To love faithfully is to love with singleness of heart and sameness of
purpose, through all the temptations which society presents, and under
all the assaults of vanity both from within and without. It is so
pleasant for a woman to be admired and so soothing to her to be loved,
that the grand trial of female constancy is to refrain from adding one
more conquest to her triumphs when it is evidently in her power to do
so. Obviously her chief protection is to restrain the first indefinite
thoughts which, if allowed to gain clearness and swiftness, may lead her
fancy astray. Even the ideas which commonly float through the mind of
woman are so rapid and so indistinctly shaped, that when the door is
opened to such thoughts as these they pour in like a torrent. Then
first will arise a sudden perception of deficiency in the object of her
love, or some additional impression of his unkindness or neglect, with
comparisons between him and other men, and regret that he has not some
quality which they possess; sadness under a conviction of her future
destiny, pining for sympathy under that sadness, and, lastly, the
commencement of some other intimacy, which at first she has no idea of
converting into love.
Such is the manner in which, in thousands of cases, the faithfulness of
woman's love has been destroyed, and destroyed far more effectually than
if assailed by an open, and, apparently, more formidable foe. And what
a wreck has followed! For when woman loses her integrity and her
self-respect, she is indeed pitiable and degraded. While her
faithfulness remains unshaken, it is true she may, and probably will,
have much to suffer; but let her destiny in this life be what it may,
she will walk through the world with a firm and upright step. To live
solitary may be the cost of her noble behaviour; but often this solitude
will represent a decoration more splendid than any to be received from
the hands of queens and emperors.
I may be accused of a cold philosophy in speaking of such consolation
being efficacious under the suffering which arises from unkindness and
desertion; but who would not rather be the one to bear injury than the
one to inflict it? The very act of bearing it meekly and reverently, as
from the hand of God, has a purifying and solemnising effect upon the
soul, which the faithless and the fickle never can experience.
Dudley Chisholm sat before the fire in his room until the dawn, trying
to unravel a thousand knots, his mind filled with sad memories and with
bitter regrets in plenty.
Muriel Mortimer had interested him, just as a child sometimes interests
the pedantic philosopher. He had found hers a frank, open, girlish
nature, as yet unspoiled by its contact with the smart, well-dressed,
vicious set into which the ambitious Lady Meldrum had seen fit to plunge
her. He admired her as one standing apart from most of the women he
knew, for she had displayed an intelligence and a knowledge of political
affairs that surprised him. She, on her side, seemed to regard him
rather fearfully, as one of the powers of the State. This amused him,
and he assured her that he could not honestly claim to be more than the
mouthpiece of the Foreign Office. Yes, she was as charming as she was
ingenuous.
And Claudia? He reflected upon all that he had said, and upon all her
answers; yet somehow he could not make up his mind whether she were
really false.
When he recollected the quick passion of her caresses, the tenderness of
her words, the gentle sympathy with which she had asked him to confide
in her, he found it difficult to believe that she could actually forget
him five minutes after leaving him in that ballroom, and waltz airily
with the man with whose name her own was being everywhere coupled.
To him, honest, upright man that he was, this seemed an absolute
impossibility. He refused to believe it. Surely she loved him, in
spite of her perplexing caprices; surely she had been seized by remorse
for her own fickleness.
He endeavoured to compare the two women, but the comparison caused him
to start up in quick impatience.
"No!" he cried aloud in a fierce voice. "A thousand times no! I love
Claudia--no one else!--no one else in all the world!"
Next day when he entered his room at Downing Street, Wrey, his
secretary, put before him a quantity of documents requiring attention.
He held the responsible office of superintending under-secretary of the
Commercial Department of Her Majesty's Foreign Office, the business of
which consisted of correspondence with our Ministers and Consuls abroad;
with the representatives of the Foreign Powers in England, and with the
Board of Trade and other departments of the Government. He had been
absorbed in these papers for some hours, snatching only a few minutes
for a glass of sherry and a biscuit at luncheon-time, when Wrey returned
to remind him of a long-standing engagement that evening at the little
town of Godalming, which was in his constituency, four miles from
Albury.
He glanced up from his writing and gave vent to a sharp ejaculation of
annoyance.
"Are you quite certain it is to-night?" he asked, for the reminder was
to him a most unpleasant one. He avoided speaking in his constituency
whenever he could.
"Yes. I put it down in the diary a month ago--a dinner given by the
Lodge of Odd Fellows in aid of a local charity."
Dudley groaned. He knew too well those charity dinners given in a small
room among his honest but rather uncouth supporters. He dreaded the
tinned soups, the roast beef, the tough fowls, and the surreptitious
tankards of ale in lieu of wine, to be followed by those post-prandial
pipes and strong cigars. He shuddered. The dense atmosphere always
turned him sick, so that he usually made his speech while it was still
possible to see across the room. He was very fond of the working-man,
and subscribed liberally to all charitable objects and associations,
from those with a political aim down to the smallest coal club in the
outlying villages; but why could not those honest sons of toil leave him
in peace?
His presence, of course, gave importance to the occasion, but if they
had found it possible to spare him the ordeal of sitting through their
dinner he would have been thankful. Out of fifty invitations to
banquets of various kinds, openings of bazaars, flower-shows, lectures,
concerts, entertainments and penny-readings, he usually declined
forty-nine. As he could not absolutely cut himself aloof from his
Division, on rare occasions he accepted, and spent an evening at Albury,
or Godalming, or some of the less important local centres of political
thought.
The pot-house politician, who forms his ideas of current events from the
ultra-patriotic screeches of certain popular newspapers, was a common
object in his constituency; but in Godalming, at any rate, the great
majority of his supporters were honest working-men. The little town is
a quaint, old-world place with a long High Street of ancient houses,
many of them displaying the oak-beams of the sixteenth century, and its
politics were just as staunch and old-fashioned as the borough itself.
True, a new town of comfortable villas has sprung up of late around it,
and high upon the hill are to be seen the pinnacles of Charterhouse
School; but, notwithstanding these innovations, Godalming has not
marched with the times. Because of this the blatant reformer has but
little chance there, and the Parliamentary Seat is always a safe one for
the Conservatives.
Much as he disliked the duty, he saw that it was absolutely necessary to
go down and make pretence of having a meal with that estimable Society
of Odd Fellows. He rose from his seat at the littered table, at once
feeling a sudden desire for fresh air after the closeness of his room,
and a few minutes later was driving in a cab to Waterloo. To dress for
such a function was quite unnecessary. Working men do not approve of
their Member wearing a dinner jacket when among them, for they look upon
a starched shirt as a sign of superiority. He was always fond of the
country round Godalming, where he had once spent a summer, and as it was
a sunshiny afternoon saw in the occasion an opportunity of taking a walk
through some of the most picturesque lanes in Surrey.
He was tired, world-weary, utterly sick of life. The duties of his
office pressed heavily upon him; but most burdensome of all was the
ever-present dread that the threatened blow should fall and crush him.
He wanted air: he wanted to be alone to think.
And so, when that afternoon he alighted at Godalming and returned the
salutes of the station-master and book-stall keeper, he started off up
the steep road as far as the Charterhouse, and from that point struck
off by a narrow footpath which led away across the brown ploughed fields
to where the Hog's Back stretched before him in the blue distance. The
autumn sun shone brightly in the clear, grey sky, and the trees in all
their glory of brown and gold shed their leaves upon him as he passed.
Save the station-master and the book-stall clerk, none had recognised
him. This was fortunate, for now he was free, out in the open country
with its rich meadows and picturesque hills and valleys, until the hour
when he must dine with his supporters and utter some trite sayings
regarding the work of the Government and its policy abroad.
He was fond of walking, and was glad to escape from Downing Street and
from the House for a single evening; so he strode along down the path
with a swinging gait, though with a heart not light enough for the full
enjoyment of his lovely surroundings.
The by-path he had taken was that which leads over the hills from
Godalming past Field Place to the little old-world village of Compton.
Having crossed the ploughed lands, he entered a thick coppice, where the
path began to run down with remarkable steepness into wide meadows, on
the other side of which lay a dark wood. The narrow path running
through the coppice terminated at a stile which gave entrance to the
park-like meadow-land.
Descending this path he halted at the stile, leaning against it. Alone
in that rural solitude, far removed from the mad hurry of London life,
he stood to think. Each gust of wind brought down a shower of brown
leaves from the oaks above, and the only other sound was the cry of a
pheasant in the wood.
For at least five minutes he stood motionless. Then he suddenly roused
himself, and some words escaped his lips:
"How strange," he murmured, "that my footsteps should lead me to this
very spot, of all others! Why, I wonder, has Fate directed me here?"
He turned and gazed slowly round upon the scene spread before him, the
green meadows, the dark wood, the sloping hill with its bare, brown
fields, and the Hog's Back rising in the far distance, with the black
line of the telegraph standing out against the sky. With slow
deliberation he took in every feature of the landscape. Then, facing
about, with his back to the stile, his eyes wandered up the steep path
by which he had just descended from the crest of the hill.
"No," he went on in a strange, low voice, speaking to himself, "it has
not changed--not in the least. It is all just the same to-day, as
then--just the same." He sighed heavily as he leaned back upon the
wooden rail and gazed up the ascent, brown with its carpet of acorns and
fallen leaves. "Yes," he continued at last, "it is destiny that has led
me here, to this well-remembered spot for the last time before I die--
the justice which demands a life for a life."
Throughout the district it would not have been easy to find a more
secluded spot than the small belt of dense wood, half of which lay on
either side of the footpath. So steep was this path that considerable
care had to be exercised during its descent, especially in autumn, when
the damp leaves and acorns were slippery, or in winter, when the
rain-channels were frozen into precipitous slides.
"A life for a life!" he repeated slowly with a strange curl of the lip.
He permitted himself to speak aloud because in that rural, solitude he
had no fear of eavesdroppers. "I have lived my life," he said, "and now
it is ended. My attempted atonement is all to no purpose, for to-day,
or to-morrow, a voice as from the grave will arise to condemn me--to
drive me to take my life!"
He glanced at his watch.
"Yes," he sighed. "Four o'clock!--at this very spot--at this hour on a
wet day in mid-winter--"
And his eyes fixed themselves blankly upon the ground a couple of yards
distant from where he was standing. "Six years have gone, and it has
remained ever a mystery!"
His face was pale, his brow contracted, his teeth firmly set. His eyes
still rested upon that spot covered with dead brown leaves. Certainly
it was strange that the steep and narrow pathway should possess such
fascination for him, for he had wandered there quite involuntarily. It
is not too much to say that he would have flown to any other part of
England rather than stand upon the spot so closely associated with the
chapter in his life's history that he hoped was closed for ever.
Suddenly he roused himself, and, walking forward a couple of paces,
marked with his stick a square in the dead leaves. Apparently he was
deep in calculation, for after he had made the mark he carefully
measured, by means of his cane, the distance between the square and the
top of the short ascent. On either side of the path was a steep
moss-grown bank surmounted by thick hazel-bushes, but on the left a
little distance up was an old wooden fence, grey with lichen. He
appeared to be deeply interested in this fence, for after going close up
to it he measured by careful pacing the distance between it and the spot
he had marked out.
When this was done, he stood again motionless, his fevered brow bared to
the breezes as though to him that spot were hallowed. Then, crossing
the stile, he entered the meadow, passing and repassing the narrow lane
as though for the purpose of discovering the exact position an observer
would be compelled to take up in order to watch a person standing at the
point he had marked.
At last he returned, standing again with his back to the stile, his hat
raised in reverence, gazing fixedly upon those dead and decaying leaves.
"Yes," he murmured, "I was mad--mad! The devil tempted me, and I fell.
Would to God that I could make amends! But I cannot--I dare not. No, I
must suffer!"