THE IRREVOCABLE.
So far as May Quisanté's distress had its rise in her husband's treatment
of Sir Winterton Mildmay, she was entitled to take some comfort from that
gentleman's extreme happiness. He had lost a seat in Parliament, thanks
to Tom Sinnett and the account to which Tom Sinnett had been turned; he
had been caused to represent to the world that the Alethea Printing Press
had lost Professor Maturin's express approval only by the accident of the
Professor's lamented decease. The one wrong he forgot, the other he did
not know. It was a favourite tenet of his that an English gentleman ought
to be able to turn his hand to everything--everything honourable, of
course--and should at once shine in any sphere of practical activity. He
saw the triumph of his opinion, and found his own delight, in his new
part of a business man. His brougham rolled down to Dowgate Hill almost
every day; he delighted to lunch with Mandeville or to entertain the
Secretary of the Company at the midday meal; business could be made to
last till three when there was no Board, till four if there were; then
Sir Winterton drove to his club and sat down to his cards with a rich
consciousness of commercial importance. He believed in the Alethea with a
devotion and a thoroughness second only to the unquestioning faith and
obedience which he now had at the service of Alexander Quisanté. Many an
amazed secret stare and many a sour smile his eulogies drew from cousin
Mandeville; for even in his enthusiasm Sir Winterton praised with
discrimination; it was the sterling worth, the heart of the man, that he
admired; shallow people stuck at superficial defects of manner; not such
was Sir Winterton. "I trust him as I do myself," he used to say to Lady
Mildmay, and she, in honest joy, posted off with the testimonial to May
Quisanté; besides she was eager to seize a chance of throwing out another
hint or two about Quisanté's health.
The Alethea, at least, seemed to be going to prove worthy of these
laudations. There really had, it appeared, been some good reason why the
Professor should reconsider his considerations. The invention stood the
test of criticism and experiment; it saved a lot of expense; the idea got
about more and more that it was an uncommonly good thing; the two or
three papers which were inquisitive about the actual views of the
Professor were treated with disdain (one with advertisements also) and
their clamour went almost unnoticed. There was a demand for the shares.
Sir Winterton pointed out to Weston Marchmont what a mistake he had
committed in not accepting the offer of an allotment which had been made
to him.
"The only thing for which I value independent means," said Marchmont, "is
that they relieve me from the necessity of imposing on the public. I
suppose my ancestors did it for me."
Sir Winterton laughed serenely. "We're serving the public," said he. Then
he remembered the new man of business in him, and added, with a slyness
obvious from across the street, "Oh, and ourselves too, ourselves too, I
admit that."
"And you, Jimmy?" asked Marchmont, turning to him; they made a group of
three at the club.
"I don't think Quisanté'll go far wrong," said Jimmy. "You know Dick's
gone in too?"
"What, after the Crusade?"
"This is another sort of game," said Jimmy, with a grim smile; he had
gone in after both the Crusade and the Sinnett affair. He turned to Sir
Winterton; "Old Foster of Henstead's in it too; he's pretty wide-awake,
you know."
"Oh, we Henstead fellows have heads on our shoulders," said Sir
Winterton, but he looked a little less happy; he had never acquitted
Foster with the confidence that Quisanté had won from him.
"And you'll grow rich against your wedding, Jimmy?" asked Marchmont.
Again Jimmy smiled. The wedding was near now, and the next day he was
going to Ashwood to meet Fanny Gaston.
"You're going to Dick's on Friday, aren't you?" he said to Marchmont.
"I believe I am."
"Ah, then you shall hear about our show from Quisanté himself."
"What?" Weston Marchmont's tone expressed surprise rather than pleasure.
"May's going to be there, and he's coming for the Sunday. Amy fought
hard, but Dick said he must come, because he was going to be a
connection." Jimmy's slow smile endured all through this speech; he had a
sense of humour which he treated gravely.
"I didn't know he was coming," said Marchmont. Sir Winterton broke into a
hearty laugh.
"You're the most prejudiced fellow in the world, Marchmont," he said. "I
tell you what, though," he went on. "Do persuade Lady May to take care of
her husband, or get him to take care of himself. My wife's been at her
again and again, but nothing's done. The man's not well, he'll break up
if they aren't careful." He paused, and a puzzled look came over his
handsome candid face. "If I was half as bad as he is, my wife'd have me
in bed or off to the seaside in a jiffy," he ended.
The silence that followed struck him much as May's and Aunt Maria's had
struck his wife. Neither he nor his wife were accustomed to the way in
which people who knew Quisanté close at hand came to stand towards him.
"I suppose Lady May's not what you'd call a very domestic woman?" he
hazarded. "Charming, most charming, but full of politics and that sort of
thing, eh?"
To Weston Marchmont it seemed simplest to laugh and say, "I suppose so."
Sir Winterton's mind had need of categories, and was best not burdened
with the complexities of an individual. But Jimmy was not so wise.
"I don't think she cares a hang about politics, except so far as
Quisanté's concerned in them," he said.
Sir Winterton looked more puzzled still. "Nothing's any good unless he
keeps his health," he murmured. He was uncomfortable; he liked May very
much, and did not welcome the thought of there being any truth in the
idea of indifference and carelessness about her husband at which Lady
Mildmay had sorrowfully hinted. "That's his wife's first business
anyhow," he ended, a trifle defiantly. But his challenge was not taken up
by either of his friends. He went home with his high spirits rather
dashed.
On the Friday Marchmont found himself travelling down to Ashwood in
company with Mr. Morewood. The painter had an extreme fit of his mocking
acidity; he refrained his tongue from nobody and showed no respect for
what might be guessed to be delicate points with his companion.
Quisanté's success was his principal theme; he exhibited it in its four
aspects, political, social, commercial, and matrimonial.
"I've talked," he said, "to Constantine Blair, to Lady Castlefort, to
Winterton Mildmay, and to Jimmy Benyon. There's nothing left for all of
us but to fall down and worship. On to your knees with the rest of us, my
friend! In every relation of life the man is great. You'll say he's
objectionable. Quite so. Greatness always is. You're still pleasant,
because you haven't become great."
"A few people think you a great artist."
"Quite a few," grinned Morewood. "I can still set up for being pleasant."
This mood did not leave him with his arrival at Ashwood. He reminded
Marchmont of a monkey who had some trick to play, and grinned and
chattered in anticipation of his cruel fun; his smile was most mocking
when he greeted May Quisanté. She was in high spirits; girlish gaiety
marked a holiday mood in her. Morewood seemed to encourage it with
malicious care, letting it grow that he might strike at it with better
effect later on. Yet what did the man know, what could he do? And though
Dick Benyon winced at his darts, and Jimmy grew a little sulky, May
herself seemed unconscious of them. She was ready to meet him in talk
about her husband and her husband's plans; she laughed at his jibes in
all the apparent security of a happy confidence. Such a state of things
exactly suited Lady Richard; she would not wish May to be pained, but she
enjoyed infinitely any legitimate "dig" at her old enemy. May fought with
equal gallantry and good temper.
"Success is our crime," she said gaily at dinner. "Mr. Morewood can't
forgive it. You call us Philistines now, I expect, don't you?"
"Philistines in the very highest degree," he nodded.
"I know," she cried. "The only really cultivated thing is to fail
elegantly."
"Let's bow our acknowledgments," Morewood called across to Marchmont.
"Oh, no, Mr. Marchmont isn't like that. He doesn't even try. Well,
perhaps that's still more superior." She smiled at Marchmont, shaking her
head. "But we try, we try everything."
The "we" grated still on Marchmont's feelings, and the worse because it
seemed to come more easily and naturally from her lips. Yet that might be
only the result of practice; she had looked at him in a merry defiance as
the last words left her lips.
"And you get other people to try your things too," pursued Morewood.
"Look here, you don't mean me, do you?" Jimmy Benyon put in. "Because I'm
not trying Fanny; on the contrary, she's trying me."
"What, already?" asked Dick with exaggerated apprehension. "What'll it be
when you're married?"
"Ah," said Morewood, "now what is it when you're married? Does any duly
qualified person wish to answer the question?" His mischievous glance
rested again on May Quisanté.
"Oh, marriage is all right," said Dick, raising his voice to allow his
wife to hear. "At least it's not so bad as things go in this world. It's
giving a shilling and getting back eleven-pence."
There was a little murmur of applause. "I declare every married person at
the table seems to endorse the opinion," said Marchmont with a laugh.
"We'll keep our shillings, I think, Morewood."
"You'd better wait till somebody offers you change," advised Lady
Richard.
"Meanwhile we've had an admirable expert opinion," said Marchmont.
"Which we believe," added Morewood, "as implicitly as we do in the
excellence of the Alethea Printing Press."
"Hallo, are you in it too?" cried Dick. "You see we're all disciples," he
added to May. She smiled slightly and turned to Jimmy Benyon who was by
her, as though to speak to him; but Morewood's voice cut across her
remark.
"No, I'm not. I'm a sceptic there," he said.
"Oh, well, you don't know anything about it," Dick assured him placidly.
If plain-speaking were the order of the day, the Benyon family could hold
their own.
"I bet he hasn't read the prospectus," said Jimmy.
"Couldn't understand it, if he had," added Dick, after a comforting gulp
of champagne.
"You're really splendid people to be in with," said May, looking
gratefully from one brother to the other. They were so staunch, and alas,
how had they been treated!
For a moment Morewood said nothing; he sat smiling maliciously.
"Shall I give my authority?" he asked. "It won't do you any harm if I do,
because I can't call him to give evidence."
"We had all the best authorities," said Dick Benyon, "as you'd know if
you'd read the prospectus."
"Hang the prospectus! What's the good of reading a man's puff of his own
wares? But I'm certain you hadn't one authority."
"Well, who's your authority?" asked Jimmy, with a contempt that he took
no trouble to conceal.
"What he said was confidential, you know----"
"Oh, you won't get out of it like that. We're all friends here. Fire
away."
Thus exhorted, and indeed nothing loth--for he had not read the prospectus
and knew not the full extent of what he did--Morewood drew his malicious
little bow and shot his arrow, sharper-pointed than he fancied. "I
suppose you'll admit," said he with the exaggerated carelessness of a
man with an unanswerable case, "that poor old Maturin was some authority,
and he told me in confidence--I asked him about it, you know, just to be
able to warn you fellows--that there was an absolutely fatal defect in
your machine."
To score too great a triumph is sometimes as disconcerting as to fail.
There was no chorus of indignation, no denial of Maturin's authority, no
good-natured scoffing such as Morewood had expected. He looked round on
faces fallen into a sudden troubled seriousness; no voice was raised in
protest, gay or grave. In an instant he knew that he had done something
far beyond what his humour had suggested; but what it was or how it came
about, he could not tell.
The Benyon brothers were not over-ready of speech in a difficulty; their
thoughts were busy now, but their tongues tied. Marchmont found nothing
to say; he could not help raising his eyes under half-drooped lids till
they rested on May Quisanté's face. There was a moment more of silence;
then, answering the tacit summons of the table, May Quisanté spoke. She
leant forward a little, smiling, and spoke clearly and composedly.
"Oh, you misunderstood him," she said. "He was consulted, but fell ill
before he could go into all the facts or write his report. But he had
expressed a favourable opinion of the Alethea to my husband." She paused,
and then added, "If you'd taken the trouble to read the prospectus you'd
have known that, Mr. Morewood."
Little Lady Richard laughed nervously, glanced round, and rose from the
table; it was sooner than the ladies were wont to move but, as she said,
nobody seemed to be eating any fruit, and so there was nothing to stay
for. The men sat down again. Morewood perceived very clearly that a
constraint had come upon them; but he was possessed by curiosity.
"Well, I should like to see the prospectus now," he said.
"You'll find one or two over there," said Dick, jerking his head towards
a writing-table, but not rising.
Morewood made in the direction indicated, a low mutter from Dick
following him. Then Jimmy observed:
"He doesn't understand a thing about it, you know, and of course he
didn't follow what Maturin said."
The others nodded. This explanation was indeed the simple one; in most
cases it would have been accepted without demur; or recourse would have
been had to the hypothesis of a sudden change in the Professor's opinion;
indeed Marchmont broached this solution in an off-hand way. Neither view
was explicitly rejected, but a third possibility was in their minds, one
which would not and could not have been there, had any one of the three
had the settling of the prospectus and conducted the business with
Maturin. But Alexander Quisanté, assisted only by cousin Mandeville, had
conducted the business and drawn the prospectus.
Morewood came back, sat down, and poured out a glass of wine.
"Yes, I see what it says," he observed. His mood of malice was gone, he
looked troubled and rather remorseful. "Well, I only repeated what
Maturin said. I'd no idea there was anything about him in the
prospectus."
The two reasonable views were suggested again by Dick and Marchmont.
"It's impossible that I misunderstood him, but of course he may have
changed his mind." He paused, seeming to think. "I gather that he put
nothing in writing?" he went on. "He only talked to you about it?"
After a little pause Jimmy Benyon said, "Not exactly to us--to the people
at the office, you know. And there was nothing in writing as you say--at
least so I understand too."
Morewood passed his hand through his hair; the ruffled locks intensified
the ruefulness of his aspect; he had before his eyes the picture of May
Quisanté's silence and her so careful, so deliberate little speech after
it. He tossed off his wine almost angrily, as Dick Benyon rose, saying,
"Let's have coffee in the garden. It's a splendid night." He added with a
rather uneasy laugh, "Quisanté's coming to-morrow! We'll leave him to
tackle you himself, Morewood."
Lady Richard and Fanny Gaston were sitting in the garden by the
drawing-room window when the men joined them; Morewood dropped into a
chair by Lady Richard and, looking across the lawn, saw May strolling by
herself on the walk that bounded the shrubberies. He took his coffee in
silence and then lighted his pipe; the vanity of cigarettes was not for
him. At last he said confidentially,
"I've a sort of feeling that I've made an ass of myself."
Lady Richard glanced round; Fanny had gone across to the other group;
nobody was in hearing.
"Do you know," she said in a low voice, "I believe that man's been up to
some trick again. You know how he treated us over the Crusade? Now I
suppose he's going to ruin us!" The satisfaction of a justified prophet
seemed to mingle with the dismay of a wife and the anger of a sufferer;
Lady Richard had expected nothing less all along!
"I'm afraid I rather--well, that Lady May didn't like it."
"Poor dear May must know what to expect by now."
"Perhaps she never knows what to expect. That'd be worse." The remark was
a little too subtle for Lady Richard's half-attentive ear. She contented
herself with sighing expressively. Morewood looked across the lawn again;
the slow-walking figure had disappeared, presumably into the shrubberies.
Two or three moments later he saw Marchmont strolling off in that
direction, cigar in mouth and hands in pockets. He rose, shook himself,
and cried to the brothers, "Oh, in heaven's name, come and play pool."
Jimmy refused and paired off with his _fiancée_, but Dick agreed to
billiards, saying as they went in, "It'll keep you from making a fool of
yourself any more." Morewood, finding his own impression of his conduct
thus confirmed, grunted remorsefully as he took down his cue.
Marchmont crossed the lawn and the path, and was hidden by the
shrubberies. Lady Richard watched till she could see him no more, and
then went indoors with another sigh; this last was a disclaimer of
responsibility; if Marchmont liked to comfort May, it was no business of
hers.
He loitered on, not admitting that he was looking for May, but very sore
to think that she had wandered away to a sad solitude rather than be with
her friends; since she did that, she was wounded indeed. There was a seat
round an old tree-trunk at the farther side of the shrubbery; the memory
of it really directed his apparently aimless steps, and as he approached
it he threw away his half-smoked cigar; he thought he would find her
there; what he would say to her he did not know.
He was right. There, she sat, very still, and looking pale under the
moon. Coming up to her he said, "I know you want to be alone, don't you?"
She smiled and answered, "No, stay. I'm glad to have you," and he sat
down by her. She was silent, her eyes gazing steadily in front of her;
the air was sweet and very still. Now he needed no telling that his guess
at the situation had been right, that she had shielded her husband at her
own cost; her face told him what the cost seemed to her. A great
indignation against the man filled him, gaining unacknowledged
reinforcement from the love he himself had for the woman. He had wrought
for himself a masterpiece of pure and faultless beauty; when another took
it from him, he had endured; now the other spoilt and stained and defiled
it; could he still endure? It seems sometimes as though the deep silence
of night carries thoughts from heart to heart that would be lost in the
passage through the broken tumultuous sea of day. The thought that was in
him he felt to be in her also, changed as her mind would change it, yet
in essence the same. She had now no ironical smiles for him, no fencing,
and no playing with her fate; and he had for her no talk of loyalty. The
time for these was gone in the light of the confidence that her silence
gave him; it told him everything, and he had no rebuke for its openness.
At last he put out his hand and lightly pressed hers for a moment. She
turned her eyes on him.
"It's a little hard, isn't it?" she asked. "I can stand most things, but
it's hard to have to tell lies to your friends." Her voice rose a little
and shook as the composure which she had so long kept failed her. "And
they know I'm lying. Oh, I don't deceive them, however hard I try. They
don't tell me so, but they know. I can't help it, I must do it. I must
sit and do it, knowing that they know it's a lie. For decency's sake I
must do it, though. Some people believe, the Mildmays believe; but you
here don't. You know me too well, and you know him too well."
"For God's sake, don't talk like that," said Marchmont.
"Don't talk like that! The talk's not the harm. If you could tell me how
not to live like that!" Her self-control broke utterly; she covered her
face with her hands and sobbed.
"For God's sake!" he murmured again.
"Oh, you don't know. This is only the crown of it. It goes on every day.
I'm coming not to know myself, not to be myself. I live scheming and
lying. I've given everything, all my life. Must I give myself, my own
self, too? Must I lose that for him?"
Her bitter despairing words seemed to him what at that moment her mood
made them seem to herself, the all-sufficient all-embracing summary of
her life; she had then no thought of another side to it, and into that
she gave him no insight. He counted as dead for her all the high hopes
and the attractive imaginings with which Quisanté once had fired her.
Dead for her they were at that moment; she could see nothing but her
husband's baseness and a baseness bred by it in herself; her bond to him
was an obligation to dishonour and a chain of treachery. She abandoned to
Marchmont's eyes all the hidden secrets of her misery; in this she seemed
also to display before him the dead body of her hopes, her interest, her
ambitions. Giving all, she had gained nothing; so her sobs said. But only
for moments does life seem so simple that a sob can cover all of it.
Presently she grew calmer. "I've never broken out like this before," she
said, "but it's rather bad to have to look forward to a life of it. And
it'll get worse, not better; or if it doesn't get worse it'll mean that
I'm getting worse, and that'll be worse than all." She smiled forlornly.
"What a tangle of 'worses' I've tied it up in, haven't I?"
She did not seem to be ashamed of her breaking-out, but rather to be
relieved by it, and to feel that it had helped to establish or renew an
intimacy in which she found some pleasure and some consolation; at least
there was one friend now who knew exactly how she stood and would not set
down to that own self of hers the actions that he might see her perform
in Quisanté's service. "You once told me I ought to take a confidante,"
she reminded him. "I don't suppose you thought I should take you,
though."
She had had her outburst; his was still to come. Yet it seemed rather as
though he acted on a deliberate purpose than was carried away by any
irresistible impulse; he spoke simply and plainly.
"I love you as I've always loved you," he said.
"I know, and I've taken advantage of it to inflict all this on you." Her
eyes rested on his for some moments, and she answered his glance. "No, I
can't escape that way. I'm not talking of running away; of course I
couldn't do that." She laughed a little and even he smiled. "But I can't
escape even in--in spirit by it. Sometimes I wish I could. It would
change the centre of my life, wouldn't it? Perhaps I shouldn't mind the
things that distress me so much now. But I can't."
"You don't love me? Well, you never did." He paused an instant and added
in a puzzled way, "Somehow."
"Yes, it's all 'somehow.' Somehow I didn't; I ought to have. Somehow I've
got where I am; and somehow, I suppose, I shall endure it." She laid her
hand on his. "I should actually like to love you--in a way I do. I'm
afraid I've very little conscience about it. But somehow--yes, somehow
again--it's all a hopeless puzzle--I can't altogether, not as you mean. I
understand it very little myself, and I know you won't understand it at
all, but--well, Alexander imprisons me; I can't escape from him; as long
as he's there he keeps me." She looked in Marchmont's face and then shook
her head, half-sadly, half-playfully. "You don't understand a bit, do
you?" she asked.
"No, I don't," he said bluntly, with an accent of impatience and almost
of exasperation. Recognising it, she gave the slightest shrug of her
shoulders.
"It's my infatuation again, I suppose, as you all said when I married
him. It makes you all angry. Oh, it makes me angry too, as far as that
goes."
"He's ruining your whole life."
She made no answer, relapsing into the still silence which had preceded
her tears. Marchmont was baffled again by his old inability to follow the
movements of her mind and the old sense of blindness in dealing with her
to which it gave rise. Owing to this he had lost her at the first; now it
seemed to prevent him from repairing the loss. In spite of all that they
had in common, in spite of the strong attraction she felt towards him and
of the love he bore her, there was always, as she had said once, at last
a break somewhere, some solution in the chain of sympathy that should
have bound them together. But he would not admit this, and chose to see
the only barrier between them in the man who was ruining her life.
"You'd be yourself again if only you could get away from him," he
murmured resentfully.
"Perhaps; I never shall, though." She added, laughing a little, "Neither
will you. I've made you an accomplice, you're bound to a guilty silence
now." Then, growing grave, she leant towards him. "Don't look like that,"
she said, "pray, pray, pray don't. I haven't spoilt your life as well as
my own? No, you mustn't tell me that." Her voice grew very tender and
low. "But I can say almost all you want. I wish I had loved you, I wish I
had married you. Oh, how I wish it! I should have been happy, I think,
and I know I--I shouldn't have had to live as I do now and do the things
I have to do now. Well, it's too late."
"You're very young," he said in a voice as low as hers. "It mayn't always
be too late."
She started a little, drawing away from him. He had brought back thoughts
which the stress of pain and excitement had banished from her mind.
"You mean----?" she murmured. "I know what you mean, though." Her face
showed again a sort of puzzle. "I can't think of that happening. I tried
the other day--_à propos_ of something else; but I couldn't. I couldn't
see it, you know. It doesn't fit my ideas about him. No, that won't
happen. We must just go on."
The wind had begun to rise, the trees stirred, leaves rustled, the whole
making, or seeming to her ears to make, a sad whimsical moaning. She
rose, gathering her lace scarf closer round her neck, and saying, "Do you
hear the wood crying for us? It's sorry for our little troubles." She
stood facing him and he took both her hands in his. "You look so
unhappy," she said in a fresh access of pity. "No use, no use; it'll all
go on, right to the end of everything. So--good-bye."
"He's coming to-morrow, isn't he?"
"Yes, he's coming to-morrow. Good-bye." She smiled a little, feeling
Marchmont's hands drawing her to him. "Oh, kiss me then," she said,
turning her cheek to him. "It'll feel friendly. And now we'll go in."
They had just started to return when they heard steps in the wood, and a
moment later her name was called in Dick Benyon's voice. Marchmont
shouted in answer, "Here we are," and Dick came along the path.
"I couldn't think where you'd got to," he said.
"That's because you've no romance in you," said May. "Or you'd have known
we should be wandering in the wood in the moonlight. Ah, she's gone under
a cloud now, but she was beautiful. Are we wanted, though?"
"Well, in the first place I think you've been quite long enough for
propriety, and in the second a man's brought a wire for you, and he's
waiting to see if there's an answer."
"Under that combination of moral and practical reasons we'll go in," said
May, laughing. Marchmont, less ready in putting on his mask, said nothing
but followed a step or two behind. "I expect the wire's from Alexander,"
she went on, "to say he's going to make a speech somewhere and won't come
to-morrow."
Dick turned to her with a quick jerk of the head; a moment later he was
covered with confusion, for her bitter little smile told him that he had
betrayed the joy which such a notion gave him. To all of them it would be
a great relief that Quisanté should not come while the memory of the
scene that Morewood had caused at dinner was still so fresh. Dick, though
he attempted no excuse, felt himself forgiven when May took his arm and
thus walked back to the house.
"Your husband had a slight seizure while dining with us to-night.
He is comfortable now, and there is no immediate reason for anxiety.
But doctor thinks you had better come up earliest convenient train
to-morrow. Winterton Mildmay."
May read the telegram, standing between Marchmont and Dick. She handed it
to Dick, saying, "Read it, and will you send an answer that I'll come as
early as possible in the morning;" then she walked to the table and sat
down by it. Dick gave Marchmont the slip of paper and went off to
despatch the answer. Nobody else was in the room, except Fanny Gaston,
who was playing softly on the piano in the corner. Marchmont came up to
May and put the telegram down on the table by her.
"I'm so sorry," he said formally and constrainedly.
"I don't suppose it's very serious," she said. "But I must go, of course."
She went on under the cover of Fanny's gentle music. "It's all rather odd
though--its coming to-night and its happening at the Mildmays'. I forgot,
though, you don't know why I feel that so odd. How Lady Mildmay'll nurse
him! I expect I shall have a struggle to get him out of the house and
home again."
Marchmont made no answer but stood looking down on her face. She met his
glance fairly, and knew what it was that had forced itself into his mind
and now found expression in his eyes. She had declared to him that her
fate was irrevocable, that the lines of her life were set, that nothing
but death could alter them, and that death had no part in her thoughts
about her husband. The telegram did not prove her wrong; yet seizure was
a vague word under which much might lie hidden. But her mood and her
feeling still remained; it was not in hope or in any attempt at
self-consolation, but in the expression of an obstinate conviction which
dominated her mind that she said in answer to Marchmont's glance, "I
can't believe it's anything really amiss. I expect I shall find him at
work again when I get back to-morrow."
With a little movement of his hands Marchmont turned away. He had at
command no conventional phrases in which to express a desire that she
might prove right. It was impossible to say that he wished she might
prove wrong; even in his own mind a man leaves a hope like that vague and
unformulated. But he marvelled, still without understanding, at the
strange obstinate idea which seemed almost to exalt Quisanté above the
ordinary lot of mortals, to see in him a force so living that it could
not perish, a vitality so intense that death could lay no hand on it. He
glanced at her as he crossed the room to the piano; she sat now with the
telegram in her hands and her eyes fixed on the floor in front of her. It
needed a sharper summons, a nearer reality, to rouse her from the
conviction that her life was bound for ever to that of the man whom she
had chosen and for whom she had given so much. It would all go on, right
to the end of everything. The telegram had not shaken that faith in her,
nor altered that despair.