The Bird of Time has but a little way
To flutter--and the Bird is on the wing.
--OMAR KHAYYÁM.
It was the third week of November. Winter, the destroyer, was late, but
he had come at last. There was death in the air, a whisper of death
stole across the empty fields and bare hill-side. The birds heard it and
were silent. The November wind was hurrying round Westhope Abbey,
shaking its bare trees.
Lord Newhaven stood looking fixedly out eastward across the level land
to the low hills beyond. He stood so long that the day died, and
twilight began to rub out first the hills and then the long, white lines
of flooded meadow and blurred pollard willows. Presently the river mist
rose up to meet the coming darkness. In the east, low and lurid, a tawny
moon crept up the livid sky. She made no moonlight on the gray earth.
Lord Newhaven moved away from the window, where he had become a shadow
among the shadows, and sat down in the dark at his writing-table.
Presently he turned on the electric lamp at his elbow and took a letter
out of his pocket. The circle of shaded light fell on his face as he
read--the thin, grave face, with the steady, inscrutable eyes.
He read the letter slowly, evidently not for the first time.
"If I had not been taken by surprise at the moment I should not have
consented to the manner in which our differences were settled.
Personally, I consider the old arrangement, to which you regretfully
alluded at the time"--("pistols for two and coffee for four," I remember
perfectly)--"as preferable, and as you appeared to think so yourself,
would it not be advisable to resort to it? Believing that the old
arrangement will meet your wishes as fully as it does mine, I trust that
you will entertain this suggestion, and that you will agree to a meeting
with your own choice of weapons, on any pretext you may choose to name
within the next week."
The letter ended there. It was unsigned.
"The time is certainly becoming short," said Lord Newhaven. "He is right
in saying there is only a week left. If it were not for the scandal for
the boys, and if I thought he would really hold to the compact, I would
meet him, but _he won't_. He flinched when he drew lots. He won't. He
has courage enough to stand up in front of me for two minutes, and take
his chance, but not to blow his own brains out. No. And if he knew what
is in store for him if he does not, he would not have courage to face
that either. Nor should I if I were in his shoes, poor devil. The first
six foot of earth would be good enough for me."
He threw the letter with its envelope into the fire and watched it burn.
Then he took up the gold pen, which his wife had given him, examined the
nib, dipped it very slowly in the ink, and wrote with sudden swiftness.
"Allow me to remind you that you made no objection at the time to the
manner of our encounter and my choice of weapons, by means of which
publicity was avoided. The risk was equal. You now, at the last moment,
propose that I should run it a second time, and in a manner to cause
instant scandal. I must decline to do so, or to reopen the subject,
which had received my careful consideration before I decided upon it. I
have burned your letter, and desire you will burn mine."
"Poor devil!" said Lord Newhaven, putting the letter, not in the
post-box at his elbow, but in his pocket.
"Loftus and I did him an ill turn when we pulled him out of the water."
* * * * *
The letter took its own time, for it had to avoid possible pitfalls. It
shunned the company of the other Westhope letters, it avoided the
village post-office, but after a day's delay it was launched, and lay
among a hundred others in a station pillar-box. And then it hurried,
hurried as fast as express train could take it, till it reached its
London address, and went softly up-stairs, and laid itself, with a few
others, on Hugh's breakfast-table.
For many weeks since his visit at Wilderleigh Hugh had been like a man
in a boat without oars, drifting slowly, imperceptibly on the placid
current of a mighty river, who far away hears the fall of Niagara
droning like a bumblebee in a lily cup.
Long ago, in the summer, he had recognized the sound, had realized the
steep agony towards which the current was bearing him, and had struggled
horribly, impotently, against the inevitable. But of late, though the
sound was ever in his ears, welling up out of the blue distance, he had
given up the useless struggle, and lay still in the sunshine watching
the summer woods slide past and the clouds sail away, always away and
away, to the birthplace of the river, to that little fluttering pulse in
the heart of the hills which a woman's hand might cover, the infant
pulse of the great river to be.
Hugh's thoughts went back, like the clouds, towards that tiny spring of
passion in his own life. He felt that he could have forgiven it--and
himself--if he had been swept into the vortex of a headlong mountain
torrent leaping down its own wild water-way, carrying all before it.
Other men he had seen who had been wrested off their feet, swept out of
their own keeping by such a torrent on the steep hill-side of their
youth. But it had not been so with him. He had walked more cautiously
than they. As he walked he had stopped to look at the little thread of
water which came bubbling up out of its white pebbles. It was so
pretty, it was so feeble, it was so clear. Involuntarily he followed it,
watched it grow, amused himself, half contemptuously, with it, helped
its course by turning obstacles from its path. It never rushed. It never
leaped. It was a toy. The day came when it spread itself safe and
shallow on level land, and he embarked upon it. But he was quickly tired
of it. It was beginning to run muddily through a commonplace country,
past squalid polluting towns and villages. The hills were long since
gone. He turned to row to the shore. And, behold, his oars were gone! He
had been trapped to his destruction.
Hugh had never regarded seriously his intrigue with Lady Newhaven. He
had been attracted, excited, partially, half-willingly enslaved. He had
thought at the time that he loved her, and that supposition had
confirmed him in his cheap cynicism about woman. This, then, was her
paltry little court, where man offered mock homage, and where she played
at being queen. Hugh had made the discovery that love was a much
overrated passion. He had always supposed so; but when he tired of Lady
Newhaven he was sure of it. His experience was, after all, only the same
as that which many men acquire by marriage, and hold unshaken through
long and useful lives. But Hugh had not been able to keep the treasures
of this early experience. It had been rendered worthless, perhaps rather
contemptible by a later one--that of falling in love with Rachel, and
the astonishing discovery that he was in love for the first time. He had
sold his birthright for a mess of red pottage, as surely as any man or
woman who marries for money or liking. He had not believed in his
birthright, and holding it to be worthless, had given it to the first
person who had offered him anything in exchange.
His whole soul had gradually hardened itself against Lady Newhaven. If
he had loved her, he said to himself, he could have borne his fate. But
the play had not been worth the candle. His position was damnable; but
that he could have borne--at least, so he thought if he had had his
day. But he had not had it. That thought rankled. To be hounded out of
life because he had mistaken paper money for real was not only unfair,
it was grotesque.
Gradually, however, Hugh forgot his smouldering hate of Lady Newhaven,
his sense of injustice and anger against fate; he forgot everything in
his love for Rachel. It became the only reality of his life.
He had remained in London throughout October and November, cancelling
all his engagements because she was there. What her work was he vaguely
apprehended: that she was spending herself and part of her colossal
fortune in the East End, but he took no interest in it. He was incapable
of taking more interests into his life at this time. He passed many
quiet evenings with her in the house in Park Lane, which she had lately
bought. The little secretary who lived with her had always a faint smile
and more writing to do than usual on the evenings when he dined with
them.
A great peace was over all their intercourse. Perhaps it was the hush
before the storm, the shadow of which was falling, falling, with each
succeeding day across the minds of both. Once only a sudden gust of
emotion stirred the quiet air, but it dropped again immediately. It came
with the hour when Hugh confessed to her the blot upon his past. The
past was taking upon itself ever an uglier and more repulsive aspect as
he saw more of Rachel. It was hard to put into words, but he spoke of
it. The spectre of love rose like a ghost between them, as they looked
earnestly at each other, each pale even in the ruddy fire-light.
Hugh was truthful in intention. He was determined he would never lie to
Rachel. He implied an intrigue with a married woman, a deviation not
only from morality, but from honor. More he did not say. But as he
looked at her strained face it seemed to him that she expected something
more. A dreadful silence fell between them when he had finished. Had
she then no word for him. Her eyes--mute, imploring, dark with an agony
of suspense--met his for a second and fell instantly. She did not speak.
Her silence filled him with despair. He got up. "It's getting late. I
must go," he stammered.
She rose, mechanically, and put out her hand.
"May I come again?" he said, holding it more tightly than he knew, and
looking intently at her. Was he going to be dismissed?
The pain he caused her hand recalled her to herself. A look of
bewilderment crossed her face, and then she realized his suspense and
said, gravely, "You may come again."
He kissed the hand he held, and, as he did so, he knew for the first
time that she loved him. But he could not speak of love after what he
had just told her. He looked back when he reached the door, and saw her
standing where he had left her. She had raised the hand he had kissed to
her lips.
That was three days ago. Since then he had not dared to go and see her.
He could not ask her to marry him when he was within a few days of the
time when he was bound in so-called honor to give Lord Newhaven
satisfaction. He certainly could not be in her presence again without
asking her. The shadows of the last weeks had suddenly become ghastly
realities once more. The roar of Niagara drowned all other sounds. What
was he going to do? What was he going to do in the predicament towards
which he had been drifting so long, which was now actually upon him? Who
shall say what horror, what agony of mind, what frenzied searching for a
way of escape, what anguish of baffled love crowded in on Hugh's mind
during those last days? At the last moment he caught at a straw, and
wrote to Lord Newhaven offering to fight him. He did not ask himself
what he should do if Lord Newhaven refused. But when Lord Newhaven did
refuse his determination, long unconsciously fostered, sprang full-grown
into existence in a sudden access of passionate anger and blind rage.
"He won't fight, won't he! He thinks I will die like a rat in a trap
with all my life before me. I will not. I offered him a fair chance of
revenging himself--I would have fired into the air--and if he won't take
it is his own look-out, damn him! He can shoot me at sight if he likes.
Let him."