A little before six o'clock on that same Sunday, Jean Dunbarton opened
the communicating door between her own little sitting-room and the big
bare drawing-room of her grandfather's house in Eaton Square. She stood
a moment on the threshold, looking back over her shoulder, and then
crossed the drawing-room, treading softly on the parquet spaces between
the rugs. She went straight to the window, and was in the act of parting
the lace curtains to look out, when she heard the folding doors open.
With raised finger she turned to say 'Sh!' The servant stood silently
waiting, while she went back to the door she had left open and with an
air of caution closed it.
When she turned round again the butler had stepped aside to admit Mr.
Stonor. He came in with a quick impatient step; but before he had time
to get a word out--'Speak low, please,' the girl said. He was obviously
too much annoyed to pay much heed to her request, which if he thought
about it at all, he must have interpreted as consideration for the
ailing grandfather.
'I waited a full half-hour for you to come back,' he said in a tone no
lower than usual.
The girl had led the way to the side of the room furthest from the
communicating door. 'I am sorry,' she said dully.
'If you didn't mind leaving me like that,' he followed her up with his
arraignment, 'you might at least have considered Lady John.'
'Is she here with you?' Jean stopped by the sofa near the window.
'No,' he said curtly. 'My place was nearer than this and she was tired.
I left her to get some tea. We couldn't tell whether you'd be here, or
_what_ had become of you!'
'Mr. Trent got us a hansom.'
'Trent?'
'The chairman of the meeting.'
'Got us----?'
'Miss Levering and me.'
Stonor's incensed face turned almost brick colour as he repeated, '_Miss
Lev_----!'
Before he got the name out, the folding doors had opened again, and the
butler was saying, 'Mr. Farnborough.'
That young gentleman was far too anxious and flurried himself, to have
sufficient detachment of mind to consider the moods of other people. 'At
last!' he said, stopping short as soon as he caught sight of Stonor.
'Don't speak loud, please,' said Miss Dunbarton; 'some one is resting in
the next room.'
'Oh, did you find your grandfather worse?'--but he never waited to
learn. 'You'll forgive the incursion when you hear'--he turned abruptly
to Stonor again. 'They've been telegraphing you all over London,' he
said, putting his hat down in the nearest chair. 'In sheer despair they
set me on your track.'
'Who did?'
Farnborough was fumbling agitatedly in his breast-pocket. 'There was the
devil to pay at Dutfield last night. The Liberal chap tore down from
London, and took over your meeting.'
'Oh? Nothing about it in the Sunday paper I saw.'
'Wait till you see the press to-morrow! There was a great rally, and the
beggar made a rousing speech.'
'What about?'
'Abolition of the Upper House.'
'They were at that when I was at Eton.' Stonor turned on his heel.
'Yes, but this man has got a way of putting things--the people went
mad.'
It was all very well for a mere girl to be staring indifferently out of
the window, while a great historic party was steering straight for
shipwreck; but it really was too much to see this man who ought to be
taking the situation with the seriousness it deserved, strolling about
the room with that abstracted air, looking superciliously at Mr.
Dunbarton's examples of the Glasgow school. Farnborough balanced himself
on wide-apart legs and thrust one hand in his trousers' pocket. The
other hand held a telegram. 'The Liberal platform as defined at Dutfield
is going to make a big difference,' he pronounced.
'You think so,' said Stonor, dryly.
'Well, your agent says as much.' He pulled off the orange-brown
envelope, threw it and the reply-paid form on the table, and held the
message under the eyes of the obviously surprised gentleman in front of
him.
'My agent!' Stonor had echoed with faint incredulity.
He took the telegram. '"Try find Stonor,"' he read. 'H'm! H'm!' His eyes
ran on.
Farnborough looked first at the expressionless face, and then at the
message.
'You see!'--he glanced over Stonor's shoulder--'"tremendous effect of
last night's Liberal manifesto ought to be counteracted in to-morrow's
papers."' Then withdrawing a couple of paces, he said very earnestly,
'You see, Mr. Stonor, it's a battle-cry we want.'
'Clap-trap,' said the great man, throwing the telegram down on the
table.
'Well,' said Farnborough, distinctly dashed, 'they've been saying we
have nothing to offer but personal popularity. No practical reform,
no----'
'No truckling to the masses, I suppose.'
Poor Farnborough bit his lip. 'Well, in these democratic days, you're
obliged (I should _think_), to consider----' In his baulked and snubbed
condition he turned to Miss Dunbarton for countenance. 'I hope you'll
forgive my bursting in like this, but'--he gathered courage as he caught
a glimpse of her averted face--'I can see you realize the gravity of the
situation.' He found her in the embrasure of the window, and went on
with an air of speaking for her ear alone. 'My excuse for being so
officious--you see it isn't as if he were going to be a mere private
member. Everybody knows he'll be in the Cabinet.'
'It may be a Liberal Cabinet,' came from Stonor at his dryest.
Farnborough leapt back into the fray. 'Nobody thought so up to last
night. Why, even your brother----' he brought up short. 'But I'm afraid
I'm really seeming rather _too_----' He took up his hat.
'What about my brother?'
'Oh, only that I went from your house to the club, you know--and I met
Lord Windlesham as I rushed up the Carlton steps.'
'Well?'
'I told him the Dutfield news.'
Stonor turned sharply round. His face was much more interested than any
of his words had been.
As though in the silence, Stonor had asked a question, Farnborough
produced the answer.
'Your brother said it only confirmed his fears.'
'Said that, did he?' Stonor spoke half under his breath.
'Yes. Defeat is inevitable, he thinks, unless----' Farnborough waited,
intently watching the big figure that had begun pacing back and forth.
It paused, but no word came, even the eyes were not raised.
'Unless,' Farnborough went on, 'you can manufacture some political
dynamite within the next few hours. Those were his words.'
As Stonor resumed his walk he raised his head and caught sight of Jean's
face. He stopped short directly in front of her.
'You are very tired,' he said.
'No, no.' She turned again to the window.
'I'm obliged to you for troubling about this,' he said, offering
Farnborough his hand with the air of civilly dismissing him. 'I'll see
what can be done.'
Farnborough caught up the reply-paid form from the table. 'If you'd like
to wire I'll take it.'
Faintly amused at this summary view of large complexities, 'You don't
understand, my young friend,' he said, not unkindly. 'Moves of this sort
are not rushed at by responsible politicians. I must have time for
consideration.'
Farnborough's face fell. 'Oh. Well, I only hope some one else won't jump
into the breach before you.' With his watch in one hand, he held out the
other to Miss Dunbarton. 'Good-bye. I'll just go and find out what time
the newspapers go to press on Sunday. I'll be at the Club,' he threw
over his shoulder, 'just in case I can be of any use.'
'No; don't do that. If I should have anything new to say----'
'B-b-but with our party, as your brother said, "heading straight for a
vast electoral disaster," and the Liberals----'
'If I decide on a counter-blast, I shall simply telegraph to
headquarters. Good-bye.'
'Oh! A--a--good-bye.'
With a gesture of 'the country's going to the dogs,' Farnborough opened
the doors and closed them behind him.
Jean had rung the bell. She came back with her eyes on the ground, and
paused near the table where the crumpled envelope made a dash of
yellow-brown on the polished satinwood. Stonor stood studying the
carpet, more concern in his face now that there was only Jean to see it.
'"Political dynamite," eh?' he repeated, walking a few paces away. He
returned with, 'After all, women are much more Conservative _naturally_
than men, aren't they?'
Jean's lowered eyes showed no spark of interest in the issue. Her only
motion, an occasional locking and unlocking of her fingers. But no words
came. He glanced at her, as if for the first time conscious of her
silence.
'You see now'--he threw himself into a chair--'one reason why I've
encouraged you to take an interest in public questions. Because people
like us don't go screaming about it, is no sign we don't--some of
us--see what's on the way. However little they may want to, women of our
class will have to come into line. All the best things in the world,
everything civilization has won, will be in danger if--when this change
comes--the only women who have practical political training are the
women of the lower classes. Women of the lower classes,' he repeated,
'_and_'--the line between his eyebrows deepening--'women inoculated by
the Socialist virus.'
'Geoffrey!'
He was in no mood to discuss a concrete type. To so intelligent a girl,
a hint should be enough. He drew the telegraph-form that still lay on
the table towards him.
'Let us see how it would sound, shall we?'
He detached a gold pencil from one end of his watch-chain, and, with
face more and more intent, bent over the paper, writing.
The girl opened her lips more than once to speak, and each time fell
back again on her silent, half-incredulous misery.
When Stonor finished writing, he held the paper off, smiling a little,
with the craftsman's satisfaction in his work, and more than a touch of
shrewd malice--
'Enough dynamite in that,' he commented. 'Rather too much, isn't there,
little girl?'
'Geoffrey, I know her story.'
He looked at her for the first time since Farnborough left the room.
'Whose story?'
'Miss Levering's.'
'_Whose?_' He crushed the rough note of his manifesto into his pocket.
'Vida Levering's.'
He stared at the girl, till across the moment's silence a cry of misery
went out--
'Why did you desert her?'
'I?' he said, like one staggered by the sheer wildness of the charge.
'_I?_'
But no comfort of doubting seemed to cross the darkness of Jean's
backward look into the past.
'Oh, why did you do it?'
'What, in the name of----? What has she been saying to you?'
'Some one else told me part. Then the way you looked when you saw her at
Aunt Ellen's--Miss Levering's saying you didn't know her--then your
letting out that you knew even the curious name on the handkerchief--oh,
I pieced it together.'
While she poured out the disjointed sentences, he had recovered his
self-possession.
'Your ingenuity is undeniable,' he said coldly, rising to his feet. But
he paused as the girl went on--
'And then when she said that at the meeting about "the dark hour," and I
looked at her face, it flashed over me----Oh, why did you desert her?'
It was as if the iteration of that charge stung him out of his chill
anger.
'I _didn't_ desert her,' he said.
'Ah-h!' Her hands went fluttering up to her eyes, and hid the quivering
face. Something in the action touched him, his face changed, and he made
a sudden passionate movement toward the trembling figure standing there
with hidden eyes. In another moment his arms would have been round her.
Her muffled voice saying, 'I'm glad. I'm glad,' checked him. He stood
bewildered, making with noiseless lips the word '_Glad?_' She was 'glad'
he hadn't tired of her rival? The girl brushed the tears from her eyes,
and steadied herself against the table.
'She went away from you, then?'
The momentary softening had vanished out of Geoffrey Stonor's face. In
its stead the look of aloofness that few dared brave, the warning 'thus
far and no farther' stamped on every feature, he answered--
'You can hardly expect me to enter into----'
She broke through the barrier without ruth--such strength, such courage
has honest pain.
'You mean she went away from you?'
'Yes!' The sharp monosyllable fell out like a thing metallic.
'Was that because you wouldn't marry her?'
'I couldn't marry her--and she knew it.' He turned on his heel.
'Did you want to?'
He paused nearly at the window, and looked back at her. She deserved to
have the bare 'yes,' but she was a child. He would soften a little the
truth's harsh impact upon the young creature's shrinking jealousy.
'I thought I wanted to marry her then. It's a long time ago.'
'And why couldn't you?'
He controlled a movement of strong irritation. 'Why are you catechizing
me? It's a matter that concerns another woman.'
'If you say it doesn't concern me, you're saying'--her lip
trembled--'saying that you don't concern me.'
With more difficulty than the girl dreamed, he compelled himself to
answer quietly--
'In those days--I--I was absolutely dependent on my father.'
'Why, you must have been thirty, Geoffrey.'
'What? Oh--thereabouts.'
'And everybody says you're so clever.'
'Well, everybody's mistaken.'
She left the table, and drew nearer to him. 'It must have been terribly
hard----'
Sounding the depth of sympathy in the gentle voice, he turned towards
her to meet a check in the phrase--
'----terribly hard for you both.'
He stood there stonily, but looking rather handsome in his big, sulky
way. The sort of person who dictates terms rather than one to accept
meekly the thing that might befall.
Something of that overbearing look of his must have penetrated the
clouded consciousness of the girl, for she was saying--
'You! a man like _you_ not to have had the freedom, that even the lowest
seem to have----'
'Freedom?'
'To marry the woman they choose.'
'She didn't break off our relations because I couldn't marry her.'
'Why was it, then?'
'You're too young to discuss such a story.' He turned away.
'I'm not so young,' said the shaking voice, 'as she was when----'
'Very well, then, if you will have it!' His look was ill to meet, for
any one who loved him. 'The truth is, it didn't weigh upon her as it
seems to on you, that I wasn't able to marry her.'
'Why are you so sure of that?'
'Because she didn't so much as hint at it when she wrote that she meant
to break off the--the----'
'What made her write like that?'
'Why _will_ you go on talking of what's so long over and ended?'
'What reason did she give?'
'If your curiosity has so got the upper hand, _ask her_.'
Her eyes were upon him. In a whisper, 'You're afraid to tell me,' she
said.
He went over to the window, seeming to wait there for something that did
not come. He turned round at last.
'I still hoped, at _that_ time, to win my father over. She blamed me
because'--again he faced the window and looked blindly out--'if the
child had lived it wouldn't have been possible to get my father to--to
overlook it.'
'You--wanted--it _overlooked_?' the girl said faintly. 'I don't
underst----'
He came back to her on a wave of passion. 'Of course you don't
understand. If you did you wouldn't be the beautiful, tender, innocent
child you are.' He took her hand, and tried to draw her to him.
She withdrew her hand, and shrank from him with a movement, slight as it
was, so tragically eloquent, that fear for the first time caught hold of
him.
'I am glad you didn't mean to desert her, Geoffrey. It wasn't your
fault, after all--only some misunderstanding that can be cleared up.'
'_Cleared up?_'
'Yes, cleared up.'
'You aren't thinking that this miserable old affair I'd as good as
forgotten----'
He did not see the horror-struck glance at the door, but he heard the
whisper--
'_Forgotten!_'
'No, no'--he caught himself up--'I don't mean exactly forgotten. But
you're torturing me so that I don't know what I'm saying.' He went
closer. 'You aren't going to let this old thing come between you and
me?'
She pressed her handkerchief to her lips, and then took it away.
'I can't make or unmake the past,' she said steadily. 'But I'm glad, at
least, that you didn't mean to desert her in her trouble. You'll remind
her of that first of all, won't you?'
She was moving across the room as she spoke, and, when she had ended,
the handkerchief went quickly to her lips again as if to shut the door
on sobbing.
'Where are you going?' He raised his voice. 'Why should I remind
_any_body of what I want only to forget?'
'Hush! Oh, hush!' A moment she looked back, holding up praying hands.
His eyes had flown to the door. 'You don't mean _she's_----'
'Yes. I left her to get a little rest.'
He recoiled in an access of uncontrollable anger. She followed him.
Speechless, he eluded her, and went for his hat.
'Geoffrey,' she cried, 'don't go before you hear me. I don't know if
what I think matters to you now, but I hope it does. You can still'--her
voice was faint with tears--'still make me think of you without
shrinking--if you will.'
He fixed her for a moment with eyes more stern than she had ever seen.
'What is it you are asking of me?' he said.
'To make amends, Geoffrey.'
His anger went out on a wave of pity. 'You poor little innocent!'
'I'm poor enough. But'--she locked her hands together like one who
summons all her resolution--'I'm not so innocent but what I know you
must right that old wrong now, if you're ever to right it.'
'You aren't insane enough to think I would turn round in these few hours
and go back to something that ten years ago was ended forever!' As he
saw how unmoved her face was, 'Why,' he burst out, 'it's stark, staring
madness!'
'No!' She caught his arm. 'What you did ten years ago--that was mad.
This is paying a debt.'
Any man looking on, or hearing of Stonor's dilemma, would have said,
'Leave the girl alone to come to her senses.' But only a stupid man
would himself have done it. Stonor caught her two hands in his, and drew
her into his arms.
'Look, here, Jeannie, you're dreadfully wrought up and excited--tired,
too.'
'No!' She freed herself, and averted the tear-stained face. 'Not tired,
though I've travelled far to-day. I know you smile at sudden
conversions. You think they're hysterical--worse--vulgar. But people
must get their revelation how they can. And, Geoffrey, if I can't make
you see this one of mine, I shall know your love could never mean
strength to me--only weakness. And I shall be afraid,' she whispered.
Her dilated eyes might have seen a ghost lurking there in the
commonplace room. 'So afraid I should never dare give you the chance of
making me loathe myself.' There was a pause, and out of the silence fell
words that were like the taking of a vow. 'I would never see you again.'
'How right I was to be afraid of that vein of fanaticism in you!'
'Certainly you couldn't make a greater mistake than to go away now and
think it any good ever to come back. Even if I came to feel different, I
couldn't _do_ anything different. I should _know_ all this couldn't be
forgotten. I should know that it would poison my life in the end--yours
too.'
'She has made good use of her time!' he said bitterly. Then, upon a
sudden thought, 'What has changed _her_? Has she been seeing visions
too?'
'What do you mean?'
'Why is she intriguing to get hold of a man that ten years ago she
flatly refused to see or hold any communication with?'
'Intriguing to get hold of? She hasn't mentioned you!'
'What! Then how, in the name of Heaven, do you know--she wants--what you
ask?'
'There can't be any doubt about that,' said the girl, firmly.
With all his tenderness for her, so little still did he understand what
she was going through, that he plainly thought all her pain had come of
knowing that this other page was in his life--he had no glimpse of the
girl's passionate need to think of that same long-turned-over page as
unmarred by the darker blot.
'You absurd, ridiculous child!' With immense relief he dropped into the
nearest chair. 'Then all this is just your own unaided invention. Well,
I could thank God!' He passed his handkerchief over his face.
'For what are you thanking God?'
He sat there obviously thinking out his plan of action.
'Suppose--I'm not going to risk it--but _suppose_----' He looked up, and
at the sight of Jean's face he rose with an expression strangely gentle.
The rather hard eyes were softened in a sudden mist. 'Whether _I_
deserve to suffer or not, it's quite certain _you_ don't. Don't cry,
dear one. It never was the real thing. I had to wait till I knew you
before I understood.'
Her own eyes were brimming as she lifted them in a passion of gratitude
to his face.
'Oh! is that true? Loving you has made things clear to me I didn't dream
of before. If I could think that because of me you were able to do
this----'
'You go back to that?' He seized her by the shoulders, and said
hoarsely, 'Look here! Do you seriously ask me to give up the girl I
love--to go and offer to marry a woman that even to think of----'
'You cared for her once!' she cried. 'You'll care about her again. She
is beautiful and brilliant--_every_thing. I've heard she could win any
man----'
He pushed the girl from him. 'She's bewitched you!' He was halfway to
the door.
'Geoffrey, Geoffrey, you aren't going away like that? This isn't _the
end_?'
The face he turned back upon her was dark and hesitating. 'I suppose if
she refused me, you'd----'
'She won't refuse you.'
'She did once.'
'She didn't refuse to marry you.'
As she passed him on the way to her sitting-room he caught her by the
arm.
'Stop!' he said, glancing about like one hunting desperately for a means
of gaining a few minutes. 'Lady John is waiting all this time at my
house for the car to go back with a message.'
'_That's_ not a matter of life and death!' she said, with all the
impatience of the young at that tyranny of little things which seems to
hold its unrelenting sway, though the battlements of righteousness are
rocking, and the tall towers of love are shaken to the nethermost
foundation-stones.
'No, it's not a matter of life and death,' Stonor said quietly. 'All the
same, I'll go down and give the order.'
'Very well.' Of her own accord this time she stopped on her way to that
other door, behind which was the Past and the Future incarnate in one
woman. 'I'll wait,' said Jean. She went to the table. Sitting there with
her face turned from him, she said, quite low, 'You'll come back, if
you're the man I pray you are.'
Her self-control seemed all at once to fail. She leaned her elbows on
the table and broke into a flood of silent tears, with face hidden in
her hands.
He came swiftly back, and bent over her a moved, adoring face.
'Dearest of all the world,' he began, in that beautiful voice of his.
His arms were closing round her, when the door on the left was softly
opened. Vida Levering stood on the threshold.