A STRANGE TRIO OF PASSENGERS
Before the open window of her room, looking out upon the fair wilderness
below, and over its high stone walls to the dim distant line of hills
vanishing in an ethereal mist, lay Mrs. Martival, and by her side stood
Bernard Maddison, looking down into her white suffering face.
Sorrow and time together had made strange havoc with its beauty, and yet
the lines had been laid on with no harsh hand. There was a certain
dignity which it had never lost, which indeed resigned and large-minded
sadness only enhances, and her simple religious life had given a touch
of spirituality to those thin, delicate features so exquisitely carved
and moulded. The bloom had gone from her cheeks for ever, and their
intense pallor was almost deathlike, matching very nearly her snow-white
hair, but her eyes seemed to have retained much of their old power and
sweetness, and the light which sometimes flashed in them lent her face a
peculiar charm. But now they were full of a deep anxiety as she lay
there, a restless disquiet which showed itself also in her nervously
twitching fingers.
Far away down the valley the little convent clock struck the hour, and
at its sound she looked up at him.
"You go at nine o'clock, Bernard?"
"At nine o'clock, mother, unless you wish me to stay."
She shook her head.
"No, I shall be better alone. This thing will crush me into the grave,
but death will be very welcome. Oh, my son, my son, that the sin of one
weak woman should have given birth to all this misery!"
He stooped over her, and held her thin fingers in his strong man's hand.
"Do not trouble about it, mother," he said. "I can bear my share. Try
and forget it."
Her eyes flashed strangely, and her lips parted in a smile which was no
smile.
"Forget it! That is a strange speech, Bernard. Have I the power to
beckon to those hills yonder, and bid them bow their everlasting heads?
Can I put back the hand of time, and live my life over again? Even so
futile is my power over memory. It is my penance, and I pray day and
night for strength to bear it."
Her voice died away with a little break, and there was silence. Soon she
spoke again.
"Tell me--something about her, Bernard."
His face changed, but it was only a passing glow, almost as though one
of those long level rays of sunlight had glanced for a moment across his
features.
"She is good and beautiful, and all that a woman should be," he
whispered.
"Does she know?"
He shook his head.
"She trusts me."
"Then you will be happy?" she asked eagerly. "Happy even if the worst
come! Time will wipe out the memory."
He turned away with a dull sickening pain at his heart. The worst he had
not told her. How could he? How could he add another to her sorrows by
telling her of the peril in which he stood? How could he tell her what
he suspected to be true--that in that quiet little Italian town English
detectives were watching his every movement, and that at any moment he
might be arrested? With her joyless life, and with this new misery
closing around her, would it not be well for her to die?
"It is farewell between us now, Bernard, then?" she said softly. "God
grant that you may be going back to a new and happier life. May I, who
have failed so utterly, give you just one word of advice?"
He bowed his head, for just then he could not have spoken. She raised
herself a little upon her couch, and felt for his hand.
"Bernard, you are not as your father was," she said; "yet you, too, have
something of the student in you. Don't think that I am going to say
anything against learning and culture. It is a grand thing for a man to
devote himself to; but, like everything else, in excess it has its
dangers. Sometimes it makes a man gloomy and reserved, and averse to all
change and society, and intolerant toward others. Bernard, it is bad for
his wife then. A woman sets so much store by little things--her
happiness is bound up in them. She is very, very human, and she wants to
be loved, and considered, and feel herself a great part in her husband's
life and thoughts. And if it is all denied to her, what is she to do? Of
necessity she must be miserable. A man should never let his wife feel
that she is shut out from any one of his great interests. He should
never let those little mutual ties which once held them together grow
weak, and fancy because he is living amongst the ghosts of great
thoughts that little human responsibilities have no claim upon him.
Bernard, you will remember all this!"
"Every word, mother," he answered. "Helen would thank you if she had
been here."
A horn sounded from outside, and he drew out his watch hastily.
"The diligence, mother!" he exclaimed; "I must go."
He took her frail form up into his arms, and kissed her.
"If all goes well," he said in a low tone, "I will bring her to you."
"If she will come, I shall die happy," she murmured. "But not against
her will or without knowing all. Farewell!"
That night three men were racing home to England as fast as express
train and steamer could bear them. One was Bernard Maddison, another Mr.
Benjamin Levy, and the third his artist friend.