,
still, he was tarred with the pitch-black brush of anarchy. There is
no doubt that the time in Siberia sowed the seeds of Margaret's
ill-health; it sapped her strength and vitality; it was--the beginning
of the end. Her maid Elizabeth has told me the truth about it all."
He was silent for a few seconds before resuming.
"Then Max--escaped, and for a long time, I understand, Margaret knew
nothing of his whereabouts; but she herself, by his wish, left Siberia,
and went to Paris, and there--after what vicissitudes God only
knows--he joined her, for a time. But--here the inherent weakness of
the man appeared. God forbid that I should be unfair to the dead--but,
he was a coward; and because he was afraid, because he was afraid of
being recaptured, and sent back to Siberia, he gave up the party to
which he belonged--he sold himself to the Secret Police. And from the
moment that was known, he must have led a life of horror. His
footsteps were dogged; he was tracked down from place to place; he was
a doomed man, and he knew it. Certainly he was guarded to an extent by
the Secret Police, but, those who wanted his life cared very little for
that. I believe he wandered over Europe, seeking a place of safety in
vain, and at last--ill, worn-out, and despairing--he came to England,
to die in that lonely house in the valley, where Margaret has also
died. Her illness sent her back to her own land; she could not travel
about with him, but when they got him there, they sent for her, and she
was with him to the last."
"Poor soul! oh, poor soul!" Cicely said softly. "And she loved him
through it all?"
"She loved him with a most amazing love," Fergusson put in, speaking
for the first time. "I was there during his last illness, and at his
death; and, as I said before, I say it again: 'God grant to every man
when death comes, to have such a woman, and such a woman's love, with
him at the last!'"
He spoke gravely, and as his words ended, he looked at Cicely, and
their eyes met in a long involuntary glance, which, as Christina caught
it, seemed to her full of some strange meaning, that set her own heart
athrob.