Hubert felt that he had been betrayed into displaying an excess of
emotion very foreign to the character of the cynic and the worldling
which he was desirous to assume. Circumstances, he told himself, had
been too strong for him. Even at the price of not making a study for a
novel of poor little Enid's personality--and how could he ever seriously
have thought of such a thing?--he must not risk close intercourse with
her. Her innocent allusions to the past, her guileless confidence in
himself, wrung his heart with shame and dismay. When he left her, he
wandered away to the other side of the sheet of water in front of the
house, until he came to a small fir plantation on the side of the hill
which rose from the water's edge. He had not been there for years, and
yet he had not forgotten a single turning in the narrow pathway that ran
deviously between the fir-tree shrubs; the memory of the little open
glade in the centre of the tiny wood had never lost its terrible
distinctness. Sometimes, when he closed his eyes, he could see every
detail of the scene, every branch of the fir-trees against the darkening
sky, every rise or depression in the mossy ground. The very scent of the
woods gave him a sickening sensation; the crunch of a broken twig made
him turn pale with the horror of a quick remembrance. For it was in the
fir-wood that Sydney Vane had been found murdered--it was in the
fir-wood that Hubert Lepel had first felt that his hand was red with his
cousin's blood.
He had not at first felt all the horror of his deed. He told himself
again and again that he had been justified in what he did. He had
punished a man for a base and craven act; he had challenged him and met
him in fair fight. By all the laws of honor he considered himself
justified. It was better that Marion Vane's heart should be broken by
her husband's death than by the news that he had deserted her. It was
better that Enid should think of her father as a saint and martyr, than
as a profligate whose hand no honest man or woman would care to hold.
Hubert Lepel sternly told himself that he had done good and not evil in
ridding the earth of a thoroughly bad man like Sydney Vane. If he might
have avowed the deed and its motive, he felt that he could almost have
gloried in it; but how to confess what he had done? At the first moment
of all he had refrained, in terrible fear of implicating Florence, not
knowing how far she would be mistress of herself; then, when he saw that
she was well able to defend her own reputation and that he might confess
the truth without bringing in her name at all--why, then he hesitated,
and found that his courage had deserted him. Florence entreated him to
conceal his act. He remembered that Sydney Vane had almost forced him to
use weapons--a course which Hubert himself would never have suggested;
and it was fatally easy to let things take their course. He hoped, in
his youthful ignorance of the laws of circumstantial evidence, that the
jury would bring in a verdict of suicide. When this hope was destroyed,
he still thought that the matter would be left a mystery--so many
mysteries were never cleared up at all! He did not think that any one
else could possibly be suspected. He was horrified when suspicion fell
upon Andrew Westwood, a poacher who had been vowing vengeance on Sydney
Vane for the past three months.
To the very end of the trial he hoped that Westwood would be acquitted.
When he had been condemned, Hubert vowed to himself that at any rate no
man should suffer death in his place. If no reprieve could be obtained,
no commutation of the sentence, he would speak out and set Andrew
Westwood free. The message of mercy came only just in time. He was on
the very point of delivering himself up to justice when news arrived
that Westwood's death sentence had been commuted to one of imprisonment
for life. Did that make things any better? Hubert thought that it did.
And his heart failed him--he could not bear the thought of public
disgrace, condemnation, punishment. He knew himself to be a coward and a
villain, and yet he could not bring himself to tell the truth. When Miss
Vane accused him of heartlessness because he explained his pallor by
saying that he had spent the previous evening with friends, he was in
reality suffering from the depression consequent on several nights of
sleepless agony of mind. He was not silent for his own sake alone. He
was afraid of implicating Flossy, the woman to whom Sydney Vane had
proposed love, and about whom he had quarrelled with her brother. It was
Flossy's share in the matter that sealed his lips; and from the moment
of his conversation with Florence at the library window his mind was
made up. He had gone too far to draw back--Andrew Westwood must bear his
fate. Lifelong imprisonment scarcely seemed more terrible to Hubert
Lepel just then than the life sentence of remorse which he had brought
on his own head.
Since those days his heart had grown harder. He had resolved to
forget--to fight down the secret consciousness of guilt which pursued
him night and day--to live his own life, in spite of the haunting sense
that he had sacrificed all that was good and noble in himself, all that
really made life worth having. He was striving hard, as he said to
Florence, to cast the past behind him, to live as if he were what he had
been before he bore about with him the shadow of a crime.
But, in the very first endeavor which Hubert Lepel made to act as if the
past were done away with, he was brought face to face with it again, and
made to feel as he had seldom felt before, that he had wronged not only
those who were dead, but those who were living--for he had let Florence
become the wife of a man, the mother of a child, whom she did not love,
and he had left the girl whom his own hand had made fatherless to
Florence's care. As to Westwood's child, she was in a worse case than
Enid Vane, for she was not only orphaned but homeless perhaps, and lost
to all that was good and pure.
He thought of this as he stood in the fir-wood, surveying the scene
where the suddenly-improvised duel had taken place; and, as the memory
of it grew upon him, he cast himself down on the mossy ground and sobbed
aloud. He had not shed a tear for years, and such as came now were few
and painful and bitter as gall; but they would not be repressed. It was
strange, even to himself, that he should be so beaten down by a little
thing--a child's simple words about her mother, a moment's loneliness in
the wood where her father had met his death. The world would not have
recognised him, the cold, subtle, polished, keen-witted _flaneur_, the
witty man of letters, critic, traveller, playwright, novelist, all in
one, in that crushed figure beneath the firs, with head bowed down,
hands clutched in agony, muscular frame shaken by the violence of
convulsive sobs. The convicted sinner, the penitent, had nothing in
common with Hubert Lepel, as known to the world at large.
Presently he came to himself a little and sat up, with his hands clasped
round his knees. Some strange thoughts visited him in those quiet
moments. What if he gave up the attempt to brave life out? What if he
acknowledged the truth and cleared poor Westwood's name? England would
ring from end to end with horror at his baseness. What of that if, by
confessing, he could lay to rest the terrors that at time took a hold of
his guilty soul--terrors, not of death, nor of what comes after
death--terrors of life and of the doom of baseness reserved for the soul
that will be base, the gradual declension of heart and mind for the man
who said, "Evil be thou my good?" He was not one who could bear as yet
to think of moral death without a shiver. He had fallen, he had sinned;
but, for his misery and his punishment, his soul was not yet dead. What
then if he should give himself up to justice after all? It seemed to
him, in that moment of solitude, that only by so doing could he regain
the freedom of mind, the peace of conscience which he had now forfeited,
perhaps for evermore.
He sat thinking of the possibilities of life opening out before him, and
decided that he could give them up without a pang. But there were
persons to be thought of beside himself. To his relatives, to the
relatives of the murdered man, the discovery of the truth would be a
terrible shock. There was no person--except that missing girl, of whom
he dared scarcely think--who could benefit by the clearing of Andrew
Westwood's name. The only gain that would accrue from his confession
would be, he considered, a subjective gain to himself. Abstract justice
would be done, no doubt, and Westwood's character would be cleared; but
that was all. He ought to have spoken earlier if he meant to do good by
speaking. Confession, he said to himself would be self-indulgence now.
Hubert Lepel was wonderfully well versed, in subtle turns of
argument--in casuistry of the abstruser kind. It was long since he had
looked truth full in the face or drawn a sharp boundary-line between
right and wrong. Not easy to him was it to get back from the varying
lights and shadows of self-deception to the radiant sunshine of truth.
With bitter remorse in his heart and a strangely passionate wish to
do--now at least--the right, he yet decided to bear the burden of
silence until his dying day--to say no word, to do no act, that should
ever revive in others' minds the memory of the Beechfield tragedy. He
was not naturally callous, and he knew that concealment of the truth
would be, as it had always been, an oppression, a weary weight upon him;
but he had made up his mind that it must be so.
"Moralists tell us never to do evil that good may come," he murmured to
himself, with head bowed upon his knees; "but surely in this case, when
it is not--not altogether my own good that I seek, a little evil may be
pardoned, a little wrong condoned! Heaven forgive me! If I have sinned,
I think that I have suffered too!"
He lifted up his head at last, and saw the red light of sunset burning
between the upright stems of the fir-trees, stealing with strange
crimson tints amongst the yellowing bracken and umber drift of
pine-needles, scarcely touching, however, the black shades of the
foliage overhead. With a sudden shiver Hubert rose to his feet. It
seemed to him that the red light looked like blood. He turned hastily to
go; he had lingered too long, had excited his own emotions too keenly.
He resolved that he would never visit the lonely fir-wood again. He
wondered why it had stood so long. If he had been the General, he would
have had the trees hewn down after the trial, and done away with every
memento of the place.
When he escaped from the shadow of the wood, and saw the red sun setting
behind the hills, sending long level beams over the tranquil meadows,
and bathing field and grove and highway-road alike in ruddy golden
light, he drew a long breath of relief. And yet he felt that he was not
quite the same man that had entered the wood an hour before. The
foundations of his soul had been shaken; he had made a resolve; he
looked at life from a new standpoint. The half-defiant determination to
make the best of the future which he had announced to his sister was
purged of its defiance. He would make the best of his future--yes. But
for this purpose he would injure no man or woman henceforward; he would
work with less selfishness of aim--for the good of the world at large as
well as for himself. Something seemed broken in him by that lonely hour
in the wood--some hardness, some coldness of temper was swept away. To
him perhaps Tennyson's words respecting Lancelot were applicable still--
"So groaned Sir Lancelot in remorseful pain,
Not knowing he should die a holy man."
Far enough from anything like holiness was Hubert Lepel, but a nobler
life was possible to him yet.
Florence commented that evening on his pale and wearied countenance, but
he smiled at her questions, and would not allow that anything ailed him.
He sat by her side for the greater part of the evening. It was as well,
he thought, to be chary of Enid's companionship. She was so sweet, so
frank, that she beguiled him into imprudent frankness in return. He
would not sit beside her at the piano therefore, or walk with her upon
the terrace, although she looked prettier than ever, with a new wistful
light in her blue eyes, a rose-flush upon her delicate cheeks. He knew
that she was disappointed when he did not come; no matter--the child
must not look on him as anything but a casual acquaintance who had
spoken a few rash words of compliment which it were idle to take too
seriously; and he would stay with Florence.
"Enid looks well to-night," said his sister, in her soft careless tones.
"She is a pretty little thing when in good health."
"Is she delicate?" Hubert asked, in some surprise.
"She has nervous attacks; she has had them at intervals ever since she
was nine years old." Nine years old--the date of her father's death!--as
Hubert knew. "At first we thought they were of an epileptic kind; but
the doctors say that they are purely nervous, and will cease when she is
older and stronger."
Hubert inquired no further. The subject was disagreeable to him,
inasmuch as it connected Enid's health with her parent's fate and his
sister's disastrous influence upon the family. It was always a matter of
keen regret to him that he had not been able to hinder Florence's
marriage, which she had prudently made a matter of secrecy until it was
too late for the General's friends to interfere. Her calm appropriation
of the position which she had secured, and, above all, the
pseudo-maternal way in which she spoke of Enid, irritated Hubert almost
beyond endurance.
He went back to London on the following day, promising to return to
Beechfield Hall before long. For some reason or other he felt eager to
get away--the air of the place seemed to excite his sensibilities
unduly, he told himself. It struck him afterwards that Enid looked very
pale and downcast when she bade him good-bye. He took his leave of her
hurriedly, feeling as if he did not like to look her full in the face.
He was afraid, that if he looked, he would be only too sure of what he
guessed--that her eyes were full of tears. He was almost glad that a
speedy return to London was incumbent upon him. He had next day to
superintend the rehearsal of his new play, which was shortly to be
produced at one of the smaller theatres; and as soon as he reached his
apartments he was immersed in business of every kind.
The next morning's rehearsal was followed by luncheon with friends, and
attendance at a _matinee_ given for the benefit of the widow and
children of an actor--a performance at which Hubert thought it well to
be present, although he invariably bemoaned the loss of time. The piece
was not over until six o'clock, and he amused himself afterwards by
going behind the scenes, and chatting with some of his acquaintances
among actors, actresses, managers, and critics. Thus it was nearly seven
before he issued from the theatre, in a street off the Strand, and the
day was already drawing to a close. The lamps were lighted and a fog was
gathering, through which their beams assumed a yellow and unnatural
intensity. Hubert stood on the edge of the pavement, leisurely drawing
on his gloves and looking out for a hansom, contrasting meanwhile the
glories of the Strand with those of the autumn woods in Hampshire, when
his attention was arrested by the sound of a woman's voice.
"If you please, Mr. Lepel, may I speak to you?"
He turned round hastily, and, after a moment's hesitation, recognised
the girl who had addressed him as a young actress whom he had lately
come to know. She had been playing a very small part in the comedy
which he had just seen. He vaguely remembered having heard her
name--she was known on the bills as Miss Cynthia West.