A VERSE OF AN OLD SONG.
"Adrian!"
The name was uttered with just a hint of hesitating appeal.
"At your service," Scarlett answered promptly. He had a bit of paper
before him, and was pencilling an initial letter to be embroidered on
Barbara's handkerchiefs.
"Adrian, did you hear that Mr. Harding--you know whom I mean--was ill?"
"Yes, I did hear something about it." He put his head on one side and
looked critically at his work. "Is it anything serious?"
"Yes," said Barbara. "I'm afraid it is."
"Poor fellow! I'm very sorry. How the days do shorten, don't they?"
"Yes," said Barbara again. "They spoke as if he were going to--die."
"Really? I'm sorry for that. It is strange," Adrian continued, putting
in a stroke very delicately, "but one of the Wilton girls used always to
say he looked like it. I think it was Molly."
Barbara sighed but did not speak.
"Let's see," said Adrian, "he left the Robinsons--what happened? Didn't
the boy get drowned?"
"No!" scornfully, "he fell into the water, but somebody fished him out."
"Not Harding?"
"No, somebody else. Mr. Harding went in, but he couldn't swim, and he
didn't reach Guy. But he got a chill--it seems that was the beginning
of it all."
Scarlett leant back in his chair, twirling the pencil between his
fingers and looking at Barbara, whose eyes were fixed upon the rug. They
were alone in the drawing-room of a house in Kensington. Their wedding
was to be in about six weeks' time, and Barbara was staying for a
fortnight with an aunt who had undertaken to help her in her shopping--a
delightful aunt who paid bills, and who liked a quiet nap in the
afternoon. Adrian sometimes went out with them, and always showed great
respect for the good lady's slumbers.
"Well," he said, after a pause, "and where is Mr. Harding now?"
"At his mother's. She lives at Westbourne Park."
"Westbourne Park," Scarlett repeated. "By Jove, that's a change from
Mitchelhurst! A nice healthy neighbourhood, and convenient for
Whiteley's, I suppose; but _what_ a change! I say, Barbara, how do you
happen to know so much about the Hardings?"
"Adrian!"
And again she seemed to appeal and hesitate in the mere utterance of his
name. She crossed the room, and touched his shoulder with her left hand,
which had a ring shining on it--a single emerald, a point of lucid
colour on her slim finger.
"Adrian, I wanted to ask you, would there be any harm if----"
"No," said Adrian gravely, "no harm at all. Not the slightest. Certainly
not."
He took her other hand in his.
She looked doubtfully at him.
"What do you mean?"
"What do _you_ mean, Barbara?"
"I wanted to go to the door and ask how he is--that's all. I feel as if
I shouldn't like to go away without a word. We didn't part quite good
friends, you know. And last year he was making his plans, and now we are
making ours, and he----Oh, Adrian, why is life so sad? And yet I never
thought I _could_ be as happy as I am now."
"It's rather mixed, isn't it?" he said, smiling up at her, and he drew
her hand to his lips. Barbara's eyes were full of tears. To hide them,
she stooped quickly and touched his hair with a fleeting kiss.
"By all means go and ask after your friend before you leave town," said
Adrian. "Let us hope he isn't as bad as they think."
"He is," said the girl.
Long before this she had told Adrian about her night adventure at
Mitchelhurst. She had been perfectly frank about it, and yet she
sometimes doubted her own confession. It seemed so little when she spoke
of it to him, so unimportant, so empty of all meaning. Could it be that,
and only that, which had troubled her so strangely? He had smiled as he
listened, and had put it aside. "I don't suppose you did very much
harm," he said, "but any one with half an eye could see that he wasn't
the kind of fellow to take things easily. Poor Barbara!" She stood now
with something of the same perplexity on her brow; the thought of
Reynold Harding always perplexed her.
There was a brief silence, during which she abandoned her hands to
Adrian's clasp, and felt his touch run through her, from sensitive
finger tips to her very heart. Then she spoke quickly, yet half
unwillingly, "Very well then, I shall go."
"You wish it?" Adrian exclaimed, swift to detect every shade of meaning
in her voice. "Because, if not, there is no reason why you should. If
you hadn't said just now you wanted to go----"
She drew one hand away and turned a little aside. "I know," she said, "I
did say it. Really and truly I don't want to go; it makes me
uncomfortable to think about him, but I want to have been."
"Get it over then. Ask, and come away as quickly as you can."
"To-morrow?" said Barbara. "I thought, perhaps, as aunt was not going
with us about those photograph frames, that to-morrow might do. I
couldn't go with aunt."
"You have thought of everything. Go on."
"You might put me into a cab after we leave the shop," she continued. "I
think that would be best. I would go and just inquire, and then come
straight on here. I don't want to explain to anybody, and if you say it
is all right----"
"Why, it is all right, of course. That's settled then," said Adrian.
* * * * *
The next day was dreary even for late November. Adrian and Barbara
passed through the frame-maker's door into an outer gloom, chilly and
acrid with a touch of fog, and variegated with slowly-descending blacks.
Everything was dirty and damp. There were gas-lights in the shop windows
of a dim tawny yellow.
Scarlett looked right and left at the sodden street and then upward in
the direction of the sky. "This isn't very nice," he said; "hadn't we
better go straight home?"
"No--please!" Barbara entreated. "We have filled up to-morrow and the
next day, and aunt has asked some people to afternoon tea on Saturday."
"All right; it may be better when we get to Westbourne Park. I'll go a
bit of the way with you."
He looked for a cab. Barbara waited passively by his side, gazing
straight before her. She had never looked prettier than she did at that
moment, standing on the muddy step in the midst of the universal
dinginess. Excitement had given tension and brilliancy to her face, she
was flushed and warm in her wrappings of dark fur, and above the
rose-red of her cheeks her eyes were shining like stars. "Here we are!"
said Scarlett, as he hailed a loitering hansom.
They drove northward, passing rows of shops, all blurred and glistening
in the foggy air, and wide, muddy crossings, where people started back
at the driver's hoarse shout. Scarlett, with Barbara's hand in his,
watched the long procession of figures on the pavement--dusky figures
which looked like marionnettes, going mechanically and ceaselessly on
their way. To the young man, driving by at his ease, their measured
movements had an air of ineffectual toil; they were on the treadmill,
they hurried for ever, and were always left behind. Looking at them he
thought of the myriads in the rear, stepping onward, stepping
continually. If they had really been marionnettes! But the droll thing
was that each figure had a history; there was a world-picture in every
one of those little, jogging heads.
Presently the shops became scarce, the procession on the pavement grew
scattered and thin. They were driving up long, dim streets of stuccoed
houses. They passed a square or two where trees, black and bare, rose
above shadowy masses of evergreens all pent together within iron
railings. One might have fancied that the poor things had strayed into
the smoky wilderness, and been impounded in that melancholy place.
"We must be almost there," said Adrian at last, when they had turned
into a cross street where the plastered fronts were lower and shabbier.
He put the question to the cabman.
"Next turning but one, sir," was the answer.
"Then I'll get out here," said Scarlett.
Barbara murmured a word of farewell, but she felt that it was best. She
always thought of Reynold Harding as the unhappiest man she knew, and
she could not have driven up to his door to flaunt her great happiness
before his eyes. She leant forward quickly, and caught a glimpse of that
clear happiness of hers on the side walk, smiling and waving a farewell,
the one bright and pleasant thing to look upon in the grey foulness of
the afternoon.
A turning--then it was very near indeed! Another dull row of houses,
each with its portico and little flight of steps. Here and there was a
glimmer of gas-light in the basement windows. Then another corner and
they were in the very street, and going more slowly as the driver tried
to make out the numbers on the doors. At that moment it suddenly
occurred to Miss Strange that her errand was altogether absurd and
impossible. She was seized with an overpowering paroxysm of shyness. Her
heart stood still, and then began to throb with labouring strokes. Why
had she ever come?
Had it depended on herself alone she would certainly have turned round
and gone home, but the cab stopped with a jerk opposite one of the
stuccoed houses, and there was an evident expectation that she would get
out and knock at the door. What would the cabman think of her if she
refused, and what could she say to Adrian after all the fuss she had
made? Well, perhaps she could face Adrian, who always understood. But
the cabman! She alighted and went miserably up the steps.
A servant answered her knock, and stood waiting. Between the maid and
the man Barbara plucked up a desperate courage, and asked if Mrs.
Harding was at home. She was.
"How is Mr. Harding to-day?" inquired Barbara, hesitating on the
threshold.
"Much as usual, thank you, miss," the girl replied. "Won't you step in?"
She obeyed. After all, as she reflected, she need only stay a few
minutes, and to go away with merely the formal inquiry, made and
answered at the door, would be unsatisfactory. Mr. Harding might never
hear that she had called. She followed the maid into a vacant
sitting-room, and gave her a card to take to her mistress. The colour
rushed to her very forehead as she opened the case. Her Uncle Hayes had
had her cards printed with _Mitchelhurst Place_ in the corner, and
though, on coming to Kensington, she had drawn her pen through it, and
written her aunt's address instead, it was plain enough to see. How
would a Rothwell like to read _Mitchelhurst Place_ on a stranger's card?
She felt that she was a miserable little upstart.
Mrs. Harding did not come immediately, and Barbara as she waited was
reminded of the dentist's room at Ilfracombe. "It's just like it," she
said to herself, "and I can't have gas, so it's worse, really. And she
hasn't got as many books either." This brought back a memory, and her
lips and eyes began to smile--
"_My love loves me. Then wherefore care
For rain or shine, for foul or fair?
My love loves me._"
But the smile was soon followed by a sigh.
The door opened and Mrs. Harding came in. To Barbara, still in her
teens, Reynold's mother was necessarily an old woman, but she recognised
her beauty almost in spite of herself, and stood amazed. Mrs. Harding
wore black, and it was rather shabby black, but she had the air of a
great lady, and her visitor, in her presence, was a shy blushing child.
She apologised for her delay, and the apology was a condescension.
"You don't know me," said the girl in timid haste, "but I know Mr.
Harding a little, and I thought I would call."
"Oh, yes," said Kate, "I know you by name, Miss Strange. My son was
indebted to Mr. Hayes for an invitation to Mitchelhurst Place last
autumn."
"I'm sure we were very glad," Barbara began, and then stopped
confusedly, remembering that they had turned Mr. Reynold Harding out of
the house before his visit was over. The situation was embarrassing. "I
wish we could have made it pleasanter for him," she said, and blushed
more furiously than ever.
"Have made Mitchelhurst Place pleasanter?" Mrs. Harding repeated. "Thank
you, you are very kind. I believe he had a great wish to see the Place."
"It's a fine old house," said Barbara, conversationally. "I have left it
now."
"So I supposed. I was sorry to see in the paper that Mr. Hayes was dead.
I remember him very well, five-and-twenty or thirty years ago."
"I am going abroad," the girl continued. "I--I don't exactly know how
long we shall be away. I am going to be married. But they told me Mr.
Harding was ill--I hope it is not serious? I thought, as I was near,
that I should like to ask before I went."
Mrs. Harding considered her with suddenly awakened attention. "He is
very ill," she said, briefly. "You know what is the matter with him?"
"Yes, I suppose so."
"He was not very strong as a boy. At one time he seemed better, but it
was only for a time."
"I'm very sorry," said Barbara, standing up. "Please tell him I came to
ask how he was before I went."
Mrs. Harding rose too, and looked straight into her visitor's eyes.
"Would you like to see him?"
"I don't know," the girl faltered. "I'm not sure he would care to see
me. If he would--"
Mrs. Harding interrupted her, "Excuse me a moment," and vanished.
Barbara, left alone, stood confounded. She was taken by surprise, and
yet she was conscious that to see Reynold Harding was what she had
really been hoping and dreading from the first. Some one moved overhead.
Perhaps he would say "No," in that harsh, sudden voice of his. Well,
then, she would escape from this house, which was like a prison to her,
and go back to Adrian, knowing that she had done all she could. Perhaps
he would laugh, and say "Yes."
She listened with strained attention. A chair was moved, a fire was
stirred, a door was closed. Then her hostess reappeared. "Will you come
this way?" she said.
Barbara obeyed without a word. The matter was taken out of her hands,
and nothing but submission was possible. The grey dusk was gathering on
the stairs, and through a tall window, rimmed with squares of red and
blue, rose a view of roofs and chimneys half drowned in fog. Barbara
passed onward and upward, went mutely through a door which was opened
for her, and saw Reynold Harding sitting by the fire. He lifted his face
and looked at her. In an instant there flashed into her memory a verse
of the old song of _Barbara Allen_, sung to her as a child for her
name's sake:--
"_Slowly, slowly, she came up,
And slowly she came nigh him;
And all she said when there she came,
'Young man, I think you're dying.'_"
The words, which she had sung to herself many a time, taking pleasure in
their grotesque simplicity, presented themselves now with such sudden
and ghastly directness, that a cold damp broke out on her forehead. She
set her teeth fast, fearing that Barbara's speech would force its way
through her lips with an outburst of hysterical laughter. What _could_
she say, what could anybody say, but, "Young man, I think you're dying?"
The words were clamouring so loudly in her ears that she glanced
apprehensively at Mrs. Harding to make sure that they had not been
spoken.
Reynold's smile recalled her to herself, and told her that he was
reading too much on her startled face. "Won't you sit down?" he said,
pointing to a chair. Before she took it she instinctively put out her
hand, and greeted him with a murmur of speech. What she said she did not
exactly know, but _not_ those hideous words, thank God!
Mrs. Harding paused for a moment by the fire, gazing curiously at her
son, as if she were studying a problem. Then silently, in obedience to
some sign of his, or to some divination of her own, she turned away and
left the two together.
Barbara looked over her shoulder at the closing door, and her eyes in
travelling back to Harding's face took in the general aspect of the
room. It was fairly large and lofty. Folding doors, painted a dull drab,
divided it from what she conjectured was the sick man's bed-room. It was
dull, it was negative, not particularly shabby, not uncomfortable, not
vulgar, but hopelessly dreary and commonplace. There was in it no single
touch of beauty or individuality on which the eye could rest. Some years
earlier an upholsterer had supplied the ordinary furniture, a
paper-hanger had put up an ordinary paper, and, except that time had a
little dulled and faded everything, it remained as they had left it.
The drab was rather more drab, that was all.
"Well," said Reynold from his arm-chair, "so you have come to see me."
"I wanted to ask you how you were--I heard you were ill," Barbara
explained, and it struck her that she was exactly like a little parrot,
saying the same thing over and over again.
"Very kind of you," he replied. "Do you want me to answer?"
"If--if you could say you were getting a little better."
He smiled. "It looks like it, doesn't it?" he said, languidly.
Barbara's eyes met his for a moment, and then she hung her head.
No, it did not look like it. Two candles were burning on the
chimney-piece, but the curtains had not been drawn. Between the two dim
lights, yellow and grey, he sat, leaning a little sideways, with a face
like the face of the dead, except for the great sombre eyes which looked
out of it, and the smile which showed a glimpse of his teeth. His hand
hung over the arm of his chair, the hot nerveless hand which Barbara had
taken in her own a moment before.
"I am so sorry," she said. "I hoped I might have had some better news of
you before I went away. Did you know I was going away--going to be
married?"
She looked up, putting the question in a timid voice, and he answered
"Yes," with a slight movement of his head and eyelids. "I wish you all
happiness."
"Thank you," said Barbara gratefully.
"And where are you going?"
"To Paris for a time, and then we shall see. He"--this with a little
hesitation--"he is very busy."
"Busy--what, more poems?" said the man who had done with being busy.
"Yes. Did you see his volume?"
Harding shook his head. "I'm afraid I'm a little past Mr. Scarlett's
poetry."
"Oh!" said Barbara, "of course one can't read when one is ill. You ought
to rest."
"Yes," he assented, "I don't seem able to manage that either, just at
present, but I dare say I shall soon. Meanwhile I sit here and look at
the fire."
"Yes," said the girl. "Some people see all sorts of things in the fire."
"So they say," he answered listlessly. "_I_ see it eating its heart out
slowly. And so you are going to Paris? That was your dream when you were
at Mitchelhurst."
"Yes--you told me to wait, and it would come, and it is coming. Oh, but
you had dreams at Mitchelhurst, too, Mr. Harding! I wanted them to come
true as well as mine."
"Did you? That was very kind of you. Mitchelhurst was a great place for
dreams, wasn't it? But I left mine there. Better there."
"I felt ashamed just now," said Barbara, "when your mother spoke about
your staying with us at Mitchelhurst. She doesn't know, then? Oh, Mr.
Harding, I hate to think how we treated you in your old home, and I know
my poor uncle was sorry too!"
"What for? People who can't agree are better apart, and Mrs. Simmonds'
lodgings were comfortable enough," said Reynold.
"Oh, but it wasn't right! If you and uncle had only met--"
"Well, if all they tell us is true, I suppose we shall before long.
Let's hope we may both be better tempered."
"Don't!" cried Barbara, with a glance at the pale face opposite, and a
remembrance of her Uncle Hayes propped up in the great bed at
Mitchelhurst. Would those two spectres meet and bow, in some dim
underworld of graves and skeletons? She could not picture them glorified
in any way, could not fancy them otherwise than as she had known them.
"Pray don't," she said again.
"Very well," said Reynold, "but why not? It makes no difference. Still,
talk of what you please."
"Does it hurt you to talk?"
"Yes, I believe it does. Everything hurts me, and therefore nothing
does. So if you like it any better, it doesn't."
"I won't keep you long," said Barbara. "Perhaps I ought not to have
come, but I felt as if I could not leave England without a word. You
see, there is no knowing how long I may be away--"
"You were wise," said Reynold. "A pleasant journey to you! But don't
come here to look for me when you come back. The fire will be out, and
the room will be swept and garnished. This is a very chilly room when it
is swept and garnished."
To Barbara it was a dim and suffocating room at that moment. She hardly
felt as if it were really she who sat there, face to face with that pale
Rothwell shadow, and she put up her hand and loosened the fur at her
throat.
"You do not mind my coming now?" she said, ignoring the latter half of
his speech. "You remember that evening? You did not make me very
welcome then." A tremulous little laugh ended the sentence.
He shifted his position in the big chair with a weary effort, and let
his head fall back. "It's different," he said. "Everything is different.
I was alive then--five-and-twenty--and I was afraid you might get
yourself into some trouble on my account--you had told me how the
Mitchelhurst people gossipped. _I_ understood, but they wouldn't have.
Did the old man hear of it?"
"No," said Barbara; "he was ill so soon."
Harding made a slight sign of comprehension. "Well, it wouldn't be my
business to say anything now," he went on in his hoarse low voice.
"Besides, there is nothing to say. If the Devil had a daughter, she
couldn't make any scandal out of an afternoon call in my mother's house.
She couldn't suspect you of a flirtation with a death's head. Visiting
the sick--it is the very pink of propriety."
Barbara felt herself continually baffled. And yet she could not accept
her repulse. There was something she wanted to say to Mr. Harding, or
rather, there was a word she wanted him to say to her. If he would but
say it she would go, very gladly, for the walls of the room, the heavy
atmosphere, and Reynold's eyes, weighed upon her like a nightmare. He
had likened her once in his thoughts to a little brown-plumaged bird,
and she felt like a bird that afternoon, a bird which had flown into a
gloomy cage, and sat, oppressed and fascinated, with a palpitating
heart. It seemed to her that his eyes had been upon her ever since she
came in, and she wanted a moment's respite.
It came almost as soon as the thought had crossed her mind. Reynold
coughed painfully. She started to her feet, not knowing what she ought
to do, but a thin hand, lifted in the air, signed to her to be still.
Presently the paroxysm subsided.
"Don't you want anything?" she ventured to ask.
He shook his head. After a moment he opened a little box on the table at
his elbow, and took out a lozenge. Barbara dared not speak again. She
looked at the dull, smouldering fire. "Young man," she said to herself
with great distinctness, "Young man, _I think_ you're dying."
She had the saddest heartache as she thought of it. That for her there
should be life, London, Paris, the South--who could tell what far-off
cities and shores?--who could tell how many years with Adrian? Who
could tell what beauty and sweetness and music, what laughter and tears,
what dreams and wonders, what joys and sorrows in days to come? While
for him, this man with whom she had built castles in the air at
Mitchelhurst, there were only four drab walls, a slowly burning fire,
and a square grey picture of roofs and chimneys, dim in the foggy air.
That was his share of the wide earth! No ease, no love, no joy, no
hope,--the mother-world which was to her so bountifully kind, kept
nothing for him but a few dull wintry days. Why must this be? And he was
so young! And there was so much life everywhere, the earth was full of
it, full to overflowing, this busy London was a surging, tumultuous sea
of life about them, where they sat in that dim hushed room. She raised
her head and looked timidly at the figure opposite, pale as a spectre,
half lying, half lolling in his leathern chair, while he sucked his
lozenge, and gazed before him with downcast eyes. From him, at least,
life had ebbed hopelessly.
"Young man, I think you're dying." Oh, it was cruel, cruel! Barbara's
thoughts flashed from the sick room to her own happiness--flashed home.
She saw the lawn at Sandmoor, and a certain tennis-player standing in
the shade of the big tulip tree, as she had seen him often that summer.
He was in his white flannels, he was flushed, smiling, his grey-blue
eyes were shining, he swung his racquet in his hand as he talked. He was
so handsome and glad and young----ah! but no younger than Reynold
Harding! Suppose it had been Adrian, and not Reynold, in the chair
yonder, and her happy dreams, instead of being carried forward on the
full flood of prosperity, had been left stranded and wrecked, on the
low, desolate shore of death. It might have been Adrian passing thus
beyond recall, the sun might have been dying out of her heaven, and at
the thought she turned away her head, to hide the hot tears which welled
into her eyes.
"You are sorry for me," said Reynold.
It was true, though the tears had not been for him. "I'm sorry you are
ill," she said. She got up as she spoke, and stood by the fire.
"Very kind, but very useless," he answered with a smile.
"Useless!" cried little Barbara. "I know it is useless! I know I can't
do anything! But, Mr. Harding, we were friends once, weren't we?"
He was silent. "I thought we were?" she faltered.
"Friends--yes, if you like. We will say that we were--friends."
"I thought we were," she repeated humbly. "I don't mean to make too much
of it, but I thought we were very good friends, as people say, till that
unlucky evening--that evening when you and Uncle Hayes--you were angry
with me then!"
"That's a long while ago."
"It was my fault," she continued. "I didn't mean any harm, but you had a
right to be vexed. And afterwards, that other evening when I went to
you--I don't know what harm I did by forgetting your letter--you would
not tell me, but I know you were angry. Afterwards, when I thought of
it, I could see that you had been keeping it down all the time, you
wouldn't reproach me then and there," said Barbara, with cheeks of
flame, "but I understood when I looked back. It was only natural that
you should be angry. It was very good of you not to say more."
"I think it was," said Reynold, but so indistinctly that Barbara, though
she looked questioningly at him, doubted whether she heard the words.
"It would be only natural if you hated me," she went on, panting and
eager, now that she had once began to speak. "But you mustn't, please, I
can't bear it! I have never quarrelled with any one, never in all my
life. I don't like to go away and feel that I am leaving some one behind
me with whom I am not friends. So, Mr. Harding, I want you just to say
that you don't hate me."
"Oh, but you are making too much of all that," he replied, and then,
with an invalid's abruptness, he asked, "Where's your talisman?"
She looked down at her watch chain. "I gave it to Mr. Scarlett, he liked
it," she said, with a guilty remembrance of Reynold among the brambles.
"But you haven't answered me, Mr. Harding."
Her pleading was persistent, like a child's. She was childishly intent
on the very word she wanted. She remembered how her uncle had laughed as
she walked home after that first encounter with young Harding. "And you
saw him roll into the ditch--Barbara, the poor fellow must hate you like
poison!" No, he must not! It was the _word_ she could not bear, it was
only the _word_ she knew.
"Nonsense!" he said, moving his head uneasily, "Let bygones be bygones.
We can't alter the past. We are going different ways--go yours, and let
me go mine in peace."
It was a harsh answer, but the frown which accompanied it betrayed
irresolution as well as anger.
"I can't go so," Barbara pleaded, emboldened by this sign of possible
yielding. "I never meant to do any harm. Say you are not angry--only one
word--and then I'll go."
"I know you will." He laid his lean hands on the arms of his chair, and
drew himself up. "Well," he said, "have it your own way--why not? What
is it that I am to say?"
"Say," she began eagerly, and then checked herself. She would not ask
too much. "Say only that you don't hate me," she entreated, fixing her
eyes intently on his face.
"I love you, Barbara."
The girl recoiled, scared at the sudden intensity of meaning in his
eyes, and in every line of his wasted figure as he leaned towards her.
His hoarse whisper sent a shock through the deadened air of the drab
room. Those three words had broken through the frozen silence of a life
of repression and self-restraint, in them was distilled all its hoarded
fierceness of love and revenge. In uttering them Reynold had uttered
himself at last.
To Barbara it was as if a flash of fire showed her his passion, such a
passion as her gentle soul had never imagined, against the outer
darkness of death and his despair. Something choked and frightened her,
and seemed to encircle her heart in its coils. It was a revelation which
came from within as well as without. She threw out her hands as if he
approached her. "_Adrian!_" she cried.
Reynold, leaning feebly on the arms of his chair, laughed.
"Well," he said, "are you content? I have said it."
"Oh," said Barbara, still gazing at him, "I know now--I understand--you
_do_ hate me!"
"Love you," he repeated. "I think I loved you from the day I saw you
first. I dreamed of you at Mitchelhurst--only of you! Mitchelhurst for
you, if you would have it so--but you--_you_!"
"No!" she cried.
"And afterwards you were afraid of me! If it had been any one else! But
you shrank from me--you were afraid of me--the only creature in the
world I loved! And then that last night when you came to me--how clever
of you to discover that I was fighting with something I wanted to keep
down! So I was, Barbara!"
He paused, but she only looked helplessly into his eyes.
"You don't know how hard it was," he continued meaningly. "For if I had
chosen----"
"No!" she cried again.
"Yes! Do you think I did not know? _Yes!_ I might have had your promise
then! I might have had----"
He checked himself, but she did not attempt a second denial.
"Well, enough of this," said Reynold, after a moment. "It need not
trouble you long. Look in the _Times_ and you will soon see the end of
it. But you can remember, if you like, that one man loved you, at any
rate."
"One man does," said Barbara, in a voice which she tried to keep steady.
"Ah, the other fellow. Well, you know about that."
"Yes, I know."
"And you know that in spite of all I _don't_ hate you. No, I don't,
though I dare say you hate me for what I have said. But I can't help
that--you asked for it."
"Yes," said Barbara. "I wish I hadn't."
"Forget it, then," he replied, with a gleam of triumph in his glance.
"You know I can't do that," she said.
She was too young to know how much may be forgotten with the help of
time, and it seemed to her that Reynold's eyes would follow her to her
dying day, that wherever there were shadows and silence, she would meet
that reproachful, unsatisfied gaze, and hear his voice.
"You are very cruel!" she exclaimed.
"Am I?" he said more gently. "Poor child! I never meant to speak of
this. I never could have spoken if you had not come this afternoon. I
could not have told it to anybody but you, and you were out of my reach.
Why did you come? You were quite safe if you had stayed away. You should
have left me to sting myself to death in a ring of fire, as the
scorpions do--or don't! What made you come inside the ring? It's narrow
enough, God knows--!" he looked round as he spoke. "And you had all the
world to choose from. As far as I was concerned you might have been in
another planet. I couldn't have reached you. What possessed you to come
here, to me? Well, you _did_, and you are stung. Is it my fault?"
"No, mine!" said the girl, passionately. "I never meant to hurt you, and
you know I didn't, but it has all gone wrong from first to last. Anyhow,
you have revenged yourself now. I wish--I _wish_ that you were well, and
strong, and rich----"
"That you might have the luxury of hating me? No, no, Barbara. I'm
dying, and no one in all the world will miss me. I leave my memory to
you."
He smiled as he spoke, but his utterance almost failed him, and
Barbara's answer was a sob.
"I take it, then," she said in a choked voice. "Perhaps I should have
been too happy if I had not known--I might never have thought about
other people. But I sha'n't forget."
Then she saw that he had sunk back into his chair, and his face, which
had fallen on the dull red leather, was a picture of death. The marble
bust in Mitchelhurst Church did not look more bloodless.
"Oh!" said Barbara, "you are tired!"
"Mortally," he replied, faintly unclosing his lips. "Good-bye."
She paused for an instant, looking at the dropped lids which hid those
eyes that she had feared. She could do nothing for him but leave him.
"Good-bye," she said, very softly, as if she feared to disturb his rest,
and then she went away.
The window on the stairs was a dim grey shape. Barbara groped her way
down, and stood hesitating in the passage. It was really only half a
minute before the maid came up from the basement with matches to light
the gas, but it was like an age of dreary perplexity.
"I've just left Mr. Harding," she said hurriedly to the girl, whose
matter-of-fact face was suddenly illuminated by the jet of flame. "I'm
afraid he's tired. I think somebody ought to go to him."
"Mind the step, miss," was the reply. "I'll tell missis. I dare say
he'll have his cocoa, I think it's past the time."
"Oh, _don't_ wait for me!" cried Barbara. "I'm all right."
She felt as if Reynold Harding might die by his fireside while she was
being ceremoniously shown out. She reached the door first and shut it
quickly after her, to cut all attentions short. She had hurried out at
the gate, under the foggy outline of a little laburnum, when a shout
from the pursuing cabman aroused her to the consciousness that she had
started off to walk.
Thus arrested, she got into the hansom, covered with confusion, and not
daring to look at the man as she gave her address. He must certainly
think that she meant to cheat him, or that she was mad. She shrank back
into the seat, feeling sure that he would look through the little hole
in the roof, from time to time, to see what his eccentric fare might be
doing, and she folded her hands and sat very still, to impress him with
the idea that she had become quite sane and well-behaved. As if it
mattered what the cabman thought! And yet she blushed over her blunder
while Reynold Harding's "I love you," was still sounding in her ears,
and while the hansom rolled southward through the lamp-lit, glimmering
streets, to the tune of _Barbara Allen_.