reason for believing that he meant to keep you here all night?”
She faced him steadfastly. The man’s life hung in the balance. It rested
with her—it rested with her.
“I was on the point of leaving when you arrived,” she said.
“Is that the truth?” he said.
“It is the truth,” she answered quietly.
“You honestly believe he meant to let you go?”
“Yes.” Her eyes looked straight into his with the words. She realized
that the tension was slackening, but she dared not relax her own
vigilance. The danger was not yet past. Not yet had she accomplished her
end.
“He has never given you any cause to distrust him?” Arthur said.
She hesitated momentarily. “I am trusting him now,” she said finally.
“Why?” He flung the word with a touch of fierceness. “You are saying
this to bluff me. It is not true.”
“It is true,” she said resolutely, paused a second, then very firmly
made her position secure. “I am trusting him because—because I have
promised to be his wife.”
The declaration fell between them like a bombshell. She did not know how
she uttered it, and having done so, there came a mist before her eyes
which seemed to fog all her senses, making it impossible for her to
gauge the result—to realize in any sense the devastation she had
wrought. She thought she heard him draw the breath between his teeth as
though he repressed some sign of suffering. But she was not sure even of
this, so desperate for the moment was her own extremity.
It could not have lasted for long, that wild tumult of emotion, but when
it passed she was trembling from head to foot as though she had merged
from some frightful conflict. She wanted to protest for very anguish
that she could not endure any more, she could not—she could not! But
her voice was gone. She stood waiting, wondering how soon her strength
would utterly fail.
Arthur’s voice came to her at last, low, hoarse with restraint. “So that
is why you came to town!”
She could not answer him. There was no reproach in his tone, but the
pain of it was more agonizing to her than any suffering of her own. As
in a vision she saw him beaten and thrust aside—the mighty gladiator to
whom, for some mysterious reason, victory was eternally denied. Her
whole soul cried out against the fate that dogged him, but she stifled
the cry. She could not—dared not—give it utterance.
She yet stood between him and his victim, and she must continue to
stand. She clung to that thought before all else. To save him from
himself—it was all that counted with her just then.
He spoke again at length, and in his voice was a subtle difference that
told her the end was within sight—the battle almost won.
“I am beginning to understand,” he said. “I thought—somehow I
thought—I had misjudged you—that night at Tetherstones—you remember?
Well, I know better now. I shall never make that mistake again. If he
marries you, no doubt you will consider yourself lucky. But—just in
case you don’t know—I had better warn you that he doesn’t stick at
letting a woman down if it suits his purpose.”
His voice grew harder, colder; it had a steely edge. “You may have heard
of a sister of mine who died some years ago—Nan? He ruined her
deliberately, intentionally. He never meant to make good. She was young.
She didn’t know the world as you know it. She—actually loved him. And
she paid the penalty. We all paid to a certain extent. That is why—”
his tone suddenly deepened,—“I have sworn to kill him if he ever comes
my way again—as I would kill a poisonous reptile. Perhaps it seems
unreasonable to you. Your ideas are different. But—the fact remains.”
He ceased to speak, and still she stood between them, past speech,
almost past feeling, yet steadfast in her resolve. The battle was nearly
over—the end within sight.
Again there fell a silence, and she counted the seconds, asking herself
how long—how long? Somewhere within her she seemed to hear the echo of
the words that he had spoken on that terrible night at Tetherstones. “I
loved you—I—loved you!” And now as then she felt that the fires of
hell were very near. But she would not faint this time. O God, she must
not faint!
He spoke again—for the last time—and there was a sound of dreadful
laughter in his voice.
“It seems I have come on a fool’s errand,” he said. “I can only
apologize for my intrusion, and withdraw. No doubt you know best how to
play your own game. I only regret that I did not realize sooner what it
was.”
That was all. He turned from her with the words, and she knew that the
awful battle was over. Because of her, he would let his enemy go free.
But as she stood numbly listening to the heavy tread of his feet as he
went away, she knew no sense of conquest or even of relief. The battle
was over, but she herself was wounded past all hope. And she thought her
heart must die within her, so bitter was the pain.
CHAPTER IV
THE VICTORY
He was gone. The clang of the outer door spoke of his departure.
He was gone, and the dread struggle was past.
She came to herself like a dazed mariner flung ashore by the breakers,
hardly believing that the peril was over. A great weakness was upon her
and she knew that she could not stand against it. Of Rotherby’s very
existence at the moment she was unaware. Mechanically, gropingly, she
made her way to the settee before the stove and sank down upon it. She
was shivering violently.
The warmth came about her, and she stretched out her hands to it,
seeking its comfort, thankful for the physical relief of it, yet hardly
conscious of her surroundings.
“It is dead—it is dead!” she kept saying to herself over and over. “It
is quite—quite dead!”
But for a long time she could not bring herself to realize why she said
it or what it was that was dead.
At last by slow and painful degrees it began to dawn upon her that there
was a meaning to the words. Something was dead. Something had died by
her hand in that very room. What was it?
Now it came to her in all its immensity, crushing her down. She had
slain his love. She had killed her own romance. From that night onwards
he would never think of her again save with reviling and bitterness of
soul. She had taken that which was holy and flung it in the dust. She
had desecrated the perfect gift, had made a hideous travesty of that
high vision which had been vouchsafed to her. More, she had dragged the
man she loved down to the very gates of hell, and had made him know the
tortures of the damned.
The warmth was beginning to ease her exhausted body, but her spirit
found no comfort. Almost she preferred that numbness of all her
faculties. For the misery that was taking its place was more than she
could bear.
She still sat with her hands outstretched, but hot tears were rolling
down her face, unheeded, unchecked, the tears of a great despair.
“It is dead,” she said to herself over and over in the desolation of her
soul. “It is dead. It is dead.”
There came a voice behind her—Rotherby’s voice, and she started
slightly, remembering him. It was curious how little he counted now.
“Frances,” he said, and with her outer consciousness she noticed an odd
embarrassment in his tone and faintly wondered. “I’ve made a pretty poor
show of this. Don’t cry! You’re perfectly safe.”
“Am I crying?” she said, and put a hand to her face.
He came and sat beside her. “Listen!” he said “I’ve been a damned cad.
And you’re a topper. I never knew you had it in you—or any woman had
for the matter of that. There’s nothing I won’t do for you after this.
Understand?”
“I don’t want you to do anything,” she said wearily.
He made an odd sound as of some irony suppressed. “You’re nearly dead,”
he said. “So am I. Come and have supper! And trust me—will you trust
me?”
Something in his tone reached her. She turned slowly and looked at him.
His face was very pale, and his eyes looked drawn and strained; but
except for this she saw no traces about him of the recent struggle. He
met her gaze with a faint smile.
“I’ve had all the nonsense knocked out of me for to-night,” he said.
“But I suppose I’m damned lucky to be here at all. That fellow has the
strength of an ox. The back of my head is like a jelly, damn him!”
“I thought he meant to kill you,” she said dully.
“He did,” said Rotherby. “You saved my life.”
“Did I?” Her look fell away from him. “It wasn’t for your sake,” she
said, after a moment. “It was for his.”
“I gathered that,” said Rotherby. “That’s what makes you so wonderful.”
“I don’t feel wonderful,” she said.
He leaned towards her. “Don’t cry!” he said again. “You are wonderful.
And you’ve made me feel a cur of the very first magnitude. That’s
something to accomplish, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I wasn’t thinking of you.”
“You’re worn out,” he said. “Have some food, and I’ll take you back.
You’re going to trust me, aren’t you? I swear I won’t let you down after
this. You’re not afraid of me?”
“Oh no, I am not afraid of you,” she said.
In a detached, impersonal fashion, out of the depths of her despair, she
wondered how he could imagine that he or his actions had the slightest
importance for her. Could anything in the world really matter after this
cataclysm? He might have been a total stranger, ministering to her, so
small was his significance now.
But she was in a vague fashion grateful for his kindness, and when he
brought her food, she forced herself to eat lest he should think her
unappreciative. It revived her also, lifting the awful weight of inertia
from her senses, so that after a while she was capable of coherent
thought again.
“That’s better,” Rotherby said presently. “Look here! You won’t believe
me, but I’m most damnably sorry for all this.”
“I do believe you,” she said, with a wan smile.
“Oh, I don’t mean the hammering,” he said. “I’m actually thinking of you
for a change. I’ve been a rotter all my life, and I don’t count. But
you—you’re straight. I always knew you were. And I’ve found out
something more about you to-night. I’ve found out why you turned me
down.”
He got up abruptly, and began to walk about the room.
“I half-guessed it long ago. I know it now. You love this hairy-heeled
chap who nearly killed me to-night. You needn’t bother to deny it. You
love him and he loves you. And yet—and yet—you let him believe—that
of you! Good God! There isn’t another woman on earth would have done
it.”
“I had to do it,” Frances said with simplicity. “He would have killed
you.”
“Yes, he would have killed me—and swung for it. You didn’t want him to
swing. Listen!” He came suddenly to her and knelt by her side. “You told
me a little while ago that I was not all beast, that I was a man at
heart. And you’re right. I am—I am. Frances, I swear to you—I’ll never
let you down after this.”
The earnestness of his tone moved her somewhat. She put out a hand to
him. “I know,” she said.
He gripped her hand fast. “You don’t know what a brute I am,” he said.
“I’m going to tell you. That fellow—Arthur Dermot as he styles
himself—is my cousin. His father is Dr. Rotherby’s brother. We were
friends once, he and I—sort of brothers, you understand. He had a
sister—a lot of sisters—one in particular—a lovely girl—Nan.” He
paused. “Somehow you have always reminded me of Nan, so dainty, so
queenly in your ways, so quick of sympathy—so full of charm. Well, I
loved her—she loved me. It was a midsummer madness—one of those
exquisite dreams that one revels in like a draught of wine, and then
forgets.”
“That isn’t love,” said Frances.
He lifted his shoulders. “Isn’t it? Well, perhaps you are right. I never
wholly forgot. But we were young. She was only twenty. No one suspected
us of falling in love until the thing was done. Then there was an
outcry—first cousins—no marriage. We hadn’t even begun to think of
marriage, but I swear—I swear—I never meant to let her down. If they
had left us alone, the thing would probably have fizzled out, but the
fuss somehow worked us up to fever pitch. We met—by stealth—at night.
She was young and very ardent. I was a damned cad. I own it. But
she—she was like a flame, and in the end—well, you know what happened
in the end. We came to our senses very early one summer morning. She was
scared, and when I tried to calm her she flew into a passion. I got
angry too. We quarrelled and separated. That very day the old Bishop, my
trustee he was then, sent for me and told me he had a mission for me to
execute in Australia. It was a trumped-up job. I knew it at the time.
But I was hot-headed, and there had been talk of foreign travel before.
I took it for granted that our dream had come to an end. I accepted and
went.”
“How could you?” Frances said.
He raised his shoulders again. “I told you I was a brute. But at the
time it seemed the only thing to do. The dream was over. One doesn’t sit
over the cards in broad daylight.”
The cynicism habitual to him sounded in the last words. She shrank a
little and withdrew her hand.
“Yes, I know,” he said. “You are a woman. You take the woman’s point of
view. But I’m not defending myself. I’m just telling you the plain
truth. I didn’t know when I went about poor Nan’s trouble. I had a
letter from her three months after, telling me. She wanted to run away,
to come and join me. It was a wild, hysterical sort of letter. It had
taken six weeks to reach me, and it seemed likely she had changed her
mind by that time. In any case I was just starting for an expedition
into the Blue Mountains. I put her letter on one side to answer, but
somehow I never did answer it. I thought she had probably exaggerated
the whole thing. So I hoped for the best and let it slide.”
“How wicked!” Frances said. “How contemptible!”
The condemnation in her voice was all the deeper for its quietness. She
sat before him cold, impersonal as a judge, her eyes fixed straight
before her.
A curious shiver went through the man. He got up to cover it, and
resumed his pacing of the room.
“I was away for over two years,” he went on, speaking as one impelled.
“I never heard from her during that time. I almost forgot her. Then I
came home. I found they had left Oxford. Did I tell you old Dermot
Rotherby had held a professorship there, and Arthur was reading for the
Bar? No one seemed to know where they were. Old Theodore, the Bishop,
had been appointed to Burminster. I went to him, asked him for news. He
said Dermot’s health had broken down, and they had taken a farm in the
country. They had never been much to one another. He spoke very vaguely
of them. It was Aunt Dorothea who let it out. She told me Nan had died
mysteriously—that there had been a child—that they had changed their
name in consequence—and then she got badly scared and begged me not to
let the Bishop know she had told me, and not to dream of going near them
as it was more than my life was worth. I must admit I didn’t feel drawn
that way, since poor Nan was past help. So I decided to let sleeping
dogs lie, and cleared out of the country again. I stayed away for some
time, sometimes drifting back to London, but never for long. Then at
last I got tired of wandering and came home. I went to Burminster, and
met—you. You caught me then. You’ve held me ever since. And I could
have won you—I could have won you—” He stopped abruptly. “What’s the
good of talking? I’ve lost you now, haven’t I? You’ll never look at me
again.”
“Never,” Frances said.
Her hands were clasped as she sat. There was no longer any agitation
about her. She might have been a carven image, so still was she, so
utterly aloof and removed from all emotion.
He glanced at her once or twice as he walked, and finally came and stood
before her.
“I haven’t told you quite everything even now,” he said. “There’s one
thing I’m almost afraid to tell you. Shall I go on—or shall I hold my
peace?”
“Go on!” she answered in the same dead-level voice.
“You think nothing matters now,” he said. “You think you won’t care.
You’re wrong. You will care—horribly.”
“I think I have got to know,” she said, “whatever it is.”
“All right,” he said recklessly. “You shall know. After some damnable
fate had taken you to Tetherstones, after they had tried to murder me
and failed, after that night at Fordestown when you refused to come with
me, the devil entered into me, and I made up my mind I’d get you—at any
cost. And so I played you a trick. I lied to you.” He bent down, trying
to read her impassive face. “Do you understand? I tricked you—to get
you up here.”
She did not flinch or give any sign of feeling. “Do you mean about my
sketches?” she said.
“Yes. That’s just what I do mean. I have got them all here. No one has
seen them but myself.”
A faint frown drew her forehead. “But you paid for them,” she said.
“I know. That was part of my damned scheme to get you into my power. You
were always so independent. I thought when once you realized that you
had been living on my money, it would break your spirit.”
“How—odd!” she said.
And that was all. No word of reproach or condemnation; yet the man
winced as if he had been struck in the face.
“My God!” he said. “If you would only curse me! Any other woman would.”
“But why?” she said. “The fault was mine. I always knew—in my
heart—that you were—that sort of man.”
“My God!” he said again. “You haven’t much mercy.”
She looked up at him. “I am sorry for you,” she said. “But—I don’t
blame you. You were made that way.”
He struck his fist into his hand. “Frances, I swear to you—I swear to
you—No, what’s the good of swearing? I’ll show you. Look here! We won’t
talk any more to-night. We’re both dead beat. I’ll take you back to your
hotel. And in a day or two—if you will trust me—I’ll show you that I
am not—that sort of man. Will you trust me, Frances? Give me this one
chance of making good? I’m a blackguard, I own it; but I can play the
game if I try. Will you trust me?”
There was a hint of desperation in his voice, and, because she was a
woman, that reached her where mere protestations had failed.
She held out her hand to him mutely, and as he took it she rose to her
feet, looking him straight in the eyes. But she did not utter one word.
She had spoken her condemnation and there was nothing left to say.
Out of her despair, tragically but fearlessly, she faced him. And to the
man in his abasement there came a sense of greatness such as he had
never before known.
Not by strength and not by strategy, but by purity of heart, she had
conquered the devil in his soul.
CHAPTER V
THE VISION
London skies and ceaseless rain, and the roar and swish of London
traffic over the streaming roads! The tramp of many hurrying feet, the
echo of careless voices vaguely heard, and the grey, grim river flowing
out to sea! How terrible it was! How inevitable! How—lonely!
She stood—a slim dark, figure—in the recess of the bridge leaning
against the stone balustrade while the crowds passed by unheeding, and
looked down into the dark-flowing water.
How long would it take, she wondered, how long a struggle in those
dreadful depths before the soul rose free? And then—even then—would it
be freedom, or slavery of another kind, a striving against yet more
awful odds, a sinking into yet more fearful depths? Her tired mind
wandered to and fro over the problem. So easy to die, if that were all!
But after death—what then? Having shirked the one issue, could she
possibly hope to be in any sense better equipped for that which lay
beyond? Having failed hopelessly to prove herself in the one life, could
there be any possibility of making a better bargain for herself in the
next? Her brain recoiled from the thought. No, deliverance did not lie
that way.
Perhaps it did not lie anywhere, she told herself drearily. Perhaps
there was no deliverance. Like the prisoners of old, shackled to that
stone of fate, perhaps it was her lot to wait until it descended upon
her. She had sought so desperately for a way of escape, and now every
channel was closed to her. Further seeking—further striving—were
useless. God alone could help her now.
She looked up at the grey sky and felt the cold rain beating down upon
her. Who was it who had once said: “Ask and ye shall receive, seek and
ye shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you”? Strange that such
words as those could ever be forgotten! They came upon her now almost as
if they had been uttered aloud. And with them, very suddenly, came the
memory of her prayer from the Tetherstones on the night of her great
need. “From all evil and mischief, from sin, from crafts and assaults of
the devil, Good Lord deliver us!” And how wonderful—how God-sent—had
been her deliverance! The thought of little Ruth shot across her mind
like a ray of light. Again the childish fingers seemed to clasp her own,
closely, confidingly, lovingly. It was like a message to her soul—the
angel of her deliverance!
It was then that the power to pray came to Frances, there on the open
crowded bridge between the grey skies and the grey river with the grey
stone to support her. She could not have said whence or how it came, but
it possessed her for a space to the exclusion of all else. And she
prayed—as she had prayed by little Ruth’s death-bed—with a fervour and
a depth of faith that amazed herself. Not for deliverance, not for a way
of escape, only for strength in her weakness—only for sustenance, lest
the journey be too great for her! And when she ceased to pray, when the
great moment passed—all too quickly, as such moments always must—when
she woke again to physical misery and physical exhaustion, to the
dripping skies and the leaden world and the dank uncleanness of the
atmosphere, though no sign of any sort came in answer, yet she knew that
her prayer was heard.
She turned and left the bridge, still with the feeling of that little
hand in hers, and a sense of relief that was almost rejoicing in her
heart. Though she had lost everything, though she trod the stones of the
wilderness and the way before her was dark and steep and wholly
unfamiliar, yet her fear had gone. The burden was lifted. For she knew
that she was not alone. She went back through the rain-soaked streets,
and still it seemed to her that that angel-presence went with her,
guiding her feet. She had come out to seek a cheap lodging, but now that
purpose had gone from her. She returned to the great station and the
vast hotel as one led.
She passed in under the echoing glass roof where the shrieking of trains
mingled with the noise of the scurrying multitudes. Everyone was in a
hurry, it seemed, except herself, and she—she moved without haste and
without lingering to a destination unknown.
She turned in to the hotel vestibule, leaving the noise and the seething
crowds, conscious of a great quietness that came as it were to meet her
and folded her round. It was late afternoon, and her intention had been
to give up her room, but she had not done so, and she did not now turn
to the office. She went instead to a settee in a corner and sat down
there as one who waited. A few people passed to and fro, but no one
accosted her. The place was dim and restful. She took no interest in
them, or they in her.
Somewhere in the distance a page-boy was calling a number in a raucous
voice. No one responded to it, and she vaguely wished he would stop; for
he intruded upon the peace of the atmosphere like a yapping dog heard in
the silent hours of the night. Now he was drawing nearer and becoming
more obtrusive. Why did not someone stop him? If he had a message why
couldn’t someone take it and send him away? Or if he couldn’t find the
person for whom it was intended, where was the use of continuing that
untuneful yell?
“_Two—four—nine! Two—four—nine!_” Now he had left the lounge and was
coming down the corridor to the vestibule! The thing was beginning to
get upon her nerves. She drew further back into the corner as he
approached. Quite a small boy, with the sharp rat-like features of his
type, and gleaming brass buttons all down his front that reflected
little knobs of light from a distant lamp! His voice was stupendous,
shattering the peace, piercing her brain with its insistence,
pulverizing the vision that had brought her thither.
“_Two—four—nine! Two—four—nine!_” He came close to her, paused,
yelled the number straight at her so that she shrank, and then passed on
to the almost empty vestibule where he continued his intolerable cry
without result.
His voice began to pass into the distance, to merge into the vague
sounds that penetrated from without. Now she heard it no longer, and she
breathed a sigh of thankfulness, and tried to return to the state of
quiescent waiting which he had so rudely disturbed. But something had
happened. She realized it with almost a sense of calamity. The little
fingers no longer clasped her own, the feeling of peace had left her.
The vision had fled.
She made a desperate attempt to call it back, to force her mind to grasp
afresh the power that had so magically inspired her. But it was gone.
The outer darkness came down upon her once more. The blackness of
despair entered into her soul.
She sat for a space in blank hopelessness. Then it was all a myth, that
strength so wonderfully bestowed, the trick of an overwrought brain—no
more! Her prayer had been in vain. She was alone and sinking—sinking! A
sound of great waters suddenly filled her ears. She saw again the grim,
dark river flowing to the sea—so deep, so cold, so terrible! She lifted
her face, gasping, as though those awful waters were overwhelming her.
Her heart had ceased to beat. It felt like a stone within her, and she
was cold to the very soul of her.
Ah, God, what was that? A cry in the distance—a voice that called! What
was it? What was it? She grabbed her failing faculties to listen. It
might be even yet the salvation for which she had prayed and waited. It
might be—ah, what was it and why did it hold her so?
Breathlessly she listened, and for those moments she was like a prisoner
on the very brink of death, hearing afar off the arresting cry that
meant—that might mean—a reprieve. Now it grew nearer, it grew louder,
it filled the world,—the universe—like a trumpet that could not be
ignored. Words came to her through the wild chaos of her mind—three
short words flung like a challenge far and wide—now a demand, now a
menace—so that all must surely stop to listen!
“_Two—four—nine! Two—four—nine!_” That page with the fiery buttons
was returning!
Along the corridor he came, and she caught back a burst of terrible
laughter that rose from her stone-cold heart at the sight. A minute
figure with a brazen voice that bawled trumpet-wise, and bearing a brass
salver with a telegram upon it. Now he approached her again, and she
marvelled at the noise he made. Surely he was made of brass, this
messenger whom no one heeded!
“_Two—four—nine! Two—four—nine!_” He came to her, he stopped again.
He shouted his challenge full at her. Then he ceased.
He thrust the salver towards her, and spoke in a husky, confidential
undertone. “Ain’t that your number, miss?”
She stared at him, amazed rather by the unexpected cessation of the
noise than by the words he spoke.
He thrust the salver a little nearer. “Ain’t that your number?” he said
again. “Two—four—nine! Thorold! Ain’t that your name?”
She put out a hand mechanically. “Is it? Can it be? Yes, my name is
Thorold.”
Her voice came mechanically too; it had a deadened sound.
The boy’s sharp eyes scanned her with pert curiosity. As she took the
telegram, he pursed his lips to a whistle, but no sound issued from
them.
She read the message in a sort of suspended silence that was peculiarly
intense.
“_I am in need of secretarial help if you care to resume your
position here as a temporary measure. Please come to-night or
wire. Rotherby. The Palace. Burminster._”
A voice out of the void! A forgotten voice, but none the less clear! She
looked up as it were through thinning mists and saw the boy’s bright
eyes watching her. Why was he interested, she wondered? What could it
matter to him?
“Any answer, miss?” he suggested helpfully, and now she saw a gleam in
the little rat-keen eyes and understood.
“No, none,” she said, “none. I shall answer it in person.”
He looked pinched for a moment, and then he grinned cheerily,
impudently, philosophically.
“That’s right, miss,” he said. “Don’t you lose no more time about it!
Time’s money to most of us.”
And with that he turned to go, but sharply, on impulse, she stayed him.
“Boy, wait!”
He waited at once. “Yes, miss? Anything I can do for you?”
“No, nothing,” she said, “nothing. You have already done—much more than
you know.” She pushed a hand down into the pocket of her rain-coat and
found a halfpenny that had been there ever since the coat had been new.
“I’ve carried this for luck,” she said, and managed to smile. “It’s all
I can offer you. Will you have it?”
He stared at her for a second, then his shrewd grin reappeared. “Not
unless you’ll toss me for it,” he said. “There’d be no luck without.”
She accepted the sporting suggestion. Strangely, in that moment, it
appealed to her. She needed trivialities as never before.
“You can toss if you like,” she said.
He took the coin and spun it, caught it deftly, and looked at her.
“Heads, miss?” he questioned.
“Yes, heads,” she agreed.
He slapped it forthwith on to the tray and handed it to her. “Heads it
is—and I wish you good luck!” he said.
She picked up her halfpenny, for there was a compelling look in his eye
which warned her that she was expected to play the game.
“Thank you,” she said, finding nothing else to say.
He drew himself up with a comic assumption of the grand manner. His
little beady eyes twinkled humorous appreciation of her action.
“You’re welcome, miss,” he said ceremoniously, and turning, tramped away
with his salver under his arm.
He left her laughing in a fashion that eased the tension of her nerves
and took from her that terrible hysterical feeling of being off her
balance that had so nearly overwhelmed her. She returned the halfpenny
to her pocket and sat motionless for a few seconds to recover.
Yes, her vision had departed, but her prayer was answered. A way was
opened before her, and, stony and difficult though it might be, she knew
that the needed strength to take it would be given. Her heart was
beating again and alive with a great thankfulness. It was not the way
she would have chosen, but what of that? It was not for her to choose.
And so, as her normal powers returned to her, she did not stay to
question. She rose to obey.
CHAPTER VI
THE INQUISITOR
“I have been given to understand,” said the Bishop, “that circumstances
have arisen which have made you not unwilling to return to me for a
time.”
“Yes, that is so,” Frances said, “if you care to make use of me.”
She stood before him in the book-lined study where so many of her hours
had been spent in bitter bondage of body and spirit. The table with its
typewriter was in its accustomed position in the window, and beyond the
window she caught a glimpse of the grey stone of the cloister-arch, no
longer decked in purple but splashed with the crimson of autumn leaves.
The morning sun shone warmly upon it. It was a glorious day.
She had travelled down by a night-train, and not till the official hour
of ten o’clock had the Bishop accorded her an interview. His austere
countenance displayed no vestige of welcome even now, yet she had a
curious conviction that he was not wholly displeased by her prompt reply
to his invitation. His greeting of her, though cold, had been without
acidity.
“Pray sit down!” he said, indicating a chair. “I have a few questions to
ask you before we proceed any further. I beg that you will reply to them
as concisely as possible.”
“I will do my best,” Frances said.
She took the seat facing him, the morning-light unsparingly upon her,
and she knew that he looked at her with a closer attention than he had
ever before bestowed upon her, as she did so.
“I will came to the point,” he said, in his curt, uncompromising way.
“You realize of course that my message to you was not the result of
chance, that I was actuated by a motive other than the mere desire to
suit my own convenience?”
“Yes, I guessed that,” she answered quietly.
He nodded, and she thought that the ascetic lines of his face became a
shade less grim as he proceeded. “I will not disguise from you the fact
that as a secretary I have not yet found your equal, but that was not my
reason for sending you that message. Now, Miss Thorold, kindly pay
attention to what I am going to say, for time is short. I am due to
conduct the service in the Cathedral in less than half-an-hour. I have a
question to ask you primarily to which I must have a simple and
unequivocal answer. When I discharged you some three months ago from my
employment, I believed that an intrigue of an unworthy nature existed
between my nephew and yourself. I ask you now—and you will answer me as
before God—has there ever been any justification for that belief either
before or since?”
He spoke with great solemnity and emphasis. His eyes—those fanatical
deep-set eyes—were fixed upon her with an intensity that seemed to burn
her.
“You will answer me,” he said again, “as before God.”
And Frances answered him with the simplicity of one to whom shame was
unknown. “There has never been the smallest justification.”
Something of tension went out of the Bishop’s attitude, but he kept his
eyes upon her with a scrutiny that never varied. “That being the case,”
he said, “on the assumption that you have nothing to hide, I am going to
ask you to give me a brief—really a brief account, Miss Thorold, of all
that has occurred between the date of your dismissal and the present
time.”
He spoke with the precision of one accustomed to instant obedience, but
Frances stiffened at the request.
“I am sorry,” she said. “But I am not prepared to do anything of the
kind.”
He lifted his thin brows. “You think my demand unreasonable?”
“Not only that. I think it impertinent,” Frances said, and still she
spoke with that simplicity which comes from the heart.
“In—deed!” said the Bishop.
There would have followed a difficult pause, but very quietly she filled
it. “You see, there are some parts of one’s life so sacred, that no man
or woman on earth has any right to trespass there. In fact, I personally
could not admit you even if I wished to do so. If I gave you the key,
you would not know how to use it.”
“You amaze me!” said the Bishop. He got up and began jerkily to pace the
room, much as his nephew had done on the night that she had sat in
judgment upon him. “Are you aware,” he said after a moment, “that many
men and women also have come to me with their confessions and have eased
their souls thereby of many burdens?”
She watched him with her clear eyes as he moved, and in her look was
something faintly quizzical. “Yes,” she said, “I can believe that many
people find relief in throwing their burdens upon someone else. With me,
it is not so. I prefer to bear my own.”
He stopped and confronted her. “You presume to treat this subject with
levity!” he said.
“Oh, believe me, no!” She rose quickly and faced him. “I have been
through too much for that. But what I have been through only God—who
has kept me safe—will ever know. I could not even begin to tell an
outsider that.”
The earnestness of her speech carried weight in spite of him. His face
softened somewhat. “You are a strange woman, Miss Thorold,” he said.
“But I am willing to believe that your motives are genuine though your
methods do not always commend themselves to me. Sit down again, and
kindly answer the few questions I shall put to you, which, you may as
well be assured, are dictated neither by curiosity nor impertinence. I
have been placed in a very peculiar position towards you, and I am doing
what I conceive to be my duty.”
That moved her also. Perhaps for the first time in her life, she looked
at him with a certain respect. “I will answer your questions to the best
of my ability, my lord,” she said.
“Enough!” said the Bishop, and waved her back to her chair prior to
reseating himself. “First then, when you left me, was it alone?”
“Quite alone,” said Frances.
“And you went—where?”
“I went to a village on the moors called Brookside. It is a few miles
from Fordestown. I found a lodging there.”
“Ah! And my nephew knew your whereabouts?”
“Certainly he did. He had offered to find me employment. I had
practically promised to be his secretary in the event of his writing a
book.”
“You did not consider that in any sense an indiscreet thing to do?”
questioned the Bishop.
She felt herself colour slightly, but she answered him without
hesitation. “Yes, I did. But beggars can’t be choosers. I tried to keep
things on a business footing. I thought he was merely sorry for me. I
did not realize—” she stopped abruptly.
“That he was strongly attracted by you?” suggested the Bishop.
“I did not think that I was sufficiently attractive for that to be
possible,” she answered with simplicity.
The flicker of a smile crossed his hard features. “You do not know human
nature very well,” he observed. “But to continue! You went to Brookside.
And then?”
“He came to see me there,” Frances said.
“And made love to you?”
“Yes.”
“Against your will?” asked the Bishop.
She met his look with great directness. “No, it was not—at
first—against my will. But I misunderstood him. And he misunderstood
me. Afterwards—very soon afterwards—I found out my mistake. That is
all I have to say upon that subject. It is over and done with now, and I
do not wish to think of it again.”
“I fear it has led to various complications,” said the Bishop, “which
make it impossible to dismiss the matter in that fashion. However, we
will pass on. May I ask you to give me the bald details of what
followed?”
She hesitated. That he was already in possession of most of the
circumstances attending her sojourn at Tetherstones was a fact which she
did not question, but she had a strong repugnance to discussing them
with him.
He read it, and in a moment, with a courtesy that surprised her, he
tried to set her at her ease.
“You need not scruple,” he said, “to speak freely to me upon this
matter. Nothing that you may tell me will go beyond this room.”
“Thank you,” she said, but still she hesitated. She could not tell him
of that terrible night with Montague upon the moors. At last, with an
effort, “I had an unpleasant adventure,” she said. “I was lost in a fog.
A little blind girl from a farm near by called Tetherstones found me,
and took me home with her. I was ill after that, and they nursed me.”
“They?” queried the Bishop.
“The Dermots,” she said.
“Ah!” said the Bishop.
He sat for a space lost in thought, his eyes still fixed upon her.
“Tell me about them!” he said at length. “Of what does the family now
consist?”
She told him, and he listened with close attention.
“What is the father like?” he asked then.
“He is an invalid,” she said. “The son works the farm, and the girls all
help. The mother spends most of her time looking after the old man.”
“Is he very old?” asked the Bishop.
“Very, I should say,” she answered.
“And the child—she is blind, you say?”
“Not now,” said Frances gently. “She is dead.”
He bent his head. “How did she come to die?”
“It was an accident,” Frances said. “It happened one night——”
She stopped. He was looking at her strangely, almost as if he suspected
her of trying to deceive him.
“You are sure it was an accident?” he said.
She gazed back at him in amazement. “How could it have been anything
else?”
He made a peculiar gesture as if to check her questioning. “And the old
man? Tell me more about him! What form does his malady take?”
His manner was compelling. She found herself answering, though wonder
still possessed her. “He suffers with his heart, and at times his brain
wanders a little. He gave me the impression of being worn out, but I did
not see a great deal of him.”
“You never saw him when he was ill?” said the Bishop.
“Yes, once.” She paused.
“Once?” repeated the Bishop.
“Yes. He was not quite himself at the time. I sat with him for an
afternoon. He spoke rather strangely, I remember. He—” Again she
paused. Memory was crowding back upon her. The inexplicable horror with
which that day she had been inspired returned to her. And suddenly a
strange thing happened. It was as if a curtain had been rent aside,
showing her in a single blinding moment of revelation the phantom of
terror from whose unseen presence she had so often shrunk in fear.
She uttered a sharp gasp, and turned from the hard eyes that watched
her. “That is all I can tell you,” she said.
He made no comment of any sort, refraining from pressing her upon the
subject with a composure that left her completely at a loss as to his
state of mind. Her own mind at the moment was in chaos, so sudden and so
overwhelming had been her discovery. She marvelled at her previous
blindness, but she asked no question even in her bewilderment. Her
loyalty to her friends at Tetherstones held her silent.
She was conscious of an urgent desire to be alone, to trace this thing
to its source, to sort and arrange the many odd memories that now chased
each other in wild confusion through her brain, to fit together once and
for all this puzzle, the key to which had just been so amazingly given
her.
But the Bishop still sat before her, an uncompromising inquisitor who
would not suffer her to go until he had obtained the last iota of
information that he desired.
He spoke, with cold peremptoriness. “Well, Miss Thorold, there remains
the matter of your further adventures with my nephew. Your sojourn at
Tetherstones at the time of your illness did not—apparently—terminate
these. Do you object to telling me under what circumstances you left the
Dermots?”
“I left them finally to get work,” she said.
“And in the first place?” said the Bishop.
She met his look again. “In the first place I left them at night with
your nephew. We went to an inn at Fordestown. He went up to town the
next day, and I took a lodging in the place. I went back to Tetherstones
about a week later at the request of old Dr. Square who attended them.
The little girl was ill and wanted me. She died that night.”
“And you stayed on?” said the Bishop.
“I stayed on until two days ago, when I also went to town in the hope of
selling some of my sketches. Your nephew had offered to help me.”
“And that was your sole reason for going?” he said.
“No, not my sole reason.” She spoke deliberately, and said no more.
“But the only one you are prepared to give me?” he said.
“Yes,” she answered with decision.
He looked at his watch. “And you are not disposed to tell me how you
came to run away—at night—with my nephew, a man with whom you wish me
to believe that you had no desire to be associated?”
“No,” said Frances quietly.
“My opinion in the matter carries no weight?” he suggested.
She knitted her brows a little. “I would certainly rather you believed
in me,” she said. “But—I cannot give you any convincing reason for so
doing.”
“You can if you wish,” said the Bishop.
She shook her head. “I am afraid not.”
He rose. “By answering two questions which concern yourself alone.
First, why are you not willing to marry my nephew?”
She looked at him, slightly startled. “Because I don’t love him,” she
said.
“Thank you,” said the Bishop. “And is there any other man whom you would
be willing to marry?”
His eyes held her. She felt the blood surge over her face, but she could
not turn away. He waited inexorably for her reply.
For a space she did battle with him, then very suddenly, almost
whimsically, she yielded.
“Yes, my lord,” she said, and she spoke with a certain pride.
He held out his hand to her abruptly; there was even a glimmer of
approval in his look. “Miss Thorold, you have convinced me,” he said. “I
have misjudged you, and I will make amends.”
It was not an apology. There was not a shadow of regret in his words,
scarcely even of kindness, yet, oddly, they sent a rush of feeling to
her heart that swept away her self-control. She stood speechless,
fighting her emotion.
“Enough!” said the Bishop, turning aside. “I must go to prepare for the
service. Perhaps you would like to walk in the garden and find
refreshment there. I will ask you later to resume your secretarial
duties.”
He was gone. She heard the door shut definitely behind him, and the
garden with its old-world peace seemed to call her. Storm-tossed and
weary, she went out into the warm sunlight, thanking God with her tears.
CHAPTER VII
FAIR PLAY
The deep tones of the Cathedral organ thrilled across the quiet garden.
There came the chanting of boys’ voices, and then a silence. She
wandered on through the enchanted stillness, past the cloister arch, and
so by winding paths down to the haunted water whither her Fate had led
her on that summer night that seemed so long ago.
Her tears had ceased. She walked like a nun, her hands folded before
her. The pain in her heart was wonderfully stilled. She was not thinking
of herself any more, but of Tetherstones, and the grim secret that had
so suddenly been bared to her gaze. She saw it all now—or nearly
all—that skeleton which they kept so closely locked away, and she
marvelled at her blindness. To have lived among them, and to have seen
so little!
The gentle white-haired mother with her patient silence—the chattering
girls darkly hinting yet never revealing—the sombre prematurely-aged
man who ruled them all, grinding the stones for bread, bitterly
trampling all his ambitions underfoot, refusing to eat of the tree of
life lest he should fail in that to which he had set his hand! And
little Ruth—little Ruth—who had lived and died among them in her
innocence—the child whom none had wanted but all had loved,—the child
whose passing had wrung those terrible tears from the man who had never
seemed to care!
Yes, she held the key to it all—that agony of despair, that extremity
of suffering. The Bishop’s question: “You are sure it was an accident?”
The old man’s halting enquiries—his relief at her reply—and then later
his wandering words that had awakened such horror within her! His
three-fold vow! What had he meant by that? And the place of
sacrifice—the place of sacrifice! Again she seemed to hear the mumbled
words. And her mind, leaping from point to point, caught detail after
detail in a stronger light.
Now the picture of that terrible night stood out vividly before her.
That shot in the moonlight, and her own conviction of tragedy! The
coming of little Ruth to her deliverance—the banging of the door! Only
Grandpa! The child’s words rushed back upon her. Only Grandpa! He had
come in after those shots, had gone to the kitchen. How she remembered
his weary, dragging gait! And she had fled—and she had fled! Again
little Ruth’s words came back to her: “Oh, please come!” Ah, why had she
not stayed with Ruth that night?
And the child had set out to seek her. Possibly she had gone to the old
man first to see if she had returned to the kitchen, and not finding
her, had hastened out to the Stones to search.
She tried to turn her imagination at this point, but a power stronger
than herself urged it on. She saw the child flitting like a spirit
through the night, over the lawn and through the nut-trees, pausing
often to listen, but always flitting on again. She saw a dark shadow
that followed, avoiding the open spaces, but never pausing at all. And
she remembered the eyes that once had glared at her through those
nut-trees and she had deemed them a dream!
Now she saw Ruth again out in the corn-field, hastening over the
stubble, drawing near to the Stones—that place where the giant
harebells grew. And the Stones themselves rose up before her, stark in
the moonlight, and the great Rocking Stone which a child could set in
motion from below but which none might overthrow. And the flitting form
was climbing it to find her—ah, why had she left little Ruth that
night?
The place of sacrifice! The place of sacrifice! The words ran with a
mocking rhythm through her brain. She saw it all—the childish figure
poised in the moonlight—the lurking shadow behind—a movement at first
imperceptible, gathering in weight and strength as the great Stone
swayed forward—and perhaps a faint cry. . . . She covered her eyes to
blot out the dreadful vision. Ah, little Ruth! Little Ruth!
When she looked up again, it had passed. Yet for a space her mind dwelt
upon the old man and his helplessness—his pathetic dignity—his
loneliness. And the mother with the eyes that were too tired to weep!
She could understand it all now. Piece by piece the puzzle came
together. She did not wonder any longer at the devotion that had
inspired them all to sacrifice. They had done it for the mother’s sake.
Ah, yes, she could understand!
She reached the yew-tree by the lake where she and Montague had hidden
together and stood still. The dark boughs hanging down screened the
further side from her view, but the small fizz of a cigarette-end
meeting the water awakened her very swiftly from her reverie. She drew
herself together with an instinctive summoning of her strength to meet
him.
But when he came round the great tree and joined her, she knew no fear,
only a sense of the inevitableness of the interview.
He spoke at once, without greeting of any sort. “I’ve been waiting for
you. You’ve seen the Bishop?”
“Yes,” she made answer. “He has been—very good to me.”
“I can hardly imagine that,” said Rotherby dryly. “But he means well.
Look here! I don’t know whether you’ll be angry, but I’ve told him
everything. It was the only thing to do.”
She stood before him with grave eyes meeting his. “Why should I be
angry?” she said. “I think it was—rather brave of you.”
“Brave!” he echoed, and his lips twisted a little as though they wanted
to sneer. “Would you say that of the cur that takes refuge behind your
skirt? No, wait! I’m not here to torment you with that sort of
platitudes. It doesn’t matter what you think of me. I don’t count.
You’ll never see me again after this show is over. I promise you that.
I’ve led you a devil’s dance, but I’m nearly done. There’s only one
figure left, and you’ve got to step that whether you want to or not.”
“What do you mean?” Frances said, arrested rather by the recklessness of
his speech than by the words he spoke.
“I’ll tell you,” said Rotherby. “It’ll be something of a shock, I warn
you. But you have pluck enough for a dozen. First then, I’ve got to own
up to a lie. You remember that affair at Tetherstones—when I was shot
waiting for you?”
“Oh yes,” she said. “Yes.” She knew what was coming, yet she waited for
it with an odd breathlessness. Somehow so much seemed to hang upon it.
“It was not Arthur Dermot who fired that shot,” Rotherby said. “It was
the old man, and he meant murder too. But Arthur and Oliver were both
there and that put him off. They turned up unexpectedly from different
directions and chased him, but somehow he got away. I bolted—with my
usual bravery.” Again she saw his twisted smile. He went on, scarcely
pausing. “I didn’t tell you the truth for several reasons. I daresay you
can guess what they were. Arthur is sane enough except when he sees red.
But the old man—well, the old man is a raving lunatic at times, though
he has his lucid intervals, I believe. He ought to be shut up of course,
but his wife has never been able to face it. Some women are like that.
You would be. They keep him shut up when he goes off the rails. I
believe he has only got one serious mania, and that is to kill me. So it
has been fairly easy to guard against that until lately. It was poor
Nan’s trouble that sent him off his head in the first place, but if I
had kept out of the way he would probably have remained harmless. You
understand that, do you?”
“I am beginning to understand—many things,” Frances said. But she could
not speak of little Ruth to him.
He also seemed glad to pass on. “Well we needn’t discuss that any
further. He got wind of my coming, and he did his best to out me. He
didn’t succeed—perhaps fortunately, perhaps otherwise. Now to come to
Arthur! He would have left me alone if it hadn’t been for you. You
realize that, of course?”
“Oh yes,” Frances said, wondering with a faint impatience why he harped
upon the matter.
He saw the wonder and grimly smiled at it. “I realized that too,” he
said. “It has simplified matters considerably. I told you I would play
the game. Well, I’ve played it. After I had got down here yesterday and
seen the Bishop, I wrote to Arthur. I told him the whole truth from
beginning to end. He hasn’t any illusions left by this time concerning
you—or me either.”
“Ah, what made you do that?” Frances said.
Strangely in that moment, deeply as his words concerned her, it was not
of herself she thought, but of the man before her, with his drawn,
haggard face in which cynicism struggled to veil suffering.
“I don’t know why you did that,” she said. “It was not necessary. It was
not wise.”
“It was—fair play,” he said, and still with set lips he smiled. “I did
more than that, and I shall do more still—unless you relieve me of the
obligation.”
“What do you mean?” she said. “What can you mean?”
A growing sense of uneasiness possessed her. Did he know Arthur Dermot’s
nature? Was it not madness to dare again that tornado of fury from which
she had so strenuously fought to deliver him? It had not been an easy
thing, that deliverance. She had sacrificed everything to accomplish it,
and now he had refuted all. “I think you must be mad,” she said. “Tell
me what you mean!”
The bitter lines deepened about his mouth. “I will tell you,” he said,
“and once more seek the refuge of your generous protection. I told him
that I should go to-day to Fordestown, and from Fordestown I would meet
him at the Stones at any hour that he cared to appoint, to give him such
further satisfaction as he might wish to demand.”
“Montague!” The name broke from her, little accustomed as she was to
utter it. “Are you really mad?” she said. “Are you quite, quite mad?”
“I am not,” he answered briefly.
“But—but he will kill you if you meet again!”
She gasped the words breathlessly. This thing must be stopped. At all
costs it must be stopped.
He was still smiling in that odd, drawn way. She did not understand his
look. He raised his shoulders at her words.
“He may. What of it?”
“Oh, you mustn’t go!” she said. “It would be madness—madness.”
“I have had my answer,” said Rotherby.
“You have?” She stared at him. “What is it? Quick! Tell me!”
He pulled a telegram from his pocket and gave it to her. She opened it
with shaking hands. Three words only—brief, characteristic,
uncompromising! “_To-night at ten._” No signature of any sort—only the
bald reply!
She gazed at it in silence. And before her inward sight there rose a
vision of the man himself as she had seen him last, terrible in his
wrath, overwhelming in his condemnation. Yet her heart leapt to the
vision. He was the man she loved.
She looked up. “You mustn’t go,” she said. “Or if you do—I shall come
too.”
“No,” said Rotherby.
She met his look. “Why do you say that? What do you mean?”
“I mean that you will never go anywhere with me again,” he said.
“But—but—” she stumbled over the words, hearing other words ringing
like hammer-strokes in her brain,—“he will kill you—he has sworn to
kill you if you go his way again.”
“Do you think you could prevent it,” said Rotherby.
She crumpled the paper in her hand. “Yes, I could—I would—somehow.”
“Very well. You can,” he said.
His manner baffled her. She looked at him uncertainly. “Tell me what you
mean!” she said again.
He made a curious gesture, as of a player who tosses down his last card
knowing himself a loser. “I mean,” he said, “that you can go in my
place. Either that—or I go alone.”
Then she understood him, read the strategy by which he had sought to
prove himself, and a deep pity surged up within her, blotting out all
that had gone before.
“But I couldn’t possibly go,” she said. “It wouldn’t really help either,
though—” she halted a little—“I know quite well what made you do
it—and—I am grateful.”
“One of us will go,” Rotherby said with decision. “That I swear to God.
It is for you to decide which.”
There was indomitable resolution in his voice. Very suddenly she
realized that the way before her was barred. She drew back
instinctively.
“But that is absurd,” she said. “You know quite well that there is
nothing to be gained by going.”
“Except a modicum of self-respect,” said Rotherby. “It may not be worth
much, but, strange to say, I value it. I will forego it for your sake,
but for no other consideration under the sun.”
He was immovable; she saw it. Yet in despair she made another effort to
move him. “But how could I go?” she protested. “It is utterly out of the
question. You know it is out of the question.”
“Do I know it?” said Rotherby, with his faint half-scoffing smile.
“If you think at all, you must,” she said. “I couldn’t possibly face it.
Not after—after——”
“After he has been told the truth in such a fashion that he cannot
possibly doubt you,” said Rotherby. “Forgive me, but I
thought—love—was capable of anything. If it isn’t, well—as I said
before—I go alone. That is quite final, so we needn’t argue about it.
There is a train to Fordestown at five this afternoon. I shall go by
that, and pick up a conveyance at the station.”
“There are none,” she said, clutching at a straw.
“Then I shall go to The Man in the Moon for one. Anyway, I shall keep my
appointment—with time to spare,” said Rotherby. “You might give us a
thought before you turn in. It’ll be an interesting interview—even more
so than our last.”
He swung upon his heel with the words, but Frances threw out a hand,
grasping his arm.
“Montague,—please—you’re not in earnest! You can’t be! I mean—it’s so
utterly preposterous.”
He stood still, the smile gone from his face. Very suddenly he threw
aside the cloak of irony in which he had wrapped himself, and met her
appeal with absolute sincerity.
“I am in earnest,” he said. “And it is not preposterous. Can’t you
realize that a time may come in a man’s life when just for his own
soul’s sake he has got to prove to himself that he is not an utter
skunk? It doesn’t matter what other people think. They can think what
they damn’ well please. But he himself—the thing that goes with him
always, that sleeps when he sleeps and wakes when he wakes—do you think
he can afford to be out with that? By God, no! Life isn’t worth having
under those conditions. I’d sooner die and be damned straight away.”
He laughed upon the words, but it was a laugh of exceeding bitterness.
And there came to Frances in that moment the conviction that what he
said was right. No power on earth can ever compensate for the loss of
self-respect.
Somehow that passionate utterance of his went straight to her heart. If
she had not forgiven him before, her forgiveness was now complete and
generous. She saw in him in the hour of his repentance the man whom once
she could have loved, and she was deeply moved thereby.
“Are you satisfied?” he said. “Have I convinced you that I am playing
the game—or trying to?”
She met his eyes though she knew that her own were wet. “Yes, I am
convinced,” she said. “I am satisfied.”
“And what are you going to do?” he questioned.
Very simply she made answer. “I will go to Tetherstones.”
He drew a hard breath. “You’re not afraid?”
“No,” she said.
He put an urgent hand on her shoulder. “Frances,” he said, “you must
make him understand.”
“He will understand,” she said.
He bent towards her. His voice came huskily. “It isn’t only—for
myself,” he said. “You know that?”
“I know,” she said.
“I want to win your forgiveness,” he said, and there was appeal in the
pressure of his hand. “Have I got that?”
“Yes,” she said.
“You are sure?” Voice and touch alike pleaded with her.
She felt the tears welling to her eyes. “From my very heart,” she said.
“Yes, I am sure.”
She offered him both her hands, and he took and held them closely for a
space, then abruptly he let them go.
“You will never love me,” he said, “but it may please you some day to
remember that you taught me how to love.”
And with that he turned and walked away from her, not suffering himself
to look back. She knew even as she watched him go that he would keep his
word and that she would never see him again.
Out of sheer pity it came to her to call him back, but a stronger
impulse held her silent. She became aware very suddenly of the crumpled
paper in her hand, and, as the solitude of the place came about her with
his going, she spread it open once again and read.
CHAPTER VIII
THE PLACE OF SACRIFICE
An owl was hooting in the moonlit distance, and the ripple, ripple,
ripple of running water filled in the silences. A vast loneliness—the
loneliness of the moors at night which is somehow like an unseen
presence—wrapped the whole world as in a mantle which the weird cry of
the wandering bird pierced but could not lift. The scent of wet
bog-myrtle with now and then a waft of late honeysuckle was in the air.
And from the east, silver, majestic, wonderful, a moon that was nearly
full mounted upwards to her throne above the earth.
The rough track that led to the Stones was clearly defined in its
radiance, and the Stones themselves stood up like sentinels on the hill.
A wonderful place! Yes, a wonderful place, but how desolate, and
barbaric in its desolation!
A woman stood at the gate that opened from the lane on to that steep
track. She had walked up from the village in the moonlight, and before
her it was as clear as day, but she stood as one hesitating to emerge
from the shadows. Her hands were folded together as if in prayer.
A vagrant breeze stirring the high hedges that bordered the lane made
her turn her head sharply to listen, and a faint, vague sound from down
the hill brought a further movement of attention from her. But the sound
ceased—it might have been some scurrying wild thing—the wind died
down, sighing sadly away, and all was quiet again, save for that unseen,
trickling water, and the far, haunting cry of the owl on the hill-side.
But her own movement had given her courage, or perhaps she feared to
remain; for she paused no longer at the gate. Noiselessly she opened it
and passed through. Then closing it, she stood for a moment, looking
back. Down the lane a light glimmered, fitfully, seen through
tree-branches—Tetherstones.
Her eyes sought it with a certain wistfulness, dwelt upon it, then
resolutely, with a sigh half-checked she turned and mounted the hill,
walking rapidly and soundlessly over the short grass beside the track.
Nearer and nearer she drew to the Stones in their gaunt splendour, and
the spell of the place encompassed her like an enchantment; but she
hesitated no more. Firmly, steadfastly, she pursued her way.
Once indeed she gave a great start as a horned creature blundered
suddenly up in front of her, and dashed away with clattering feet over
the scattered stones, but she checked her instinctive alarm with swift
self-assertion. It was only a goat more startled than herself. What was
there to fear?
She came at last into the great circle, pushing through coarse
straggling grass till she reached the smooth, boulder-strewn turf where
the sheep and the goats had grazed. And here she stopped and looked
around her in the moonlight with the feeling strong upon her that she
was being watched.
Again, with an effort of will, she dismissed the thought. It was the
stark emptiness of the place that induced it; of that she was certain.
For there was no sign of movement anywhere; only the great Tether Stones
standing round, a grim challenge to the centuries. She turned slowly
after a time and faced the Rocking Stone. More than ever now in the
moonlight had it the appearance of rolling towards her, as though set in
motion by some unseen hand. And she shuddered as she watched it. The
eeriness of the place was beginning to fold itself around her
irresistibly, almost suffocatingly.
“Why should I be afraid?” she whispered to herself, clenching her hands
desperately to keep down the panic that was knocking at her heart.
“There is nothing here to hurt me. They are only stones.”
Only stones! Yet they seemed to threaten her by their very immobility,
their coldness, their silence. She was an intruder in their midst, and
whichever way she turned that sensation of being watched went with her,
oppressed her. The hooting of the owl in the distance was somehow like
the calling of a lost spirit, wandering to and fro, seeking rest—and
finding none. . . . There was no other sound in all the world, though
her ears were strained to listen. Even the music of the streams was
hushed up here.
“They are only stones,” she said to herself again, and began to walk
down the centre of the circle towards the Rocking Stone, defying that
engulfing, fateful silence with all her strength. Within a dozen yards
of it something stopped her, as surely as if a hand had caught her back.
She stood still, not breathing.
Was it fancy? Was it reality? The monstrous thing was moving! Like a
seated giant giving her salutation it swayed slowly forward. And what
were those long, crimson streaks upon it that gleamed as if wet in the
moonlight?
She stood as one transfixed, possessed by horror. A devil’s paradise!
The words rushed meteor-like through her brain. Surely this gruesome
place was haunted by devils!
Fascinated, she watched the great stone. Would it leave its
resting-place, roll down to her, annihilate her? Had it started upon its
dread course she knew she could not have avoided it. She was paralyzed
by terror, possibly the more intense because of its utter unreason.
That some animal might have set the thing in motion was a possibility
that did not even cross her mind. She knew, without any proof, that some
evil influence was at work. She could feel it with every gasping breath
she drew.
Downwards and yet further downwards rocked the great Stone, and at the
last there came a grinding noise as though some substance were being
pulverized beneath it. It was unutterably horrible to the looker-on, but
still she could not turn and flee. She was as much a prisoner as though
she were indeed tethered to one of those grim monsters that stood about
her.
Spell-bound as one in a nightmare, she stood and watched, quaking and
powerless, saw the thing begin to lift again like some prehistoric beast
of prey rising from its slaughtered victim, saw it roll slowly back
again soundlessly, as if on hinges, with the inevitable poise which
alone kept it in its place, saw the dreadful crimson streaks and patches
that dripped down its scarred front. And suddenly the bond that held her
snapped. She turned from the dreadful sight and fled through the ghastly
solitude as if she fled for her life.
Again the cry of the owl sounded, much nearer now, and she thought it
was the shriek of a pursuing demon. Through that grass-grown place of
sacrifice she tore like the wind, so goaded by fear as to be hardly
conscious of direction. And now the shriek of the demon had become a
yell of mocking laughter that died away with dreadful echoes among the
Stones. . . .
She reached the open hill-side beyond that awful Circle, and here
abruptly she was stayed. A maddening pain awoke in her side and she
could go no further. The pain was acute for a few seconds, and she
crouched in the grass in her extremity, fighting for breath. Then,
gradually recovering, she began to tell her racing heart that she had
fled from shadows. Yet it was no shadow that had moved that Rocking
Stone.
Her strength returned to her at last and she stood up. But she could not
return to that terrible trysting-place. Her knees were shaking still.
There was only one course left if she would keep her tryst, and though
her whole soul shrank from the thought of it, yet was she in honor bound
to fulfil that pledge. Since she could not return, she must wait on the
hill-side till he came. The appointed time must be drawing near now, and
if she knew him he would not be late.
Even with the thought there rose a sound from the valley below her,—a
clear and beautiful sound that went far to dispel that sense of lurking
evil that so oppressed her—the church-clock striking ten. It renewed
her courage, it stilled that wild, insensate fear within her. It gave
her the power that belongs to purity.
No longer weak and stumbling, she left the spot where she had crouched
and walked across the grass towards the track by which he would come.
And as she went, there came to her the clang of the gate that led out of
the lane. He was coming!
She realized abruptly that she could not stand and await him in the full
moonlight. The shadows of the Stones fell densely not fifty yards away,
and, conquering that instinct that urged her in the opposite direction,
she directed her steps towards them. The consciousness of another human
presence went far to disperse the ghostly influence of the place. The
definite effort that lay before her drove the thought of forces less
concrete into the background. At the very entrance to the arena,
screened by the shadow of the first great Tether Stone she waited for
him.
Immediately below her was the cattle-shed with its thatched roof, within
which she and Montague Rotherby had found shelter on that night of fog
when deliverance had so wonderfully come to her. Her mind dwelt upon the
memory for a moment, then swiftly flashed back to the present, for,
distinct in the stillness, there came to her the sound of his feet upon
the track. Her heart gave a wild bound of recognition. How well she knew
that sound!
Slow and regular and unfalteringly firm, they mounted the steep ascent
while she stood waiting in the shadow. Now she could see him, a dark and
powerful figure, walking with bent head, coming straight towards her,
pursuing his undeviating course. Now he was close at hand. And now—
What moved her suddenly to look towards the cattle-shed—the flash of
something that gleamed with a steely brightness in the moonlight, or an
influence more subtle and infinitely more compelling. She knew not, but
in that moment she looked, and looking, sprang forward with a cry. For
in the entrance, clear against the blackness behind, she saw a face,
corpse-like in its whiteness, but alive with a murderous malice,—the
face of a devil.
Her cry arrested the man upon the path. He stood still, and she rushed
to him with arms outspread, intervening between him and the evil thing
that lurked in the shed.
She reached him, flung her arms around him. “Arthur—Arthur! For God’s
sake—come away from this dreadful place—this dreadful place!”
Wildly she poured forth the words, seeking with frantic urgency to turn
him from the path. But he stood like a rock, resisting her.
“What are you doing here?” he said.
She tried to tell him, but explanation failed. “I came to meet you,
but—there is—there is something dreadful in the barn. Don’t go near!
Come away! Oh, come away!”
But still he stood, resisting her desperate efforts to move him. “I have
come to meet Rotherby,” he said. “You go—and let me meet him alone!”
The curt words steadied her somewhat, but she could not let him go.
“Arthur, please,—listen!” she urged. “He isn’t here. I came in his
place. But there is something terrible in the shed. I don’t know what. I
only know—I only know—that the whole place is full of evil, and the
thing I saw—the thing I saw—is probably one of many.”
She was trembling violently, and his hand came up and supported her.
“Oh, why did you come?” he said, and his tone held more of reproach than
questioning.
She answered him notwithstanding. “I had to come. There was no choice.
But don’t let us stay! I have seen the Rocking Stone move. I have
seen—a thing like a devil in the barn.”
“How long have you been here?” he said.
She was shivering still. “I don’t know—a long time. But that awful
thing——”
He turned towards the barn. “Your nerves have been playing you tricks,”
he said. “There is nothing here.”
She hung back, still clinging to him, reassured by his confidence in
spite of herself, yet afraid beneath her reassurance.
“It couldn’t have been fancy. I am not fanciful. Arthur, don’t go! Don’t
go!”
He stopped and looked at her, and in his eyes was that which strangely
moved her, stilling her entreaty, overwhelming her fear, banishing every
thought in her heart but the one great rapture of her soul as it leaped
to his.
So for a long moment they stood, then his arm went round her. He turned
aside.
“We will go to the Stones,” he said, “and leave these banshees to look
after themselves. It was probably a goat you saw.”
She went with him, almost convinced that he was right and that her fancy
had tricked her. She would have gone with him in that moment if all the
ghosts of the centuries had awaited them among the Stones.
As they passed into the great arena, he uttered a groan, and his arm
relaxed and fell. “This is absolute madness,” he said. “I told you
before. I am tied. I am a prisoner. I shall never be free.” The iron of
despair was in his voice.
“Then I will be a prisoner too,” she said.
“No—no! Why did that scoundrel send you to me? Why didn’t he come
himself?” He flung the words passionately, as though the emotions
surging within him were greater than he could control.
But she answered him steadfastly, without agitation. “Arthur, listen! He
sent me to you because he is ashamed of all that has gone before—and
because he wished to make amends. He has gone out of my life. But I have
forgiven him, and—some day—I hope you will forgive him too.”
“Never!” he said. “Never! I would have killed him with my naked hands if
I had had the chance.”
She suppressed a shiver at the memory his words called up. “That is not
worthy of you. Forgiveness is a greater thing than revenge—oh, so much
greater. And love is greater than all. You won’t believe it, but—he was
capable of love.”
“He was capable of anything,” Arthur said, “except playing a straight
game.”
“You are wrong,” she said earnestly. “You are wrong. He has played a
straight game now in telling you the truth and in sending me to you. He
made me come, do you understand? I didn’t want to—I would rather have
done anything than come. But he would have come himself if I hadn’t. And
so——”
“You came to save his life?” suggested Arthur, with a bitter sneer.
She answered him with the simplicity that is above bitterness. “I came
to save you both.”
He looked at her with a certain grimness. “And why didn’t you want to
come?”
Again with absolute directness she answered him. “Because I knew how it
would hurt you to send me away again.”
He swung away from her and again she heard him groan. “This is well
named the place of sacrifice,” he said. “Do you remember the day I first
brought you here? I loved you then, and I knew it was hopeless—utterly
hopeless. It is more so than ever now. I can’t go on. I won’t go on.
This thing has got to stop. God knows I have fought it. You have got to
fight it too,—go on fighting till it dies.”
“It will rise again,” she said.
His hands clenched. “I’ve never been beaten yet,” he said.
To which she made no answer, for she knew, as he did, that there is no
power in earth or heaven so omnipotent as the power of Love.
They went on together, side by side down that great arena, the gaunt
Stones all around them like monstrous idols in a forgotten place of
worship. They drew near to the Rocking Stone, and very suddenly Arthur
stopped.
He stood before it in utter silence, and she wondered what was passing
in his mind. The moonlight shone full upon the face of the Stone. She
saw again those strange red streaks of which old Mr. Dermot had told
her. But her fear was gone, swallowed up in that which was infinitely
greater—her love for the man at her side.
How long they stood thus she did not know. She began to realize that he
was bracing himself anew for sacrifice, that he was battling desperately
for the mastery against odds such as even he had never faced before. She
saw him once more as a gladiator, terrible in his resolution,
indomitable as the Stone he faced, invincible so long as the breath
remained in his body. His last words kept hammering in her brain with
the swing and rhythm of a haunting refrain: “I’ve never been beaten
yet—I’ve never been beaten yet.” And through them, faint, thread-like
as a far-off echo, she heard another voice—whether of child or angel
she knew not: “You’ll find it up by the Stones, where the giant
hare-bells grow. It’s the most precious thing in the world, and when you
find it, keep it—always—always—always!”
The giant hare-bells! There they grew at the foot of that grim Stone
where the child had lain all night, unafraid because God was there. She
saw them, pale in the moonlight, and in memory of little Ruth she
stooped to gather one.
It was then that it happened,—so suddenly, so appallingly,—with a
crash as if the heavens were rent above her. A blinding red flame seemed
to spring from the very ground in front of her, the smell of burning
choked her senses. The whole world rocked and burst into a blaze. She
went backwards, conscious of Arthur’s arms around her, conscious that
they fell together . . . or were they hurled into space among the
wandering star-atoms to drift for evermore hither and thither—spirits
without a home?
“From all evil and mischief, from sin, from the crafts and assaults of
the devil, from Thy wrath—and from everlasting damnation” (that
dreadful irremediable doom in which she had never believed), “Good Lord,
deliver us.”
CHAPTER IX
WHERE THE GIANT HARE-BELLS GROW
Who was that whispering behind the screen—Lucy and Nell, could it be,
audible as ever, though hidden from sight? It was like a long-forgotten
story, begun years since and never finished.
“Dr. Square says she may just drift away and never recover consciousness
at all; but her heart is a little stronger than it was, and she is able
to take nourishment, so she may rally and sleep it off. I wonder if she
will remember anything if she does.”
“Oh, I hope—I hope she won’t!” This was surely Lucy’s voice, hushed and
tearful. “She may have seen him lying dead, all torn by the explosion.
It would be dreadful for her to remember that.”
“Well, thank God he is dead!” Nell spoke stoutly, as one expectant of
rebuke. “The life we have led has been enough to kill us all. Whatever
happens, things must get better now.”
“Oh, hush!” imploringly from Lucy. “It is wrong—it must be wrong to
talk like that.”
“I don’t see why,” combatively from Nell. “God must have arranged it
all. And when you’ve carried a burden that’s too big for you, it can’t
be wrong to be thankful when He takes it away.”
“But think of Mother!” Lucy’s whisper was broken with tears.
“I do think of her. And I know she is thankful too. My dear, you are
thankful yourself. Why disguise it? It isn’t wrong to be thankful.” Nell
spoke with vigorous decision. “If only _she_ gets over this—and I don’t
see why she shouldn’t, for it’s only shock, nothing else—why, all our
troubles will be over. The inquest was the simplest thing in the
world—nothing but sympathy and condolences, no tiresome questions at
all. I’m ashamed of you, Lucy, for having so little spirit. Don’t you
see what it means to us? Why, we’re free—we’re free—we’re free!”
To which, sighing, Lucy could only answer, “It doesn’t seem right. And
she hasn’t got over it yet, and even if she does——”
“Which she will!” Nell’s voice arose above a whisper and ran with
confidence. “Which she shall and will! How I would like to know what
brought her there! I wonder if she will ever tell us.”
“I wonder,” murmured Lucy.
* * * * *
Thereafter for a space there was silence, and then there began that
gradual groping towards the light which comes to a brain awakening. Who
was it who was lying dead among the Stones? And why were they all so
thankful? Then at last she opened her eyes to the soft sunshine of late
autumn and awoke from her long, trance-like sleep.
Someone rose to minister to her, and she saw the white-haired mother
with her patient eyes bending over her. She smiled upon her with a great
tenderness.
“So you are awake!” she said, and Frances knew that she was glad. “Don’t
try to move too quickly! Just wait till your strength comes back!”
“Am I ill then?” Frances asked her, wondering.
And she answered gently, “No, dear. Only tired. You will be quite all
right presently. Just lie still!”
So Frances lay still and pondered, fitting the puzzle piece by piece,
slowly, painfully, till at length with returning memory the picture was
complete. But who was lying dead among the Stones? And why—oh,
why—were they thankful?
She could not ask the quiet woman by her side. The sad face bent over
her work somehow held her silent, so deep were its lines of suffering.
But the need to know was strong upon her. Someone was lying dead.
Someone had been killed. Who? Oh, who? And what had caused that
frightful explosion up there among the Stones?
There came to her again the memory of Arthur’s arms holding her. And
they had gone out together into the star-wide spaces. How was it that
she had returned—alone?
Something awoke within her, urging her. She sat up, not conscious of any
effort.
Mrs. Dermot came to her. “What is it, dear? Are you wanting something?”
Frances looked at her, but still she could not ask that dread question.
Her lips refused to frame it. Not of anyone could she have borne to ask
that which so earnestly she desired to know. She must find out for
herself. She must go to the Stones. If he were dead—and in her heart
she knew he must be—she would meet his spirit there.
And she must go alone.
She met Mrs. Dermot’s gentle questioning very steadfastly. “I want to
get up, please,” she said. “I am going to the Stones—to look for
something.”
She expected opposition, but she met with none. Mrs. Dermot seemed to
understand.
“Whatever you wish, dear,” she said. “But don’t overtax your strength!”
She helped her to dress, but she did not offer to accompany her. And so
presently Frances found herself out in the misty sunshine, hastening
with a desperate concentration of will towards the place of sacrifice.
She never remembered any stages of her journey later, so fixed was she
upon reaching her destination. But as she sped up the steep track, her
heart was racing within her, and, conscious of weakness, she had to
pause ere she reached the top to give herself breathing-space.
Then she pressed on, never once looking back, passing the cattle-shed
without a glance, reaching the Stones at length and moving fearlessly in
among the long shadows cast by the setting sun.
A warm glow lay everywhere, softening the dread desolation of the place.
She walked straight down the great circle, looking neither to right nor
to left, straight to that point whence she had stood and watched the
ghostly Rocking Stone sway before her like a prehistoric monster in dumb
salute. And here she stood again, arrested by a sight that made her
suddenly cold. The Rocking Stone was gone,—crumbled into a shattered
heap of grey stones, around which the giant hare-bells still flowered in
their purple splendour!
She caught her breath. This was where he was lying dead. This was where
she would meet his spirit.
Again little Ruth’s message ran like a silvery echo through the seething
uncertainty of her soul. “You’ll find it up by the Stones, where the
giant hare-bells grow—something that you’re wanting—that you’ve wanted
always—very big—bigger even than the Rocking Stone. If you can’t find
it by yourself, Uncle Arthur will help you. You’ll know it when you find
it—because it’s the most precious thing in the world.”
The echo sank away, and the loneliness that was like an unseen presence
came close about her. The silence was intense, so intense that she heard
her own heart jerking and stopping, jerking and stopping, as the hope
that had inspired her slowly died.
She stood motionless before that tragic heap of stones, and the unseen
presence drew closer, closer yet. Then, rising clear from the valley,
there came to her the sound of the church-clock striking the hour.
That released her from the spell. She lifted her clasped hands above the
ruin before her and prayed,—prayed aloud and passionately, pouring
forth the anguish of her soul.
“O God, let him come to me—only once—only once! O God, send his spirit
back to me,—if only for one moment—that we may know that our love is
eternal—that holy thing—that nothing—can ever change—or take away!”
The agony of her appeal went up through the loneliness, and she stood
with closed eyes and waited for her answer. For she knew that an answer
would be sent. Already, deep within her, was the certainty of his
coming. Had she not told him on this very spot that their love would
rise again?
And so she waited for that unseen presence among the barren and desolate
stones, felt it drawing near to her, felt the surge and quiver of her
heart at its nearness. And then—very suddenly—a great wave of
exaltation that was almost more than she could bear caught her, uplifted
her, compelled her. She turned by no volition of her own,—and met him
face to face. . . .
“Arthur!” she said.
And heard his answering voice, deeply moved, deeply tender. “Frances!
Frances! Frances!”
She was in his arms, she was clinging to him, before she knew that it
was flesh and blood that had answered her cry. But she knew it then. His
lips upon her own dispelled all doubt, banished all questioning. The
rapture of those moments was the rapture which few may ever know on
earth. He had come back to her, as it were, from the dead. Later, it
seemed to her that no words at all could have passed between them during
that wonderful re-union. Surely there are no words that can express the
joy of those who love when at last they meet again! Is there in earth or
Heaven any language that can utter so great a gladness?
She only remembered that when speech again was possible they were
walking side by side through the chequered spaces of sunlight and shadow
that lay between the Stones. And the desolation was gone for ever from
her heart.
His arm was about her. He held her very closely.
“Why did you come up here?” he asked her.
And when she answered, “To find you,” he drew her closer still.
“My mother told me. I followed you. She would have told you everything
if you had asked, but the doctor said it must come gradually. She was
afraid of giving you a shock.”
“I was afraid to ask,” said Frances.
He looked down at her. “You’re not afraid now. Shall I tell you
everything?”
She met his look. “I know a good deal. I know about—Nan, and about your
father,—at least in part.”
“You have got to know—everything,” he said, and stopped where he had
stopped once before to gaze out between the Stones to the infinite
distance. “And you are to understand, Frances, that what has passed
between us now can be wiped out—as if it had never been, if you so
desire it. You know about—my sister Nan.” His voice dropped. “I can’t
talk about her even to you, except to tell you that you are somehow like
her. That was what made my father take to you. He didn’t take to any
strangers as a rule. Neither did I.” Again she was conscious of the
close holding of his arm, but he did not turn his eyes towards her. He
went sombrely on. “We gave up everything and came here because the
trouble over Nan had turned his brain. He wanted to tear across the
world and kill my cousin. So did I—once. But—my mother—well, you know
my mother. You realized long ago that all we did was for her sake. And
so—since so far as we knew, my father had only the one mania and was
sane on all other points—we came here. Nan’s baby was born here. We
settled down. My father never liked the life, but he got better. We
hoped his brain was recovering. Then—one winter night—the madness
broke out again. I was away on business. He got up in the early morning,
went to Nan’s room, and ordered her out of the house with her child. He
terrified her, and she went. The next morning she was found up by the
Stones in deep snow, dead. The child was living, but she was always a
weakling, and she lost her sight. My father had a seizure when he heard
that Nan was dead. In his delirium he told them what he had done. But
when he came to himself he had forgotten, and his distress over the loss
of Nan was heart-rending. Of course he ought to have been sent away. My
uncle, Theodore Rotherby, had urged it from the outset; but my poor
mother would not hear of it. And I—well, I hadn’t the heart to insist.
After that, I never left home again. Either Oliver or I kept guard day
and night. But except for occasional outbursts of unreasonable anger he
became much better, almost normal. He regarded me as his gaoler and
hated me, but he always worshipped my mother. I believe it would have
killed him to be parted from her. Better if it had perhaps, but—it’s
too late now. What I did, I did for the best.” He uttered a heavy sigh.
“It brutalized me. I couldn’t help it. It didn’t seem to matter. Nothing
ever mattered till you came. I was harsh with the girls, I was harsh
with everyone—except my mother. Life was so damnable. There were times
when the burden seemed past bearing. The perpetual strain, year in, year
out,—only God knows what it was.”
“I can guess,” whispered Frances.
His brooding eyes softened somewhat, but still he did not look at her.
“Then you came. You changed everything. But that letter—you remember
that lost letter? My father found it, recognized the writing, knew that
my cousin was in the neighbourhood. That brought everything back.
Somehow from the first he always connected you with Nan. There is a
resemblance, though I can’t tell you where it lies. On the night my
cousin came to meet you at the Stones—that ghastly night—he broke out.
I think you know what happened. He tried to murder him, but he got away.
Oliver was there, but he ought to have been earlier. I blamed him for
that. The mischief might have been avoided. However, my cousin got away,
and my father dodged us and came back to the house. There he left his
gun, thinking he had killed his man. Then he must have seen the child.
Possibly she spoke to him. I don’t know. But the lust for murder was on
him that night. He followed her to the Stones, dodging us again, and saw
her climb on to the Rocking Stone. He had made a great study of the
Stones, and it was he who had discovered how to make the thing move. He
used his knowledge on that occasion, and—and—well, you know what
happened.” His arm tightened about her convulsively.
“Oh, don’t tell me any more!” Frances said.
He bit his lip and continued. “It all came out afterwards in his
ravings, but we suspected foul play before. I was practically sure of
it. Frances, it nearly killed my mother. I shall never forget her agony
as long as I live.”
“My dear—my dear!” Frances said. But she was thinking of the man’s own
agony which she had witnessed in the farm-kitchen on the night of little
Ruth’s death.
He drew a hard breath between his teeth. “Then, as you know, he was
taken ill. And I hoped he would die. My God! How I hoped he would die!
That night with you in the garden—do you remember? The night you
offered yourself to me! I could have fallen at your feet and worshipped
you that night. But—I had to turn away. You understood, didn’t you? You
knew?” A passionate note sounded in his voice.
“Oh yes, I knew,” Frances said.
He went on with an effort. “I was nearly mad with trouble myself after
that. And afterwards—when you were gone and I heard from Maggie that
you had been inveigled into going up to town alone to meet that
scoundrel, I couldn’t stand it any longer. I had to follow you. I went
to his rooms and I dogged him that night. I was like a man possessed—as
much a murderer at heart as my father had ever been. If you hadn’t
stopped me, I should have killed him. But—oh, Frances,—” his deep
voice broke—“nothing was worth while after that lie of yours. If it
hadn’t been for my mother I should have put an end to myself.”
She laid her cheek against his shoulder. “Arthur! Do you think I found
it easy—to lie? It nearly killed me too.”
“Wait!” he said. “Hear it all! I came back. I found my father better.
But I was at the end of my endurance. I couldn’t go on. I told my mother
so. I told her he must be certified insane and put away. She said I was
quite right, though I know it would have broken her heart to have done
it. I told her I must go right away too—to save my own sanity. And
she—God bless her—she understood without any words. She just told me
to go. Then I had my cousin’s letter, telling me everything, vindicating
you. I shouldn’t have believed him if I hadn’t known you. But—knowing
you—I knew it was true. He asked for a meeting, and I agreed. Somehow I
couldn’t help it. It seemed inevitable. You know how sometimes one is
pushed by Fate. I was bound to agree. I don’t know what would have
happened if I had met him. I might have killed him. I can’t say. But I
had only my hands to do it with. I didn’t set out to kill him. And
then—you came instead. You were frightened. You thought you had seen a
devil. Do you know what it was you saw?”
“Your father!” she whispered.
“My father, yes. He had been wandering among the Stones, and I can only
think that he had remembered about the child, and in a fit of mad
remorse he had made up his mind to destroy the Rocking Stone,—possibly
himself also. It is all surmise now. Anyhow, when you saw the Stone
move, he must have been putting the charge underneath. And
afterwards—when you and I were standing there—the murderous impulse
must have seized him again. Perhaps he took me for Montague, and he may
have thought you were Nan. I don’t know. It is impossible to say.
Anyway, he fired the fuse, and blasted the Stone. God only knows how we
escaped unhurt. But he—but he——”
“He was killed?” said Frances.
“Yes, instantly. When I came to myself, you were unconscious and he was
lying dead among the stones. Oliver and some of the men heard the noise
and came up. We carried you back. I thought you were dead, but Dr.
Square said it was only shock, that in a few days, given absolute quiet,
you might recover.”
“A few days!” said Frances, wonderingly.
“It happened a week ago,” he said. “You were semi-conscious once or
twice, and then you seemed to sleep. That was what brought you back.”
“How amazing!” she said.
He turned for the first time and looked down into her upraised face. “I
thought you would never come back,” he said, and in voice and look she
gauged the misery to which he gave no words. “I never had any hope.”
The tears sprang to her eyes. She clung to him voicelessly for a few
seconds. Then: “And I thought you were dead!” she whispered. “That was
why I didn’t dare to ask!”
He took her shoulders between his hands, holding her slightly from him.
“Frances, listen!” he said. “I’m going to be fair to you. I won’t take
you—like this. You don’t know what I am—a hard man, melancholy,
bitter, the son of a murderer, not fit for any woman to love, much less
marry. I am going away—as I said. Maggie and Oliver will run the farm.
My mother will stay on with them. The girls will either stay or find
their own way in the world. I’ve come to see that it isn’t for me to
hold them in any longer. Maggie made me realize that—you too. But I
always had the thought of Nan before me. That was what made me so hard
with them. But I’m going away now. And you will go back to the Bishop.
He wants you. I believe he will be decent to you. I have heard from him
about you. Some day—some day—you will find a man worthy of you. Not
me—not Montague—someone you can give your whole heart to—and trust.”
He paused a moment. His face was quivering. She saw him again—a
gladiator fighting his desperate battle, conquered yet still not beaten
to earth, holding her from him, defying the irresistible, ready to make
the last and utmost sacrifice, that she might suffer no hurt.
And then, with a gesture of renunciation, he dropped his hands from her
and let her go.
“That’s all,” he said, and there was a tremor in his voice which
thrilled her through and through. “You are free. I am going. Good-bye!”
He turned away from her with the words. He would have gone. But in that
instant Frances spoke—in the language that comes from the heart and
speaks to the heart alone.
“I am not free,” she said, “and you can never make me so. I am yours—as
you are mine—for ever and ever. Nothing can ever alter that,
because—God made it so.”
Then, as he stood motionless, she went close to him, twining her arm in
his, drawing him to her.
“Ah, don’t you understand?” she said. “I love you—I have always loved
you—I shall love you till I die.”
And then he yielded. He turned with a low, passionate sound that was
almost of pain, and held her to him, bowing his head against her, beaten
at last.
“You are sure?” he said, and she felt the sob he stifled. “Frances, you
are sure? Before God—this is for your own sake—not for mine?”
She held him to her, so that the throbbing of her heart was against his
own. “But you and I are one,” she said. “God made us so.”
* * * * *
The church-clock struck the hour again, and they looked at one another
with the dismay of lovers for whom time flies on wings. Down the hill at
the farm they heard Roger’s voice uplifted in cheery admonition. The
cows were being driven back to pasture for the night, and Maggie’s song
came lilting through the gloaming.
“Shall we go back to Tetherstones?” Arthur said.
And Frances nodded silently.
They left the place of sacrifice hand in hand.
THE END
_A Selection from the_
_Catalogue of_
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
Complete Catalogues sent
on application
Lew Tyler’s Wives
By
Wallace Irwin
Women often wonder just how much they mean in the lives of the
men they marry, and how deeply they touch the hearts of the men
they love. In “Lew Tyler’s Wives” Wallace Irwin shows us a very
human American man, as full of frailty as of charm, and the
women who loved him, Jessie, Coleen, Virginia. How he loved each
of them, how much and how truly, is told with an understanding
which men will envy, women long for if they’re Jessies, smile at
if they’re Virginias, and resent if they’re Coleens.
* * * * *
G. P. Putnam’s Sons
New York London
The Luck of the Kid
By
Ridgwell Cullum
Author of “The Heart of Unaga,”
“The Man in the Twilight,” etc.
This new Cullum novel is a tale of pioneer life on the
Yukon-Alaska frontier; it has all the author’s familiar
qualities—strength of story, vividness of description, rapidity
of action, and sure development of character.
Bill Wilder, the Canadian gold-king, is one of Cullum’s finest
creations, and the reader will follow him breathlessly in his
adventures with the fur trappers and gold prospectors, and in
his search for “the lost white girl,” who proves to be “The
Kid.” The story of the English missionary who loses his life on
the gold trail, and the Indian servant who lives only to avenge
his death, is a thrilling one, which gains in interest on every
page.
* * * * *
G. P. Putnam’s Sons
New York London
TRANSCRIBER NOTES
Mis-spelled words and printer errors have been fixed.
Inconsistency in hyphenation has been retained.