AS he lay in the death-like sleep of exhaustion that followed his swoon,
the change in Strange was terribly evident. He had shrunk to half his
former size, his clothes hung in bags on his limp, thin limbs, his eyes
were sunk into deep hollows, his skin was yellow and puckered, and his
lips were drawn back from his teeth in a way that told of fever and
thirst.
When Brydon, with the help of the panic-stricken servants, had got him
to the sofa, knowing his horror of fuss, he told them to send at once
for the doctor, and then dismissed them with the utmost speed—and now he
stood at the window revolving many things, and wondering, if Strange
grew worse, what would happen, would he send for his wife, and would she
come?
“My God! I wish I did not know quite so much of him,” he muttered, “I
wish he had not, in his ravings, turned himself inside out in that
ghastly way. No man should know so much of another fellow as I do of
him, it is like eavesdropping.”
Strange moaned, and Brydon crept over and covered his feet with awkward
tenderness, then he moved softly through the rooms, looking at the skins
and Oriental stuffs, the colours of which slid into him, and comforted
his soul to some slight extent.
He was vaguely fingering a piece of drapery, when he struck his foot
against the leg of a chair, he looked round breathlessly to see if he
had disturbed Strange. No—he still slept, and Brydon continued his
purposeless inspection, and, drawn by some strange coloured texture he
went towards it, and came face to face with his own bride-picture.
He staggered back two or three steps in a spasm of terror. He had learnt
a deal too much of that picture in Strange’s ravings, but the
overmastering love for one’s own creation—inherent in God and man—forced
him back to it, and as he looked, all the past died out, right back to
that day when he was sitting in Waring Church, painting, and wiping
great sweat-drops from his face in the ecstasy of knowing that he had
done a great work, and one that would live for ever.
A sudden indefinable sound from the terrace brought him to himself.
It was a queer primitive sound; he felt somehow that Strange should not
hear it, and went to the window to find out what it was.
Presently it began again, and ended in a chuckle, then he caught sight
of a flutter of petticoats around the corner, and could distinguish a
murmur of words. Then a distinct squeak startled him, and suddenly a
toddling creature appeared on the terrace, and making a grab at a flower
fell sprawling on its face, and in a fraction of time was pounced upon
by the owner of the white skirts, who cuddled it to her breast, with
anxious care, but as it only kicked and crowed she lifted her head from
her kissing. And there within ten paces of him was his picture made
flesh, but with the sorrow of all ages upon her face.
He swayed, put his hand to his head, then he dropped like a man in a
dream into a chair, and murmured,
“Oh, God! has the earth opened—has she fallen from Heaven—has—has——”
He looked again and the flutter of her white dress in the sunlight gave
to his dazed, enchanted eyes, the figure of a new Madonna, before whom
the whole world must kneel and rise up to call her blessed.
She came on, still murmuring to her baby, she came up to the French
window, and put out her hand to open it—then the madness fell from
Brydon, and the whole truth came with a rush.
He sprang to his feet, cast one perturbed look at Strange, “Kill him or
not, I can’t face it,” he muttered, and fled.
When Gwen got into the room, she sank wearily into a chair, and throwing
off her hat let the baby butt her at his will.
When the smile for her baby flickered off her face, the final contained
anguish of it was awful, but the child gave her little time to nurse
grief. Every moment she had either to rock him, croon little songs to
him or tickle him, if she were silent or passive for a moment a lusty
butt against her breast or a punch from the pink dimpled fist brought
her back to his service.
As she sat—sideways to the window—it was impossible for her to see
Strange, but there was nothing to hide her from him.
The soft murmur of croons and baby-sounds at last half awoke him, he lay
for some moments and let the vague music creep into his
semi-consciousness, then he opened his eyes impatiently and closed them
again—it was only one more dream, he thought—he was beset with dreams,
tortured, shaken by them.
“Oh, God! those drugs,” he muttered.
Again the murmurs broke on his ears, there was a chuckle, a tender
protesting voice, and a sharp little squeal. He shivered and peered out
towards the sounds, his eyes were dimmed from his great sickness and
could only see “men as trees walking.” Gradually he made out the shapes
of a woman and a little child.
“Is it a dream, or death?” he murmured. “Oh! God, spare me! I am haunted
by delusions.”
Another little murmur, and a soft low sob, it was the woman this time.
Again he opened his eyes and through his dreaming saw the little
yellow-headed child laughing around the chair, and inviting the woman to
a game of bo-peep.
“Oh! my baby, my own, own baby,” she broke out, stooping to him, “do you
know what they say—what they din into my ears, little love, dear baby
mine? They say your father is dead, _dead_, DEAD, dear one. And must you
live, grow up, little manikin, without knowing what a man he was?—Sweet,
must I sing?—Ah! If you only knew how it hurts!”
The smile flickered back to her face, as she took him on her knee, and
she sang a little song he evidently knew well, for he kicked and crowed
by way of chorus, then he played with his bare toes for a little—his
mother, as she sang, had pulled off his socks to kiss his feet—and as he
played she returned to her sad soliloquy.
“You will have to take all from me on trust, little one, and, of course,
you will think I exaggerate, my own, when I tell you that your mother
had the best man that God yet made or will make, to love her, to love
her.—Ah! what love it was!” she repeated gently.
Then her eyes dreamt, and rested for a moment, all the pain fled, and
her face shone with radiant triumph and her mouth trembled like a happy
child’s.
“Ah! what love!” she said again; but instantly all this was swamped in a
mighty wave of pain—she caught her child and kissed him rather wildly,
whispering, “Baby, she killed this man who loved her—killed him, baby,
because she was unnatural and couldn’t love—she killed her mother too,
and oh! baby, when in her loneliness she pleads and prays that God may
let her love Him, He hides His face from her, and it is all quite just,
baby mine, her mere desert.
“Ah! my own—I can’t sing, I am so tired.”
She put him down gently, and looked before her with sad unseeing eyes.
Strange struggled to break the spell—to speak—to move—but he was
impotent—paralyzed. A vague horror—full of sickness and delirium—had him
by the throat. He put his hand feebly to his forehead to brush the sweat
away.
“This is more cruel than death,” he muttered.
Meanwhile, the baby—being a young person of an exploring tendency, and
loose on the premises—played havoc with his opportunities. Having
smashed two Venetian glasses and an atom of old Sèvres, he perceived his
father on the sofa, and toddled over to investigate him—but so softly
that no notice was taken till Strange suddenly found a tiny fist thrust
into his mouth, then he started amazedly and touched the child with
quaking awe.
Just then Gwen discovered her loss, ran a few steps forward with
outstretched hands, and saw the two—Humphrey and his child.
“Humphrey—Humphrey!” she cried faintly, tottering towards them—then she
fell at their feet.
To Strange it was still a cruel dream—her falling but part of it.
Between the two, the child stood wondering, then he caught sight of a
diamond on his father’s finger. He seized on the finger and dragged it
to show his mother, but as she took no notice, he smacked her face
soundly with his other hand—and simultaneously the two awoke, he from
his delirium, she from her swoon.
And for one moment the two of them peered at each other through the fog
of a bitter past. Then she sat up slowly, and looked at his face
marvelling above her, and at his hand caught in her baby’s, and broke
into half incoherent wild explainings. But suddenly the consciousness
that words could in no sort of way touch her case, silenced her; she
just sat dumbly on the floor, knowing that she had done evil in
ignorance but that she had come up through great tribulation into
unutterable joy, full of knowledge, and with a soul as white as Naaman’s
skin. And so—as best became her—she simply held up her face to be
kissed, while the baby clutched hold of one of her fingers and one of
his father’s, and in words all his own and untranslatable, but mightier
than those of gods or churches, decreed that henceforth and for ever
those two should be one flesh. Which, after all, is the especial mission
of his kind.
THE END.
_NEW NOVEL_
BY
HELEN PROTHERO-LEWIS
HOOKS OF STEEL
IN 3 VOLS.
Now ready at all Libraries.
[Illustration: Decorative border]
CHAPTER IV.
(_Reprinted from Hooks of Steel._)
HE stopped when he saw us, stopped dead short on the pavement amidst all
the hurrying people. And as he looked at me and D’Arcy, his face changed
and grew drawn and old with sharp, sudden misery. I had pierced him to
the heart; in his face I saw it. Sick and cold with shame, scarce
knowing what I did, I shrank back in the hansom. Only for a moment, but
it was a fatal moment.
“Yes, that’s right, keep back, hide, I’ll protect you!” called out
D’Arcy to me loudly, so loudly Felix could not fail to hear. Then
placing one hand familiarly on my shoulder, he opened the trap-door
again with his cane and shouted—“Off!”
Without an instant’s pause the driver whipped up his horse and was off
as hard as he could go.
I recovered myself when I found I was being borne away from Felix.
“Stop!” I cried wildly, swinging back the doors in front of me, “let me
get out. I must go back! I must go back to Felix!”
D’Arcy leaned forward and hastily swung the doors together again.
“You can never go back to Felix,” he said, seizing me and holding me
firmly down in my seat. “You will have to stay with me instead. Felix
would not have you now. He has caught you here in London alone with me;
_he has found you out_.”
Appalled by his words and manner, I turned upon him. His face was still
full of malignant triumph, his small dark eyes burnt as they gazed into
mine, his lips were drawn back from his big white teeth in a wide grin.
It was a full revelation this time. I knew him as he was; loathsomely,
horribly ugly and wicked.
“You are a fiend!” I cried. “I know you now. You arranged it all. You
deliberately took me where you knew Felix would see me. It was a vile
plot. I see it all, and I hate you, I hate you! Do not dare to touch me.
Take your hands off. Let me get out and leave you this instant.”
But D’Arcy only held me down more tightly. I dashed my hand upwards
through the opening in the roof and called to the driver to stop. “No
use,” said D’Arcy. “The man is in my pay. You may as well sit quiet,
Rosamund. I shall be very kind, you have nothing to fear.”
Nearly frantic, I called to a passer-by to help me. Then D’Arcy shouted
to the driver to let down the glass, and I found myself more straitly
imprisoned than ever. By this time we had left the Strand far behind us,
and were dashing up quiet side streets, but in what direction I knew
not. It was like a horrible nightmare: on and on we went, and each step
took me more hopelessly away from Felix. In vain did I struggle, in vain
did I cry to be set down. The driver took no notice of my cries, and
D’Arcy, still with that horrible grin on his face, said never another
word, only held me back tightly in the hansom. I cannot say how long
that terrible drive lasted. My mind throughout was a chaos of horror and
despair.
At last, after long hours as it seemed to me, the hansom stopped, and
D’Arcy called to the man to open the window. We were in the middle of a
broad path bordered with trees, and all around us was silent dreary
park-land. A drizzle of rain had begun, and beneath the trees it was
already dark with the fast gathering shades of a winter evening. Here
D’Arcy loosened his hold of me, and instantly I got out. Where to go and
what to do next I knew not, so stood helplessly in the rain. D’Arcy sat
looking at me for a moment, as if thinking, then got out also.
“There is the sovereign,” he said, handing up some money to the driver.
The man took it, glanced at me, and hesitated.
“You can go,” said D’Arcy sharply.
“And leave the young lady in the rain?”
“Did you hear? You can go,” repeated D’Arcy, still more sharply. The man
drove away. I felt too stunned to make any appeal to him. Besides, of
what use? Was it not he who had driven me on and on, in spite of my
cries, until now miles and miles of unknown streets lay between me and
Felix. If I had been in the middle of a wilderness, and Felix the other
side of the world, he could not have felt more lost to me than he did at
that moment.
“Now, Rosamund,” said D’Arcy, turning to me and speaking very
determinedly, “listen to reason and be a sensible girl. _You have lost
Felix._ You are not so mad, I suppose, as to imagine he will have
anything further to do with you after this. You lead a miserable life at
the castle, and it will be still more miserable to go back there now,
for Felix will never visit you any more. Neither will I come there after
you again. I have had enough of it, I want something better. So if you
go back, you go back to be absolutely alone with a madman and his
keeper. Mark my words: your uncle is not, and never will be cured. At
his best, he’s as mad as a hatter. And he’s liable to these attacks of
violent madness which make him absolutely dangerous. Matthew keeps it
dark, but it is not the first time your uncle has had to go to the
asylum by any means. He’ll break out again as sure as my name is Leigh,
perhaps next time without any warning. That happened once, so may well
happen again. There’s no method in his madness: a thoroughly unreliable
madman, my friend on the common calls him. So that’s the companion you
will go home to.
“Now I have it in my power to offer you a very happy life. I love you,
and I want you to be my wife. You are just fitted for a London life, and
with your beauty and originality might make a perfect furore. Now, will
you accept what I offer you and marry me? You have only to say ‘yes,’
and I will take you straight to my sister who will act as chaperon until
we can be married: She is a good-natured girl, and will be glad to
oblige me, for many reasons. Now say, will you marry me? I’ll be awfully
kind to you, Rosamund. After all, you’d have had a slow time of it with
that impecunious Felix.”
I had been listening in a dull, stunned way to this speech, but at his
last words an hysterical passion of anger awoke within me.
“Marry you! Never! I would rather die,” I cried. “I know you at last for
what you are, a wicked, plotting fiend!”
“Now, now! No nonsense,” said D’Arcy angrily. “Remember, Rosamund, you
are very much in my power. You don’t know where you are, night is coming
on, it is raining faster every minute, and you can’t find your way out
of this place, or get a cab, without me. So give me a kind answer, and
let me take you off to my sister’s. Come, child, don’t be foolish, we
can’t stand here an hour, getting drenched. Be nice, I’ve loved you a
long time, and been your most devoted slave, I am sure. Give me a kiss,
and say you’ll come.”
“Never! Keep off! How dare you?” I cried, trembling with mingled fear
and anger.
“You needn’t be so very particular. I’ll be bound you’ve kissed Felix
hundreds of times.”
“Felix! Yes. But you—you!!” Words failed me. I could find none that
would express my detestation of him.
He pressed closer, as if determined to kiss me. Then my passion grew
beyond my control. I seized the cane he was holding in his hand, and
struck him smartly across the face with it. Then I flung the hateful
thing from me amidst the trees.
“There!” I cried. “That is to show you how I loathe and detest you now.
Go and pick up your cane, the cane you used to help you in your
plotting. You have wrecked my life. You have ruined Felix’s. You have
persuaded me to deceive, and dragged me down to misery. Go, and never
let me see your wicked face again.”
D’Arcy made for an instant as if he were going to strike me in return,
but he restrained himself. “All right,” he said, in a voice trembling
with suppressed rage. “All right, young lady. You have given me my
_congé_, and I’ll take it. I don’t feel so anxious to make you my wife
as I did a moment ago. I’d best not saddle myself with a vixen. I’ll
leave you, to find your way back to the castle. I hope you will enjoy
yourself when you get there.”
Then, without another word, he strode away and left me alone in that
strange place in the rain.
I waited until he had disappeared in the darkness, then turned and
walked in exactly the opposite direction, neither thinking nor caring
where I was going, so dulled was I with misery. But the road went on,
and seemed as if it would never end, and at length I stopped, chilled,
wet, and weary. Then suddenly it occurred to me that I ought to try and
get home; there was just a faint chance that Felix might go down to ask
what it all meant. At the thought that he might arrive at the castle,
find me still absent, and imagine me still with D’Arcy, I began to burn
with fever. I turned, and ne’er through an arch so hurried the blown
tide, as I through the rain and the dark did hurry then. Thinking it
would now be best, I followed the direction D’Arcy had taken, and after
a time came to some big iron gates. Just as I passed through them a
hansom came driving towards me. My first impulse was to accost the
driver, but I pulled myself up just when about to speak, for by the
flickering light of the gas-lamp on the gate I saw it was the man who
had driven me away from Felix. With my head down I hurried past him.
“Missy! Missy!” called the man as I passed. I made no answer. He turned
and drove after me, walking the horse by my side as I pressed on in the
rain. “Missy! Listen. I’m a poor man with a large family, and that gent
is a well-known fare of mine so I did not like to go against him. But I
didn’t half like the job. It went against my conscience a bit, it did,
seeing you so unwilling inside. After I left you, when I’d got well
away, who should I see but the gent dashing round a corner in another
hansom, with a bad sort of look on him, and, dashed if I could go on,
for thinking of the helpless looking young thing I left with him in the
rain. So back I came again, just to see what had become of you. And now,
Missy, if I can make up to you by driving you anywhere, say the word and
jump in, and there you shall go.”
So lost and wretched did I feel, and so consuming was my desire to get
home, I could not refuse the offer. The man helped to bring about my
misery, but, if I sent him away now, where should I go, what should I
do, in this great unknown city? I climbed in, feeling utterly spent.
“Where to?” asked the man, peering down through the now horribly
familiar trap-door.
“Oh, take me home, take me home!” I half moaned in answer.
“Yes, Missy, don’t you fret, I’ll take you home. But where is it?”
“On Wildacre Common.”
“Phew! That’s a long way off. I can’t drive you to Wildacre, but I’ll
drive you to Waterloo, and you’ll get a train there easy that’ll take
you straight to Wildacre.”
He flicked his whip and started. I do not know what streets we passed
through, but again I seemed to drive through miles and miles of them.
The rain poured down upon the pavements, which shone in murky glossiness
beneath the gas-lamps. The people flitted past like black ghosts,
beneath the shade of their dripping umbrellas. This was the gay city,
the city of my dreams. I had envied Felix his life in this city; I had
risked my life’s happiness to spend one day in it. And, behold! its
pleasures had turned to ashes in my mouth, and its light into horrible
murky darkness. It was a miserable city, a terrible city, a city that
made one feel fearfully, utterly alone.
We reached Waterloo at last, and my driver called a porter and asked him
to attend to me. Then he drove off instantly, and not until afterwards
did I remember that he had gone without even asking for his fare. The
porter escorted me to the right platform, but there we found a train to
Wildacre had just gone, and there would be no other for thirty-five
minutes. I sat down in my wet things upon a bench, and waited with
feverish impatience, whilst the clock overhead lagged through the
interminable minutes. Then what D’Arcy had said came true. Strange
horrible men came up and spoke to me. I sat mute, and answered never a
word, and my heart sickened with longing for Felix. The porter came for
me when the time was up, and put me into the train, and smiled
gratefully at me when I gave him half-a-crown. All through the journey
to Wildacre I sat in a kind of stupor, only waking from it when people
got in and out at the stations, or when a train whizzed past on its way
up to London. Then came the drive up the hill and across the common. It
was very cold on the common. The rain had now ceased to fall, and the
wind cut my face like a knife, but I was too weary to pull up the cab
windows. By the little sunken fence I dismissed the cab, and walked in
the darkness across the lawn to the honeysuckle porch. A flood of light
greeted me as I opened the door, and Anne Gillotson rushed out of the
dining-room looking white and agitated.
“Oh! I _am_ glad to see you safely back again, Miss,” she said. “It is
going on for ten o’clock, and I have been so anxious about you ever
since it became dark. Mr. Felix Gray has been here. He arrived about
nine o’clock, but when he found you were out he did not stay.”
I stood still in the hall, and a deadly sick feeling came over me. “Did
he ask where I was?” I managed to say.
“Yes, Miss. Oh, please don’t look like that,” replied Anne, almost
weeping. “I hope you’ll forgive me, but he was so stern and asked such
sharp questions I was obliged to tell him.”
“You told him——?”
“I told him that you had said you were going to spend the day with an
old schoolfellow who was staying near here.”
“And then?”
“Oh, dear! Miss, I am more vexed than I can say that it should have
happened, for he looked in a dreadful way and went straight out at the
door. I begged him to wait, but he said there would be no use in
waiting. Then he changed his mind and came in again, and said he’d leave
a note for you. I got him pen and paper and he wrote a short note. ‘Give
her this,’ he said, ‘when she returns, if she ever does return.’ Then he
went away. He has not been gone half an hour, Miss, if you’d only been a
little bit earlier you’d have caught him. My dear, how wet you are, and
how white you look; what does it all mean?”
“Where is the note?” I gasped.
She went into the dining-room and brought it out to me. I tore it open.
There were but two words written on the paper:
“Good-bye, Rosamund.”
This was the end. Upon me had been laid the punishing hand of God.
CHAPTER V.
NOT Ariadne passioning for Theseus’ flight ever felt such grief as mine
was then. Felix must have gone back to town in one of the trains that
whizzed past mine as I made the dreadful journey home. I had lost my
last chance by missing that earlier train at Waterloo. Thirty-five
minutes earlier, and we should not have whizzed past each other in
silent misery, and I might have been saved. If only I could have seen
him! I should have thrown myself upon his bosom, and clung to him and
entreated him. I should have poured out to him the whole story of my
wickedness and my sorrow, have forced him to believe in my remorse and
my love. I would have held him fast and never let him go. And he who
loved me so much, seeing my misery, seeing my real love, would have been
unable to tear himself away. But now, he had gone, he had said good-bye,
and all was over. I staggered where I stood, and the frightened
dressmaker came over to me and supported me. There was no strength left
in me any more. She led me upstairs, and took off my wet things, and put
me to bed like a baby.
Mute and unresisting I let her do as she would with me. Then she fetched
the charwoman to light my fire, and they whispered together, and through
my chilled stupor I could feel both were full of deep concern. They
brought me some hot drink later on, and I drank it after they had
implored me long, drank it just to be left in peace.
All through the night I lay there, cold, quiet, stupid. There had come
upon me a frost, a killing frost, and dead were the tender leaves of
hope. Sleep fled far away, and left me a watcher of mine own heart’s
sorrow. My bright day was done. I was for the dark; and no glimpse was
given to me, as to Charmian, of the far-off break in the clouds, and the
eastern star.
Never once during the miserable Sunday that followed that endless night
did I leave the house. I feared lest by some chance Felix might come
back and find me again absent. All the day long I watched from the
window, straining my eyes across the wide common even after light had
waned. Vain effort! No dark figure came towards me, such as I had seen
many a time before when waiting eagerly for Felix.
A second night. Again no sleep came near me. I think I was touched with
madness that second night. Whenever I closed my eyes I saw the wide
dreary common, and far away a dark figure which came on and on, yet
never drew nearer. On the Monday, although I knew it would be a
fruitless watch, I again set myself to stare out of the window across
the common. When the luncheon hour approached Anne came and forcibly
drew me away.
“Miss Gwynne,” she said, “I really must not allow you to go on like this
any longer. You will have a serious illness. Will you not tell me what
is wrong? Do, dear child; in some way I might be able to help. When we
are in trouble we never know from what quarter help may come. Tell me,
tell me, dear!”
“I have lost Felix,” I said, breaking down suddenly into wild sobs. “I
have lost Felix. He has said good-bye to me. He will never come back to
me again.”
“Oh! my dear, I hope it is not so bad as that.”
“Hope! There is no hope. I have been guilty of a base and cruel sin, and
this is my punishment. God is punishing me: there is no hope when He
punishes.”
“Oh, my dear! don’t say that. I think there is more hope than when man
does. Let us try to do something better for you than staring out of that
window. Can’t we go after Mr. Felix? He’s so fond of you I am sure if he
could see your poor changed face he’d forgive you anything!”
Could there yet be hope? Oh, Eastern Star! are you there, behind the
clouds? My heart beat wildly at the thought.
“Oh, yes! let us do that, let us go at once after Felix,” I cried, a
fever of impatience rising within me, and taking the place of the cold
numbness which had possessed me before.
“Very well,” said Anne, “we will go, but not until you have eaten a
solid luncheon. I will take no step from here until you have done that.”
I saw by her face she was determined, so followed her into the
dining-room. So deep a horror did I now feel of the great city, I had
not the courage to start off by myself. I forced some solid food down my
throat, the barouche was ordered, and in half an hour we were on the
weary way to London. It was half past two when we reached Waterloo. Two
days ago the place had breathed to me of pleasant anticipation, now it
was full of distressing associations. The bench against the wall wore a
terrible look of familiarity, so did the loungers who stared at me on
the wide platform. The face of the clock was as the face of an
inexorable enemy. “Too late,” it had said to me when I was striving to
hasten away from London, and then it had lagged through the minutes
which lost me Felix. “Too late,” it said now to my anxious heart, when I
was hastening back. It seemed to me ages before we could get a cab, and
again did miles and miles of streets seem to lie twixt me and my goal.
I flew up the stairs when I reached the house where Felix lodged, on and
on towards the top where he had often said he lived. The first door I
came to I opened. The room within was small and had a deserted look. A
fire was dying in the grate, pieces of brown paper and lengths of twine
lay about on the floor. One who had inhabited it had been packing there
and had gone. Flushing all over with almost unbearable misery I tore at
the bell. The landlady had been following me upstairs, and entered now
with Anne. A stout woman with a big pale face and dark eyes that looked
curiously at me.
“You are too late if you want to see Mr. Gray,” she said. “He has just
left. He gave up these rooms suddenly and has gone abroad to join a
relation; his grandmother, I think he said.”
As she spoke her face seemed to me to change, and to become enormously
big and white like that of my inexorable enemy the clock. I think I was
near swooning at that moment.
“Has he left any address?” asked Anne, divining by instinct the question
I had not strength to put myself.
“None whatever. He made up his mind very suddenly; in fact I don’t think
on Saturday he had any intention of going abroad at all. I heard nothing
of it until Sunday at any rate. All yesterday he was very busy arranging
his affairs, and this morning he paid his bill, and a week’s rent
instead of notice. He took everything away with him and said he should
not be returning. Poor gentleman! He looked very ill. There was some
trouble I am sure, but he was not one to talk about himself. I’m sorry I
can’t give you his address, but he gave me no hint of where he was going
any more than of why he was going. All I know for certain is that he
drove off to catch the club train, 3 P.M. from Victoria. Perhaps if you
drove after him at once you might be just in time to say good-bye. You
are not far from Victoria Station here.”
Strength came back to me at this suggestion. “Come,” I cried, seizing
hold of Anne’s cloak, and almost dragging her out of the room. Almost as
excited as I, she rushed after me down the stairs, and a moment later we
were tearing along the streets to Victoria. We wasted five precious
minutes by going first to an utterly wrong part of the station. I was
nearly frantic when I discovered this mistake, and no porter seemed to
have time to attend to us. At length a gentleman took pity on our
helplessness, and offered us his services.
“The club train, for going abroad—I must catch it,” I said feverishly.
“You are on quite a wrong platform. This is the Brighton and South Coast
line, you want the London, Chatham, and Dover. I doubt if you’ll catch
the club train, but we’ll see. Follow me—this way.”
We followed quickly where he led but it seemed a long way from the one
line to the other.
“Ah! Just in time! There’s your train!” exclaimed our guide when at last
we reached the right platform.
Yes, there it was, just a little ahead, to the right. I ran wildly
forward, my heart beating almost to suffocation. The others followed me.
“Oh, by Jove! Hard luck, the train’s off!” exclaimed the stranger-friend
behind me.
My knees trembled beneath me and I came suddenly to a full stop.
“And there he is!” screamed Anne. “Oh, look Miss, in that saloon
carriage, bending down. Oh, somebody, stop the train!”
Just for an instant, as the train sped by, I caught sight of Felix. A
desolate man in a grey suit sitting by the window with his face buried
in his hands. Oh! why did he not look up and see me standing there in
helpless misery? Only for an instant was I given this last glimpse of my
lover, then I found myself gazing at the back of the departing train.
“Oh, dear! Oh, dear!” cried Anne, wringing her hands. “How unfortunate
to miss him again and by so little. You are just too late every time. I
never saw such hard luck.”
“No,” I said, feeling quite numb with despair, “not hard luck. It is the
punishing hand, the punishing hand which has kept me back every time. It
is no use to struggle against the punishing hand. Take me home, Anne,
take me home.”
She took me home. Good kind woman, she would not let me succumb to
despair. The whole way back she kept telling me that Matthew would be
with me that evening, and that he would be surely able to do something,
he was so clever. So constantly did she give me this assurance that at
length I began to believe in it a little myself. A faint hope crept back
into my heart. Matthew might yet save me, Matthew who was so clever, so
ingenious, so full of resource; Matthew who was such an experienced man,
who had such a wonderful talent for knowing the right thing to do in a
difficulty. If anyone in the world could help me, surely Matthew could.
I dwelt upon this thought until it grew and grew in my mind, and became
a conviction that Matthew was to save me. How, I knew not, unless by
following Felix over the world himself, but somehow he was to save me.
I watched for his coming as a drowning man watches for a spar which the
waves are tossing to his side. Two hours after our return from London he
came, with his master. The barouche drove up gaily to the door, and the
two men got out, both looking radiant. This was the hour to which two
days ago I had so looked forward, and now it was all I could do to come
forward and greet the home-comers at all, so unbearable was my grief and
anxiety.
“Ah! Here she is! Here’s the Valkyrie!” cried my uncle, skipping up to
me, spotless, fresh, and bland as ever. “My dear, I have much pleasure
in shaking hands with you again. It is most pleasant to return to the
castle, and to feel I am once more on my own property. Not that I
haven’t enjoyed my visit immensely. Of course you know that I’ve been on
a pleasant visit, don’t you?”
Here he peered sharply and suspiciously into my face. Matthew gave me a
nudge. I knew what it meant. I was to ignore the lunatic asylum, and
converse with my uncle as if he had simply been away on a visit. The old
insupportable life was beginning again; beginning again without Felix.
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Transcriber’s Note
This book uses inconsistent spelling and hyphenation, which were
retained in the ebook version. Ditto marks used to represent
repeated text have been replaced with the text that they represent.
Some corrections have been made to the text, including normalizing
punctuation. Further corrections are noted below:
p. 10: its just like one I once made -> it's just like one I once
made
p. 28: I shouldn't care a tuppeny damn -> I shouldn't care a
tuppenny damn
p. 48: the awful hunted look of that women -> the awful hunted look
of that woman
p. 210: But suddenly the consciusness -> But suddenly the
consciousness