THE FINAL RESOLVE.
It was dark, with the pitchy darkness of a village street, where the
greater part of the population were gone to bed, when he passed through
Engelberg towards the hotel, where Phebe must be awaiting his return
anxiously. In carrying out his project it would be well for him to have
as little as possible to do with the inmates of the hotel, and he
approached it cautiously. All the ground-floor was dark, except for a
glimmer of light in a little room at the end of a long passage; but the
windows of the _salon_ on the floor above were lit up, and Jean Merle
stepped quietly up the staircase unheard and unseen.
Phebe was sitting by a table, her head buried in her arms, which rested
upon it--a forlorn and despondent attitude. She lifted up her face as he
entered and gazed pitifully into his; but for a minute or two neither of
them spoke. He stood just within the door, looking towards her as he had
done on the fateful night when Felicita had told him that she chose his
death rather than her share of the disgrace attaching to his crime. This
day just drawn to a close had been the bitterest fruit of the seed then
sown. Jean Merle's face, on which there was stamped an expression of
intense but patient suffering, steadfastly met Phebe's aching eyes.
"She is dead!" she murmured.
"I knew it," he answered.
"I did not know what to do," she went on after a slight pause, and
speaking in a pitiful and deprecating tone.
"Poor Phebe!" he said; "but I am come to tell you what I have resolved
to do--what seems best for us all to do. We must act as if I was only
what I seem to be, a stranger to you, a passing guide, who has no more
to do with these things than any other stranger. We will do what I
believe she would have desired; her name shall be as dear to us as it
was to her; no disgrace shall stain it now."
"But can you never throw off your disguise?" she asked, weeping. "Must
you always be what you seem to be now?"
"I must always be Jean Merle," he replied. "Roland Sefton cannot return
to life; it is impossible. Let us leave her children at least the tender
memory of their mother; I can bear being unknown to them for what
remains to me of life. And we do no one any harm, you and I, by keeping
this secret."
"No, we wrong no one," she answered. "I have been thinking of it ever
since I was sure she was dead, and I counted upon you doing this. It
will save Felix and Hilda from bitter sorrow, and it would keep her
memory fair and true for them. But you--there will be so much to give
up. They will never know that you are their father; for if we do not
tell them now, we must never, never betray it. Can you do it?"
"I gave them up long ago," he said; "and if there be any sacrifice I can
make for them, what should withhold me, Phebe? God only knows what an
unutterable relief it would be to me if I could lay bare my whole life
to the eyes of my fellow-men and henceforth walk in their sight in
simple honesty and truthfulness. But that is impossible. Not even you
can see my whole life as it has been. I must go softly all my days,
bearing my burden of secrecy."
"I too shall have to bear it," she murmured almost inaudibly.
"I shall start at once for Stans," he went on, "and go to Lucerne by the
first boat in the morning. You shall give me a telegram to send from
there to Canon Pascal, and Felix will be here in less than three days. I
must return direct to Riversborough. I must not perform the last duties
to the dead; even that is denied to me."
"But Felicita must not be buried here," exclaimed Phebe, her voice
faltering, with an accent of horror at the thought of it. A shudder of
repugnance ran through him also. Roland Sefton's grave was here, and
what would be more natural than to bury Felicita beside it?
"No, no," he cried, "you must save me from that, Phebe. She must be
brought home and buried among her own people. Promise to save her and me
from that."
"Oh, I promise it," she said; "it shall never be. You shall not have
that grief."
"If I stayed here myself," he continued, "it would make it more
difficult to take up my life in Riversborough unquestioned and
unsuspected. It can only be by a complete separation now that I can
effect my purpose. But I can hardly bear to go away, Phebe."
The profound pitifulness of Phebe's heart was stirred to its inmost
depths by the sound of his voice and the expression of his hopeless
face. She left her seat and drew near to him.
"Come and see her once more," she whispered.
Silently he made a gesture of assent, and she led the way to the
adjoining room. He knew it better than she did; for it was here that he
had watched all the night long the death of the stranger who was buried
in Roland Sefton's grave. There was little change in it to his eyes. The
bare walls and the scanty homely furniture were the same now as then.
There was the glimmer of a little lamp falling on the tranquil figure on
the bed. The occupant of this chamber only was different, but oh! the
difference to him!
"Do not leave me, Phebe!" he cried, stretching out his hand towards her,
as if blind and groping to be led. She stepped noiselessly across the
uncarpeted floor and looked down on the face lying on the pillow. The
smile that had been upon it in the last moment yet lingered about the
mouth, and added an inexpressible gentleness and tenderness to its
beauty. The long dark eyelashes shadowed the cheeks, which were suffused
with a faint flush. Felicita looked young again, with something of the
sweet shy grace of the girl whom he had first seen in this distant
mountain village so many years ago. He sank down on his knees, and shut
out the sight of her from his despairing eyes. The silent minutes crept
slowly away unheeded; he did not stir, or sob, or lift up his bowed
face. This kneeling figure at her feet was as rigid and as death-like as
the lifeless form lying on the bed; and Phebe grew frightened, yet dared
not break in upon his grief. At last a footstep came somewhat noisily up
the staircase, and she laid her hand softly on the gray head beneath
her.
"Jean Merle," she said, "it is time for us to go."
The sound of this name in Phebe's familiar voice aroused him. She had
never called him by it before; and its utterance was marked as a thing
irrevocably settled that his life henceforth was to be altogether
divorced from that of Roland Sefton. He had come to the last point which
connected him with it. When he turned away from this rigid form, in all
the awful loveliness of death, he would have cut himself off forever
from the past. He laid his hand upon the chilly forehead; but he dared
not stoop down to touch the sweet sad face with his lips. With no word
of farewell to Phebe, he rushed out into the dense darkness of the night
and made his way down the valley, and through the steep forest roads he
had traversed only a few hours ago with something like hope dawning in
his heart. For in the morning he had known that he should see Felicita
again, and there was expectation and a gleam of gladness in that; but
to-night his eyes had looked upon her for the last time.