FACING THE INEVITABLE
When Saturday morning arrived and the _Skylark_ had not been sighted,
Sir Charles began to grow suspicious. An hour or two later his worst
fears were confirmed. A letter was handed to him in Madeline's
handwriting. The postmark, he noticed, was Genoa. He could hardly keep
his hand steady while he tore open the envelope, and when he began to
read his face grew ashen.
The letter was brief and quite explicit. She had no intention, she said,
of returning again to Nice or to Cornwall. She was going back to America
with the Harveys. For many things she was sorry she ever left it. She
had been unhappy for months past--ever since the return of Gervase, in
fact. To become his wife was simply impossible. She expressed her regret
for any pain or annoyance she had caused, and her thanks for all
kindnesses she had received. She regarded the appearance of the Harveys
on the scene as an interposition of Providence, and her escape from an
intolerable position as a direct answer to prayer.
Sir Charles had not got over the anger and disgust produced by this
frank epistle when Gervase came hurriedly into the room, with blanched
cheeks and a wild light in his eyes.
"Do you know that Madeline has given us the slip?" he said, in a hoarse
whisper.
"Have you heard from her also?"
"Then you know?" he questioned, with a gasp. "What has she said to you?
Let me see her letter."
Sir Charles handed him Madeline's letter without a word. Gervase read it
carefully, and then handed it back with a little sigh of relief. She had
not told his father what she had told him, and for that mercy he was
supremely grateful.
For several moments the two men looked at each other in silence. Neither
had the courage to blame the other, and yet neither was disposed to take
the blame himself. Gervase was convinced that his father played the game
badly at the beginning, but he had played it worse at the end. Hence it
was bad policy to fling stones while he lived in a glass-house himself.
A similar train of thought wound its way slowly through Sir Charles's
brain. From his point of view Gervase had played the fool again and
again, though he saw now that the waiting policy he had advocated was a
huge mistake. So while he was inclined to throw the principal share of
blame on to Gervase's shoulders, he was bound to take a share himself.
"I suppose we may conclude," Gervase said, at length, in a lugubrious
tone, "that the game is up."
"I'm afraid it is," Sir Charles answered, with suppressed emotion.
"It's a beastly shame, for I've been counting on her fortune for years
past."
"It's an awful miss. Her fortune would have set the Tregonys on their
feet."
"It's no use trying to get her back, I suppose?"
"Do you think you could yet persuade her to marry you?"
Gervase blushed, and walked to the window and looked out into the
courtyard.
"Girls are such curious things," he muttered, evasively. "You never know
when you have them."
"I can't help thinking you played your cards badly, Gervase. She seemed
to idolise you when she came to Trewinion, and looked forward so eagerly
to your return."
"The mistake was in not marrying her right off when we met at
Washington. She would have said 'yes' like a shot, for she was awfully
gone on me. She adored soldiers at that time, and regarded me as a
hero."
Sir Charles heaved a sigh and remained silent for several moments.
"Would you mind letting me see her letter to you?" he questioned, at
length.
"Sorry, father, but--but--I've destroyed it," he blurted out, awkwardly.
This was not the truth, but he wouldn't for the world that his father
should read what she said to him.
"Destroyed it? What did you do that for?" Sir Charles asked,
suspiciously.
"I was just mad and hardly knew what I was doing. It seemed the only way
I could give vent to my anger. I tore it into millions of bits."
"What reasons did she give for her outrageous conduct?"
"Well, in some respects it was an awfully nice letter she wrote. She
said she admired me as a friend immensely. But she didn't love me as she
felt she ought to do, which made her unhappy, and so she thought it best
to go away without any fuss, and all that, don't you know."
"And do you believe she still admires you?"
"Why, of course I do. She said so, in fact. I wish I hadn't destroyed
her letter. There were some awfully nice sentiments in it, I can assure
you."
"Then why were you so angry?"
"Why, because I saw I was up a tree. When a girl you want to marry talks
about being a sister to you, and all that, don't you know, it makes one
angrier than anything."
"Well, yes, I suppose it does. I'm terribly disappointed, Madeline was a
chance in a lifetime."
"But rather smacked of trade, don't you think? You know very well if
she'd been an English girl, you wouldn't have considered her for a
moment."
"That may be. But since even dukes marry tradesmen's
daughters--provided, of course, they hail from across the water--there
was no reason why we should turn up our noses."
"I'm too poverty-stricken to turn up my nose at anything. I'd marry a
barmaid if she only had sufficient of the needful."
"Don't talk nonsense, Gervase, I thought you were really fond of
Madeline, apart from her money."
"So I am. She's awfully pretty, there's no denying that. But I'm too old
to break my heart over any woman. It's the tin--or the lack of it--that
is troubling me."
"You'll have to curtail your expenses, Gervase; there's nothing else for
it. I cannot possibly increase your allowance. The fact is, we shall
have to economise all round."
"I'm always economising," was the angry retort. "It's been pinch and
grind ever since I was born."
"That's not my fault, my boy. I'm getting the biggest rents I can
possibly squeeze out of the tenants as it is, and there's no chance of
things mending unless we can get Protection."
"And that we may whistle for."
"Why so?"
"Because the people have got educated. An awful mistake, I say, to
educate the working classes. An ignorant proletariat you may hoodwink
and bamboozle to your heart's content; but no enlightened community is
going to consent to have its bread taxed for the benefit of the
landowners."
"The people will have to be shown it's for their benefit. That's the
game to play."
"No doubt. But it will take a mighty clever man to prove even to a
public-house loafer that the dearer things are made, the better off he
will be."
"But you must not forget that there are some very clever men at work."
"They are not clever enough for that."
"You don't know. They have undertaken more difficult tasks and
succeeded. Think of South Africa!"
"I'd rather not. It won't bear thinking about."
"Nevertheless, it shows what can be done. The masses of the people are
more easily persuaded than you think. Education, you must remember, is
not sense. Hit upon a popular cry, and the rest is easy."
"But no country can be gulled twice in so short a period. No, dad, our
fortunes are not to be mended along those lines."
"I am not so sure. A good stirring appeal to patriotism will work
wonders still. 'England for the English----'"
"England for the English landlords, you mean, for that's what it comes
to in the end."
"No doubt it does. But while a few people own the land it is well that
the masses should think that England belongs to them."
"But do they think that England belongs to them?"
"Of course they do. There isn't a man-jack among them that will not talk
big about defending his country and dying for his country, when he
doesn't possess a foot of it, and hasn't money enough to buy a grave to
be buried in."
"Well, dad, I sincerely trust that your hopes will be realised, and that
England will consent to be gulled again for the benefit of a few. Good
heavens! if I'd only been an army contractor instead of a soldier, I
should have made my fortune."
"Your only hope of a fortune, Gervase, is by marrying one," and Sir
Charles put Madeline's letter into his pocket and walked out of the
room.
For the rest of the day Gervase loitered about alone. He was much more
troubled than he let his father see. Madeline had accused him of
treachery to Rufus Sterne, and had hinted in words too plain to be
misunderstood that she had proof that he bribed Tim Polgarrow to commit
perjury. If Madeline, therefore, had discovered this, how did he know
that other people had not made the same discovery? He felt that he could
not return to St. Gaved again until he knew. If Tim had let the secret
out, his best course would be to keep out of sight until the storm had
blown over, and people had forgotten the incident.
So it came about that Sir Charles and the others returned without him.
Gervase promised to follow in a week or two at the outside. But a run of
luck at Monte Carlo kept him a slave at the Casino. This was followed by
a run of bad luck during which he lost all he had won. Then he remained
on, trying to recover his lost position, and in the end he had to cable
to his father for a remittance to bring him home.
Gervase had not been at Trewinion many days before the truth about
Madeline began to leak out. Sir Charles had been too chagrined to give
the smallest hint as to her whereabouts, or even to mention her name if
it could be avoided, and Beryl and Lady Tregony took their cue from him.
But Gervase, discovering that he was still in good odour among the
people, and that the secret Madeline had discovered appeared to be known
to no one else, concluded that nothing was to be gained by a policy of
silence. He need not tell all the truth; in fact, he could put his own
gloss on the facts as they stood, and so it began to be whispered about
that Miss Grover had decided on visiting her friends in America before
finally settling in England.
Rufus Sterne heard the story from Mrs. Tuke with apparent unconcern. He
argued quite naturally that it was a matter of supreme indifference to
him whether she went to America or remained in England. His life--by
fair means or by foul--was drawing to its inevitable close. There was
some sense of satisfaction in the thought that she was not Gervase
Tregony's wife. She deserved a better fate than that. He hoped she had
discovered his true character and that among her own people in her own
country she would find all the happiness she deserved; and with these
reflections he tried to put her out of his mind.
His thoughts in the main were intent upon the tragedy that was daily
drawing nearer. His daily hope and prayer was that God would release him
from the burden of life, and so save him from the guilt and shame of
dying by his own hand.
Failing this, he had no doubt as to how the final act would be brought
about. Much as he shrank from the disgrace of dying in the manner
contemplated, he shrank more from the disgrace of living, should his
courage fail him. To face his ruined friend, his broken pledge, his
tarnished honour, would be death repeated every day, and every hour of
the day.
He was not a little surprised to find, as the days and weeks passed
swiftly away, how without effort and without volition his mind fastened
itself upon the dominant truths of Christianity. He gave up reading. He
still absented himself from church and chapel. But bit by bit the rags
of his materialistic philosophy dropped from him, while the simple
truths of the gospel possessed him and obsessed him, until he felt that
only here was life in any true sense to be found.
The philosophisings and hair-splittings of theologians did not concern
him. The elaborate edifices built up by the creed-makers possessed for
him no interest at all. But the warm sympathy of the Son of Man, the
tender influence of the universal Spirit, the growing consciousness of a
supreme Ruler, the clearing vision of a life beyond--these things seemed
as parts of his being, the stuff out of which his life was woven.
He wondered now that his youthful revolt from the narrow creed of his
grandfather should have carried him so far; wondered that he had not
earlier seen that human creeds must of necessity be ever too narrow to
represent the Divine idea; wondered that he had not seen the obvious
truth that ecclesiasticism may bear but a faint resemblance to
Christianity, and that "the Church," so called, may form but a very
small portion of the Kingdom of God.
But it was all clear enough to him now. He had cast away what he fancied
was only husk, not knowing that the kernel of truth was within. He had
tried to wrap his naked spirit in something thinner than a shadow, had
sought to choke the soul's deepest instinct in the quagmire of a Godless
philosophy, and had prated about happiness, while steeping his senses in
the fumes of a deadly narcotic.
What lay beyond he did not know. But he had a fancy that the great
universal Heart of Love would give him a chance under better conditions,
and that at worst it would be better than the awful torture of the last
few months. He was not afraid, and he was becoming again so terribly
weary that the thought of rest was infinitely sweet. There was very
little he had to give up. No home ties bound him to earth, no arms of
wife or children hung about his neck. His ambitions had been nipped by
the frosts of disappointment, and were now dead. His love for Madeline
Grover--which had been the strongest and purest passion of his life--was
hopeless from the first.
It was only existence amid familiar surroundings that he had to part
with--only existence! And yet how much that meant to him, even in the
darkest hours, no words could tell. The passion for life nothing could
kill, and that seemed to him one of the strong arguments in proof of
immortality.
One afternoon, in his little office, he fell down in a dead faint, and
remained unconscious for several hours. The long summer day was fading
into twilight when he opened his eyes, and saw the familiar face of Dr.
Pendarvis bending over him.
"Have I been ill?" he asked, looking round the room with wondering eyes.
"You've had a slight heat stroke, I think, but you needn't be alarmed."
"I'm not in the least alarmed," he said, with a pathetic smile; "but I
hate giving Mrs. Tuke so much trouble."
"You've been overworking yourself rather. I've seen it for months past.
When you are a little recovered, I'll give you a complete overhauling,"
and he smiled cheerfully.
"Then you think I shall recover?"
"Of course you will recover. But, meanwhile, keep quite still, and don't
worry."
Rufus hoped for a day or two that his illness would take a fatal turn.
He wanted so much to die quietly at home in bed; it would be such a
perfect solution of the whole difficulty. But it was not to be.
In a few days he was up and about again. "You want toning up," the
doctor said to him. "There is really nothing the matter with you except
that you are run down. Take more exercise, get a sea bath two or three
times a week, and be careful what you eat."
Rufus told Mrs. Tuke and Captain Tom Hendy what the doctor had
prescribed, and proceeded at once to carry out his orders. But no one
knew the thought that was in his mind. Some day he would not return from
his short swim in the sea, and then he would be at rest. It would be
very easy, and almost as natural as dying at home in bed.
The weather was brilliantly fine. The yellow corn was falling before the
sickle in all directions, the sea danced and shimmered in the sunshine,
the flowers drooped in the windless heat. To all appearances Rufus was
recovering his health and spirits. He told Mrs. Tuke that he enjoyed his
morning bath. His appetite seemed better than it had been for weeks
past, and once or twice she heard him humming a hymn tune after he had
gone upstairs to bed.
"I'm glad I stood by him," Mrs. Tuke reflected, with a smile of
self-satisfaction, "for I believe he is coming back to the fold again."
One evening Rufus sat up very late. He had gone through his papers again
to see that everything was in order, and now he sat staring at the clock
on the mantelpiece, and listening to its solemn and regular tick.
"To-morrow will be just as good as next week," he said to himself. "As
it must come, better it should come quickly. I could have done it this
morning easily enough, and I don't think it will be at all painful. So
let it be then," he added, rising to his feet. "The next time I go into
the sea I do not return," and he put the lights out, and climbed slowly
and silently to his bedroom.
Before undressing he knelt down and prayed. He asked for strength and
pardon, and a just and merciful judgment.
He felt like a child when he rose from his knees, and a few minutes
after he laid his head on the pillow he was fast asleep.