It was the old housekeeper at Coryston, one Mrs. Drew, who had been the
presiding spirit of the house in all its domestic aspects for some thirty
years, who came at the summons of Marcia's frightened maid, and helped the
girl to revive her mistress, without alarming Lady Coryston. And before the
news could reach her mother in other ways, Marcia herself went in to tell
her what she must know.
Lady Coryston had had a bad night, and was sitting up in bed gazing
straight before her, her gaunt hands lying listlessly on a pile of letters
she had not yet opened. When Marcia came in, a white ghost, still shivering
under nervous shock, her mother looked at her in sudden dismay. She sprang
forward in bed.
"What!--Marcia!--have you seen Arthur?"
Marcia shook her head.
"It's not Arthur, mother!"
And standing rigid beside her mother's bed, she told her news, so far as
those piteous deaths at Redcross Farm were concerned. Of her own position,
and of the scene which had passed between herself and Newbury the preceding
day, she said not a word.
On the facts presented to her, Lady Coryston was first bewildered, then
irritated. Why on earth should Marcia take this morbid and extravagant
interest in the affairs of such people? They were not even tenants of the
Coryston estates! It was monstrous that she should have taken them up
at all, and most audacious and unbecoming that she should have tried
to intercede for them with the Newburys, as she understood, from her
daughter's hardly coherent story, had been the case. And now, she
supposed, as Marcia had actually been so foolish, so headstrong, as to go
herself--without permission either from her mother or her betrothed--to
see these two people at the farm, the very day before this horrible thing
happened, she might have to appear at the inquest. Most improper and
annoying!
However, she scarcely expressed her disapproval aloud with her usual
trenchancy. In the first place, Marcia's tremulous state made it difficult.
In the next, she was herself so far from normal that she could not, after
the first few minutes, keep her attention fixed upon the matter at all. She
began abruptly to question Marcia as to whether she had seen Arthur the
night before--or that morning?
"I had gone up-stairs before he arrived last night--and this morning he's
not yet down," said the girl, perfunctorily, as though she only answered
the question with her lips, without attaching any real meaning to it. Then
her mother's aspect, which on her entrance she had scarcely noticed, struck
her with a sudden and added distress.
"You don't look well, mother. Don't come down to-day."
"I shall certainly come down by luncheon-time," said Lady Coryston,
sharply. "Tell Arthur that I wish to have some conversation with him before
he goes back to London. And as for you, Marcia, the best thing you can do
is to go and rest for a time, and then to explain all you have been doing
to Edward. I must say I think you will have a great deal to explain. And
I shall scold Bellows and Mrs. Drew for letting you hear such a horrible
thing at all--without coming to me first."
"Mother!" cried Marcia, in a kind of despair. "Aren't you--aren't you sorry
for those two people?--and don't you understand that I--I hoped I might
have helped them?"
At last she began to weep. The tears ran down her cheeks. Lady Coryston
frowned.
"Certainly, I'm sorry. But--the fact is, Marcia--I can't stand any extra
strain this morning. We'll talk about it again when you're more composed.
Now go and lie down."
She closed her eyes, looking so gray and old that Marcia, seized with a
new compunction, could only obey her at once. But on the threshold she was
called back.
"If any messenger arrives with a letter for Arthur--tell them down-stairs
to let me know."
"Yes, mother."
As soon, however, as she had closed the door Marcia's tired mind
immediately dismissed the subject of Arthur, even of her mother. The tumult
of anguish returned upon her in which she had stood ever since she had
come back from her faint to the bitter consciousness of a world--an awful
world--where people can die of misery for lack of pity, for lack of help,
and yet within a stone's-throw of those who yearned to give them both.
She went back to her room, finished her dressing mechanically, wrote a
short letter, blotting it with tears, and then went tottering down-stairs.
In the central hall, a vast pillared space, crowded with statuary and
flowers, where the men of the house were accustomed to smoke and read the
newspapers after breakfast, she perceived Reginald Lester sitting alone.
He sprang up at sight of her, came to her, took her hands, looked into her
face, and then stooped and kissed her fingers, respectfully, ardently; with
such an action as a brother might have used to a much younger sister.
She showed no surprise. She simply lifted her eyes to him, like a miserable
child--saying under her breath:
"You know--I saw them--the night before last?"
"I know. It has been a fearful shock. Is there anything I can do for you?"
For he saw she had a letter in her hand.
"Please tell them to send this letter. And then--come back. I'll go to the
library."
She went blindly along the passages to the library, hearing and flying from
the voices of Sir Wilfrid and Arthur in the dining-room as she passed. When
Lester returned, he saw her standing by his desk, lost in an abstraction of
grief. But she roused herself at sight of him, and asked for any further
news there might be. Lester, who had been suffering from a sprained wrist,
had that morning seen the same doctor who had been called in on the
discovery of the tragedy.
"It must all have happened within an hour. His sister, who had come to stay
with them, says that John Betts had seemed rather brighter in the
evening, and his wife rather less in terror. She spoke very warmly to her
sister-in-law of your having come to see her, and said she had promised
you to wait a little before she took any step. Then he went out to the
laboratory, and there, it is supposed, he was overcome by a fit of acute
depression--the revolver was in his drawer--he scrawled the two words
that were found--and you know the rest. Two people on the farm heard the
shot--but it was taken as fired by the night watcher in a field beyond,
which was full of young pheasants. About midnight Mrs. Betts went out to
bring him in--her sister-in-law having gone up to bed. She never came back
again--no one heard a sound--and they were not discovered till the morning.
How long she was alone with him before she killed herself cannot even be
guessed."
Marcia's trembling fingers fumbled at the bosom of her dress. She drew out
a crumpled paper, and pushed it toward him. He read:
"Good-by, dear Miss Coryston. He sits so still--not much injured. I have
often seen him look so. My John--my John--I can't stay behind. Will you
please do something for my boy? John--John--if only we hadn't met again--"
It ended incoherently in blots and smudges.
"You poor child!" said Lester, involuntarily, as he looked up from the
letter. It was a word of sudden compassion wrested from him by the sight
of Marcia's intolerable pain. He brought forward one of the deep library
chairs, and made her sit in it, and as he bent over her his sympathy drew
from her piteous little cries and stifled moans which he met with answering
words of comfort. All consciousness of sex dropped away; the sharp-chinned
face, the blue, black-fringed eyes, behind their spectacles, the noble brow
under its pile of strong grizzled hair:--she saw them all as an embodied
tenderness--courage and help made visible--a courage and help on which she
gradually laid hold. She could not stop to ask herself how it was that, in
this moment of shock and misery, she fell so naturally into this attitude
of trust toward one with whom she had never yet set up any relation but
that of a passing friendship. She only knew that there was comfort in his
voice, his look, in his understanding of her suffering, in the reticence
with which he handled it. She had lived beside him in the same house for
months without ever really knowing him. Now suddenly--here was a friend--on
whom to lean.
But she could not speak to him of Newbury, though it was the thought of
Newbury that was burning her heart. She did mention Coryston, only to say
with energy: "I don't want to see him yet--not _yet_!" Lester could
only guess at her meaning, and would not have probed her for the world.
But after a little she braced herself, gave him a grateful, shrinking look,
and, rising, she went in search of Sir Wilfrid and Arthur.
Only Sir Wilfrid was in the hall when she reentered it. He had just
dismissed a local reporter who had got wind of Miss Coryston's visit to the
farm, and had rushed over to Coryston, in the hope of seeing her.
"My dear child!" He hurried to meet her. "You look a perfect wreck! How
_abominable_ that you should be mixed up with this thing!"
"I couldn't help it," she said, vaguely, turning away at once from the
discussion of it. "Where is Arthur? Mother wanted me to give him a
message."
[Illustration: NOW SUDDENLY--HERE WAS A FRIEND--ON WHOM TO LEAN]
Sir Wilfrid looked uneasy.
"He was here till just now. But he is in a curious state of mind. He thinks
of nothing but one thing--and one person. He arrived late last night, and
it is my belief that he hardly went to bed. And he is just hanging on the
arrival of a letter--"
"From Enid Glenwilliam?"
"Evidently. I tried to get him to realize this horrible affair--the part
the Newburys had played in it--the effect on you--since that poor creature
appealed to you. But no--not a bit of it! He seems to have neither eyes nor
ears--But here he is!"
Sir Wilfrid and Marcia stepped apart. Arthur came into the hall from the
library entrance. Marcia saw that he was much flushed, and that his face
wore a hard, determined look, curiously at variance with its young features
and receding chin.
"Hullo, Marcia! Beastly business, this you've been getting into. Think, my
dear, you'd have done much better to keep out of it--especially as you and
Newbury didn't agree. I've just seen Coryston in the park--he confessed
he'd set you on--and that you and Newbury had quarreled over it.
_He's_ perfectly mad about it, of course. That you might expect. I
say--mother is late!"
He looked round the hall imperiously.
Marcia, supporting herself on a chair, met his eyes, and made no reply.
Yet she dimly remembered that her mother had asked her to give him some
message.
"Arthur, remember that your sister's had a great shock!" said Sir Wilfrid,
sternly.
"I know that! Sorry for you, Marcia--awfully--but I expect you'll have to
appear at the inquest--don't see how you can get out of it. You should
have thought twice about going there--when Newbury didn't want you to. And
what's this they say about a letter?"
His tone had the peremptory ring natural to many young men of his stamp, in
dealing with their inferiors, or--until love has tamed them--with women;
but it came strangely from the good-tempered and easy-going Arthur.
Marcia's hand closed instinctively on the bosom of her dress, where the
letter was.
"Mrs. Betts wrote me a letter," she said, slowly.
"You'd better let me see it. Sir Wilfrid and I can advise you."
He held out an authoritative hand. Marcia made no movement, and the hand
dropped.
"Oh, well, if you're going to take no one's advice but your own, I suppose
you must gang your own gait!" said her brother, impatiently. "But if you're
a sensible girl you'll make it up with Newbury and let him keep you out of
it as much as possible. Betts was always a cranky fellow. I'm sorry for the
little woman, though."
And walking away to a distant window at the far end of the hall, whence all
the front approaches to the house could be seen, he stood drumming on the
glass and fixedly looking out. Sir Wilfrid, with an angry ejaculation,
approached Marcia.
"My dear, your brother isn't himself!--else he could never have spoken so
unkindly. Will you show me that letter? It will, of course, have to go to
the police."
She held it out to him obediently.
Sir Wilfrid read it. He blew his nose, and walked away for a minute.
When he returned, it was to say, with lips that twitched a little in his
smooth-shaven actor's face:
"Most touching! If one could only have known! But dear Marcia, I hope
it's not true--I hope to God, it's not true!--that you've quarreled with
Newbury?"
Marcia was standing with her head thrown back against the high marble
mantelpiece. The lids drooped over her eyes.
"I don't know," she said, in a faint voice. "I don't know. Oh no, not
_quarreled_--"
Sir Wilfrid looked at her with a fatherly concern; took her limp hand and
pressed it.
"Stand by him, dear, stand by him! He'll suffer enough from this--without
losing you."
Marcia did not answer. Lester had returned to the hall, and he and Bury
then got from her, as gently as possible, a full account of her two
interviews with Mrs. Betts. Lester wrote it down, and Marcia signed it. The
object of the two men was to make the police authorities acquainted with
such testimony as Marcia had to give, while sparing her if possible an
appearance at the inquest. While Lester was writing, Sir Wilfrid threw
occasional scathing glances toward the distant Arthur, who seemed to be
alternately pacing up and down and reading the newspapers. But the young
man showed no signs whatever of doing or suggesting anything further to
help his sister.
Sir Wilfrid perceived at once how Marcia's narrative might be turned
against the Newburys, round whom the hostile feeling of a whole
neighborhood was probably at that moment rising into fury. Was there ever a
more odious, a more untoward situation!
But he could not be certain that Marcia understood it so. He failed,
indeed, altogether, to decipher her mind toward Newbury; or to get at the
truth of what had happened between them. She sat, very pale, and piteously
composed; answering the questions they put to her, and sometimes,
though rarely, unable to control a sob, which seemed to force its way
unconsciously. At the end of their cross-examination, when Sir Wilfrid was
ready to start for Martover, the police headquarters for the district, she
rose, and said she would go back to her room.
"Do, do, dear child!" Bury threw a fatherly arm round her, and went with
her to the foot of the stairs. "Go and rest--sleep if you can."
As Marcia moved away there was a sudden sound at the end of the hall.
Arthur had run hurriedly toward the door leading to the outer vestibule. He
opened it and disappeared. Through the high-arched windows to the left, a
boy on a bicycle could be seen descending the long central avenue leading
to the fore-court.
It was just noon. The great clock set in the center of the eastern façade
had chimed the hour, and as its strokes died away on the midsummer air
Marcia was conscious, as her mother had been the preceding afternoon, of an
abnormal stillness round her. She was in her sitting-room, trying to write
a letter to Mrs. Betts's sister about the boy mentioned in his mother's
last words. He was not at the farm, thank God!--that she knew. His
stepfather had sent him at Easter to a good preparatory school.
It seemed to help her to be doing this last poor service to the dead woman.
And yet in truth she scarcely knew what she was writing. Her mind was torn
between two contending imaginations--the thought of Mrs. Betts, sitting
beside her dead husband, and waiting for the moment of her own death; and
the thought of Newbury. Alternately she saw the laboratory at night--the
shelves of labeled bottles and jars--the tables and chemical apparatus--the
electric light burning--and in the chair the dead man, with the bowed
figure against his knee:--and then--Newbury--in his sitting-room, amid
the books and portraits of his college years--the crucifix over the
mantelpiece--the beautiful drawings of Einsiedeln--of Assisi.
Her heart cried out to him. It had cried out to him in her letter. The
thought of the agony he must be suffering tortured her. Did he blame
himself? Did he remember how she had implored him to "take care"? Or was it
all still plain to him that he had done right? She found herself praying
with all her strength that he might still feel he could have done no other,
and that what had happened, because of his action, had been God's will, and
not merely man's mistake. She longed--sometimes--to throw her arms round
him, and comfort him. Yet there was no passion in her longing. All that
young rising of the blood seemed to have been killed in her. But she would
never draw back from what she had offered him--never. She would go to him,
and stand by him--as Sir Wilfrid had said--if he wanted her.
The gong rang for luncheon. Marcia rose unwillingly; but she was still more
unwilling to make her feelings the talk of the household. As she neared the
dining-room she saw her mother approaching from the opposite side of
the house. Lady Coryston walked feebly, and her appearance shocked her
daughter.
"Mother!--do let me send for Bryan!" she pleaded, as they met--blaming
herself sharply the while for her own absorption and inaction during the
morning hours. "You don't look a bit fit to be up."
Lady Coryston replied in a tone which forbade discussion that she was quite
well, and had no need whatever of Dr. Bryan's attendance. Then she turned
to the butler, and inquired if Mr. Arthur was in the house.
"His motor came round, my lady, about twelve o'clock. I have not seen him
since."
The lunch passed almost in complete silence between the two ladies. Lady
Coryston was informed that Sir Wilfrid and Lester had gone to Martover in
connection with Marcia's share in the events at Redcross Farm. "They hope I
needn't appear," said Marcia, dully.
"I should rather think not!"
Lady Coryston's indignant tone seemed to assume that English legal
institutions were made merely to suit the convenience of the Coryston
family. Marcia had enough of Coryston in her to perceive it. But she said
nothing.
As they entered the drawing-room after luncheon she remembered--with a
start.
"Mother--I forgot!--I'm so sorry--I dare say it was nothing. But I think a
letter came for Arthur just before twelve--a letter he was expecting. At
least I saw a messenger-boy come down the avenue. Arthur ran out to meet
him. Then I went up-stairs, and I haven't seen him since."
Lady Coryston had turned whiter than before. She groped for a chair near
and seated herself, before she recovered sufficient self-possession
to question her daughter as to the precise moment of the messenger's
appearance, the direction from which he arrived, and so forth.
But Marcia knew no more, and could tell no more. Nor could she summon up
any curiosity about her brother, possessed and absorbed as her mind was by
other thoughts and images. But in a vague, anxious way she felt for her
mother; and if Lady Coryston had spoken Marcia would have responded.
And Lady Coryston would have liked to speak, first of all to scold Marcia
for forgetting her message, and then to confide in her--insignificant as
the daughter's part in the mother's real life and thoughts had always been.
But she felt physically incapable of bearing the emotion which might spring
out upon her from such a conversation. It was as though she possessed--and
knew she possessed--a certain measured strength; just enough--and no
more--to enable her to go through a conversation which _must_ be
faced. She had better not waste it beforehand. Sometimes it occurred to
her that her feeling toward this coming interview was wholly morbid and
unnatural. How many worse things had she faced in her time!
But reasoning on it did not help her--only silence and endurance. After
resting a little in the drawing-room she went up to her sitting-room again,
refusing Marcia's company.
"Won't you let me come and make you comfortable?--if you're going to rest,
you'll want a shawl and some pillows," said the girl, as she stood at the
foot of the staircase, wistfully looking after her.
But Lady Coryston shook her head.
"Thank you--I don't want anything."
* * * * *
So--for Marcia--there was nothing to be done with these weary hours--but
wait and think and weep! She went back to her own sitting-room, and
lingeringly put Newbury's letters together, in a packet, which she sealed;
in case--well, in case--nothing came of her letter of the morning. They had
been engaged not quite a month. Although they had met almost every day, yet
there were many letters from him; letters of which she felt anew the power
and beauty as she reread them. Yet from that power and beauty, the natural
expression of his character, she stood further off now than when she had
first known him. The mystery indeed in which her nascent love had wrapped
him had dropped away. She knew him better, she respected him infinitely;
and all the time--strangely, inexplicably--love had been, not growing, but
withering.
Meanwhile, into all her thoughts about herself and Newbury there rushed at
recurrent intervals the memory, the overwhelming memory, of her last sight
of John and Alice Betts. That gray face in the summer dusk, beyond the
window, haunted her; and the memory of those arms which had clung about her
waist.
Was there a beyond?--where were they?--those poor ghosts! All the riddles
of the eternal Sphinx leaped upon Marcia--riddles at last made real.
Twenty-four hours ago, two brains, two hearts, alive, furiously alive, with
human sorrow and human revolt. And now? Had that infinitely pitiful Christ
in whom Newbury believed, received the two tormented souls?--were they
comforted--purged--absolved? Had they simply ceased to be--to feel--to
suffer? Or did some stern doom await them--still--after all the suffering
here? A shudder ran through the girl, evoking by reaction the memory of
immortal words--"_Her sins which are many are forgiven; for she loved
much_." She fed herself on the divine saying; repressing with all her
strength the skeptical, pessimistic impulses that were perhaps natural to
her temperament, forcing herself, as it were, for their sakes, to hope and
to believe.
Again, as the afternoon wore away, she was weighed down by the surrounding
silence. No one in the main pile of building but her mother and herself.
Not a sound, but the striking of the great gilt clock outside. From her own
room she could see the side windows of her mother's sitting-room; and once
she thought she perceived the stately figure passing across them. But
otherwise Lady Coryston made no sign; and her daughter dared not go to her
without permission.
Why did no letter come for her, no reply? She sat at her open windows for a
time, watching the front approaches, and looking out into a drizzling rain
which veiled the afternoon. When it ceased she went out--restlessly--to the
East Wood--the wood where they had broken it off. She lay down with her
face against the log--a prone white figure, among the fern. The buried
ring--almost within reach of her hand--seemed to call to her like a living
thing. No!--let it rest.
If it was God's will that she should go back to Edward, she would make him
a good wife. But her fear, her shrinking, was all there still. She prayed;
but she did not know for what.
Meanwhile at Redcross Farm, the Coroner was holding his inquiry. The facts
were simple, the public sympathy and horror profound. Newbury and Lord
William had given their evidence amid a deep and, in many quarters, hostile
silence. The old man, parchment-pale, but of an unshaken dignity, gave a
full account of the efforts--many and vain--that had been made both by
himself and his son to find Betts congenial work in another sphere and to
persuade him to accept it.
"We had nothing to do with his conscience, or with his private affairs--in
themselves. All we asked was that we should not be called on to recognize
a marriage which in our eyes was not a marriage. Everything that we could
have done consistently with that position, my son and I may honestly say we
have done."
Sir Wilfrid Bury was called, to verify Marcia's written statement, and Mrs.
Betts's letter was handed to the Coroner, who broke down in reading it.
Coryston, who was sitting on the opposite side of the room, watched the
countenances of the two Newburys while it was being read, with a frowning
attention.
When the evidence was over, and the jury had retired, Edward Newbury took
his father to the carriage which was waiting. The old man, so thin and
straight, from his small head and narrow shoulders to his childishly small
feet, leaned upon his son's arm, and apparently saw nothing around him. A
mostly silent throng lined the lane leading to the farm. Half-way stood the
man who had come down to lecture on "Rational Marriage," surrounded by a
group of Martover Socialists. From them rose a few hisses and groans as the
Newburys passed. But other groups represented the Church Confraternities
and clubs of the Newbury estate. Among them heads were quietly bared as the
old man went by, or hands were silently held out. Even a stranger would
have realized that the scene represented the meeting of two opposing
currents of thought and life.
Newbury placed his father in the carriage, which drove off. He then went
back himself to wait for the verdict.
As he approached the door of the laboratory in which the inquiry had been
held, Coryston emerged.
Newbury flushed and stopped him. Coryston received it as though it had been
the challenge of an enemy. He stepped back, straightening himself fiercely.
Newbury began:
"Will you take a message from me to your sister?"
A man opened the door in front a little way.
"Mr. Edward, the jury are coming back."
The two men went in; Coryston listened with a sarcastic mouth to the
conventional verdict of "unsound mind" which drapes impartially so many
forms of human ill. And again he found himself in the lane with Newbury
beside him.
"One more lie," he said, violently, "to a jury's credit!"
Newbury looked up. It was astonishing what a mask he could make of his
face, normally so charged--over-charged--with expression.
"What else could it have been? But this is no time or place for us to
discuss our differences, Coryston--"
"Why not!" cried Coryston, who had turned a dead white. "'Our differences,'
as you call them, have led to _that_!" He turned and flung out a thin
arm toward the annex to the laboratory, where the bodies were lying. "It is
time, I think, that reasonable men should come to some understanding about
'differences' that can slay and madden a pair of poor hunted souls, as
these have been slain!"
"'Hunted?' What do you mean?" said Newbury, sternly, while his dark eyes
took fire.
"Hunted by the Christian conscience!--that it might lie comfortable o'
nights," was the scornful reply.
Newbury said nothing for a few moments. They emerged on the main road,
crossed it, and entered the Hoddon Grey park. Here they were alone, out of
sight of the crowd returning from the inquest to the neighboring village.
As they stepped into one of the green rides of the park they perceived a
motorcar descending the private road which crossed it a hundred yards away.
A man was driving it at a furious pace, and Coryston clearly recognized his
brother Arthur. He was driving toward Coryston. Up to the moment when the
news of the farm tragedy had reached him that morning, Coryston's mind had
been very full of what seemed to him the impending storm between his mother
and Arthur. Since then he had never thought of it, and the sight of his
brother rushing past, making for Coryston, no doubt, from some unknown
point, excited but a moment's recollection, lost at once in the emotion
which held him.
Newbury struck in, however, before he could express it further; in the same
dry and carefully governed voice as before.
"You are Marcia's brother, Coryston. Yesterday morning she and I were still
engaged to be married. Yesterday afternoon we broke it off--although--since
then--I have received two letters from her--"
He paused a moment, but soon resumed, with fresh composure.
"Those letters I shall answer to-night. By that time--perhaps--I shall know
better--what my future life will be."
"Perhaps!" Coryston repeated, roughly. "But I have no claim to know, nor do
I want to know!"
Newbury gave him a look of wonder.
"I thought you were out for justice--and freedom of conscience?" he said,
slowly. "Is the Christian conscience--alone--excepted? Freedom for every
one else--but none for us?"
"Precisely! Because your freedom means other men's slavery!" Coryston
panted out the words. "You can't have your freedom! It's too costly
in human life. Everywhere Europe has found that out. The freedom you
Catholics--Anglican or Roman--want, is anti-social. We sha'n't give it
you!"
"You will have to give it us," said Newbury, calmly, "because in putting us
down--which of course you could do with ease--you would destroy all that
you yourselves value in civilization. It would be the same with us, if we
had the upper hand, as you have now. Neither of us can destroy the other.
We stand face to face--we shall stand face to face--while the world lasts."
Coryston broke into passionate contradiction. Society, he was confident,
would, in the long run, put down Catholicism, of all sorts, by law.
"Life is hard enough, the devil knows! We can't afford--we simply can't
afford--to let you make it harder by these damned traditions! I appeal to
those two dead people! They did what _you_ thought wrong, and your
conscience judged and sentenced them. But who made you a judge and divider
over them? Who asked you to be the dispenser for them of blessing and
cursing?"
Newbury stood still.
"No good, Coryston, your raving like this! There is one question that
cuts the knot--that decides where you stand--and where I stand. You don't
believe there has ever been any living word from God to man--any lifting
of the eternal veil. We do! We say the heavens _have_ opened--a God
_has_ walked this earth! Everything else follows from that."
"Including the deaths of John Betts and his wife!" said Coryston, with
bitter contempt. "A God suffers and bleeds, for that! No!--for us, if there
is a God, He speaks in love--in love only--in love supremely--such love as
those two poor things had for each other!"
After which they walked along in silence for some time. Each had said the
last word of his own creed.
Presently they reached a footpath from which the house at Hoddon Grey could
be reached. Newbury paused.
"Here, Coryston, we part--and we may never meet again."
He raised his heavy eyes to his companion. All passion had died from his
face, which in its pale sorrow was more beautiful than Coryston had ever
seen it.
"Do you think," he said, with deliberate gentleness, "that I feel
nothing--that life can ever be the same for me again--after this? It has
been to me a sign-post in the dark--written in letters of flame--and blood.
It tells me where to go--and I obey."
He paused, looking, as it seemed, through Coryston, at things beyond. And
Coryston was aware of a strange and sudden awe in himself which silenced
him.
But Newbury recalled his thoughts. He spoke next in his ordinary tone.
"Please, tell--Marcia--that all arrangements have been made for Mr. Betts's
boy, with the relatives' consent. She need have no anxiety about him. And
all I have to say to her for her letter--her blessed letter--I will say
to-night."
He walked away, and was soon lost to sight among the trees.