'HEAR MY PRAYER!'
Miss Travers did not, after all, succeed in cornering Gladys at the
garden-party, but she did contrive to get herself asked to stay later,
and without much difficulty (she would probably have found it far more
difficult to go with the rest--hostesses were tenacious of Miss
Travers); and after dinner, when the ladies went off to the
drawing-room, her stubborn waiting was at last rewarded.
Some other people had stayed to dinner also, in the same informal way,
and among them one or two of Granville's friends. These young men had
come to the garden-party by no advice of Gran's--in fact, those who
chanced to have mentioned to him Lady Bligh's invitation he had
frankly told to stay away and not to be fools. But, having come, he
insisted on their staying. 'For,' he said, 'you deserve compensation,
you fellows; and the Judge's wine, though I say it, hasn't a
fault--unless it's spoiling a man for his club's.'
And while the young men put the truth of this statement to a more
earnest test than could be applied before the ladies left the table,
Miss Travers, in the drawing-room, at last had Gladys to herself. And
Miss Travers was sadly disappointed--as, perhaps, she deserved to be.
Gladys had very little to say to her. As a matter of fact, it was no
less irksome to the Bride to listen than to talk herself. But they
happened to be sitting close to the piano, and it was not long before
a very happy thought struck Gladys, which she instantly expressed in
the abrupt question:--
'You sing, Miss Travers, don't you?'
'In a way.'
'In a way! I've heard all about the way!' Gladys smiled; Miss Travers
thought the smile sadly changed since yesterday. 'Sing now.'
'You really want me to?'
'Yes, really. And you must.' Gladys opened the piano.
Miss Travers sang a little song that Gladys had never heard before,
accompanying herself from memory. She sang very sweetly, very
simply--in a word, uncommonly well. The voice, to begin with, was an
exceptionally sound soprano, but the secret and charm of it all was,
of course, in the way she used her voice. Gladys had asked for a song
to escape from a chat, but she had forgotten her motive in asking--she
had forgotten that she _had_ asked for it--she had forgotten much that
it had seemed impossible to forget, even thus, for one moment--before
the song was half finished. Very possibly, with Gladys, who knew
nothing of music, this was an appeal to the senses only; but it gave
her some peaceful, painless moments when such were rare; and it left
her, with everything coming back to her, it is true, but with a
grateful heart. So grateful, indeed, was Gladys that she forgot to
express her thanks until Miss Travers smilingly asked her how she
liked that song; and then, instead of answering, she went over to
where Lady Bligh was sitting, bent down, and asked a question, which
was answered in a whisper.
Then Gladys came back to the piano. 'Yes, I _do_ like that song, very,
very much; and I beg your pardon for not answering you, Miss Travers,
but I was thinking of something else; and I want you, please, to sing
Mendelssohn's "Hear my Prayer!"' These words came quickly--they were
newly learnt from Lady Bligh.
Miss Travers could not repress a smile. 'Do you know what you are
asking me for?'
'Yes; for what we heard in church last Sunday evening. That's the
name, because I've just asked Lady Bligh. I would rather you sang that
than anything else in the world!'
'But----' Miss Travers was puzzled by the Bride's expression; she
would have given anything not to refuse, yet what could she do?
'But--it isn't the sort of thing one can sit down and sing--_really_
it isn't. It wants a chorus, and it is very long and elaborate.'
'Yes?' Gladys seemed strangely disappointed. 'But there was one
part--the part I liked--where the chorus didn't come in, I am sure. It
was sung by a boy. You could do it so much better! It was about the
wings of a dove, and the wilderness. You know, I come from the
wilderness myself'--the Bride smiled faintly--'and I thought I'd never
heard anything half so lovely before; though of course I've heard very
little.'
'No matter how little you have heard, you will never hear anything
much more beautiful than that,' said Miss Travers, with sympathetic
enthusiasm.
'Since I cannot hear it now, however, there is an end of it.'
Gladys sighed, but her eyes pleaded still; it was impossible to look
in them long and still resist. Miss Travers looked but for a moment,
then, turning round to the keys, she softly touched a chord. 'I will
try the little bit you liked,' she whispered, kindly, 'whatever I make
of it!'
What she did make of it is unimportant, except in its effect upon
Gladys. This effect was very different from that produced a few
minutes before by the song; this, at least, was no mere titillation of
the senses by agreeable sounds. And it differed quite as much from the
effect produced by the same thing in church on Sunday, when Gladys,
after being surprised into listening, had listened only to the words.
Then, indeed, the music had seemed sweet and sad, but to-night each
note palpitated with a shivering, tremulous yearning, dropping into
her soul a relief as deep as that of sorrow unbosomed, a comfort as
soothing as the comfort of tears. And there was now an added infinity
of meaning in the words; though it was the words that had thrilled her
then--then, before she had brought all the present misery to pass.
O for the wings, for the wings of a dove!
Far away, far away would I rove:
In the wilderness build me a nest,
And remain there for ever at rest.
It is only a few bars, the solo here; and at the point where the
chorus catches up the refrain Miss Travers softly ceased. She turned
round slowly on the stool, then rose up quickly in surprise. Her
ardent listener was gone. And as Miss Travers stood by the piano,
peering with raised eyebrows into every corner of the room, and out
into the night through the open French window, the men entered the
room in a body--she was surrounded.
But Gladys had stepped softly through the window on to the lawn,
re-entered the house by another way, and stolen swiftly up to her
room. The last strains came to her through the open window of the
drawing-room, and in at her own window, at which Gladys now knelt: and
this short passage through the outer air brought them upward on the
breath of the night, rarefied and softened as though from the lips of
far-off angels: and so they reached her trembling ears.
The scent of roses was in the air. The moon was rising, and its rays
spanned the river with a broad bridge of silver, against which some of
the foliage at the garden-end stood out in fine filigree. It was a
heavenly night; it was a sweet and tranquil place; but yet--
O for the wings of a dove!
Gladys had been home-sick before; she had been miserable and desperate
for many, many hours; but at this moment it seemed as though hitherto
she had never known what it was to pant and pray in real earnest for
her old life and her own country. She was almost as a weak woman in
the transports of spiritual fervour, her vision riveted upon some
material mental picture, the soul for one ecstatic instant separated
from the flesh--only Gladys missed the ecstasy.
There was no light in the room; and the girl remained so entirely
motionless, as she knelt, that her glossy head, just raised above the
level of the sill, would have seemed in the moonlight a mere inanimate
accessory, if it had been seen at all. But only the bats could have
seen Gladys, and they did not; at all events, it was the touch of a
bat's wing upon the forehead that recalled her to herself, making her
aware of voices within earshot, immediately below her window. Her room
was over the dining-room. The voices were men's voices, and the scent
of cigars reached her as well. She could hear distinctly, but she
never would have listened had she not heard her own name spoken; and
then--the weakness of the moment prevented her from rising.
'No,' said one of the voices, 'not a bit of it; oh dear, no! Gladys
has her good points; and, frankly, I am getting rather to like her.
But she is impossible in her position. The whole thing was a fearful
mistake, which poor old Alfred will live to repent.'
The voice was unmistakable; it was Granville's.
'But'--and the other voice was that of Granville's most intimate
friend, whom he had introduced to Gladys during the course of the
afternoon--'doesn't he repent it already, think you?'
'Upon my word, I'm not sure that he doesn't,' said Granville.
'If you ask me,' said his friend, 'I should say there isn't a doubt of
it. I've been watching him pretty closely. Mark my words, he's a
miserable man!'
'Well, I'm half inclined to agree with you,' said Granville. 'I didn't
think so two or three days since, but now I do. You see, there are
camels' backs and there are last straws (though I wish there were no
proverbs); and there never was a heavier straw than yesterday's--'gad!
'twas as heavy as the rest of the load! I mean the perfectly awful
scene in the Park, which you know about, and the whole town knows
about, and the low papers will publish, confound them! Yes, I believe
you're right; he _can't_ get over this.'
'Poor chap!' said Granville's friend.
'You may well say that. Alfred is no genius'--Granville was,
apparently--'but he has position; he has money--luckily for him; he
means to settle down in the country somewhere, and, no doubt, he'd
like to be somebody in the county. But how could he? Look at his
wife!'
'There ought to be a separation,' said the friend, feelingly.
'Well, I don't think it's quite as bad as that,' said Granville,
wearing ship. 'Anyway, there never will be one; you may trust her for
that. And, I must own, I don't think it's all the main chance with
her, either; they're sufficiently spooney. Why, she will not even
leave him for a week on a visit, though, as I understand, he's doing
his best to persuade her to.'
Gladys's hands tightened upon the woodwork of the window-frame.
'Can't persuade her to?' cried the friend. 'What did I tell you? Why,
Lord love you, he wants to get rid of her already!'
This was rather strong, even for an intimate friend, and even though
the intimate friend had drunk a good deal of wine. Granville's tone
cooled suddenly.
'We'll drop the subject, I think. My cigar's done, and you've smoked
as much as is good for you. You can do as you like, but I'm going
inside.'
Their footsteps sounded down the gravel-path; then the sound ceased;
they had gone in by the drawing-room window.
Gladys had never once altered her position; she did not alter it now.
The moon rose high in the purple sky, and touched her head with
threads of silver. It was as though gray hairs had come upon her while
she knelt. The sudden turning of the door-handle, and a quick step
upon the threshold, aroused her. It was Alfred come for an easier
coat. The people were gone.
'What--_Gladys!_' he cried. She rose stiffly to her feet, and
confronted him with her back to the moonlight. 'Up here--alone?'
'You didn't miss me, then?' Her tone was low and hoarse--the words ran
into one another in their hurried, eager utterance.
'Why, no,' cried Alfred; 'to tell you the truth, I didn't.'
He seemed to her in better spirits than he had been all day; his
voice was full and cheery, and his manner brisk. Why? Evidently the
evening had gone off very agreeably. Why? Was it because he had got
rid of her for an hour? Was it, then, true that he was doing his best
to get rid of her for a week--that he would be only too glad to get
rid of her for ever? It was as though a poniard were being held to her
breast. She paused, and nerved herself to speak calmly, before, as it
were, baring her bosom to the steel.
'Alfred,' she said at length, with slow distinctness, but not with the
manner of one who is consciously asking a question of life or death,
'I have been thinking it over, about the Barringtons; and I think I
_should_ like to go to them on Saturday after all. May I go?'
'May you?' Alfred fairly shouted. 'I am only too delighted, Gladdie!
Of course you may.'
The poniard went in--to the hilt.
So delighted was Alfred that he caught her in his arms and kissed her.
Her cheek was quite cold, her frame all limp. Though she reeled on
her feet, she seemed to shrink instinctively from his support.
'What's the matter, Gladdie?' he cried, in sudden alarm. 'What's
wrong--are you ill? Stop, I'll fetch----'
She interrupted him in a whisper.
'Fetch no one.' She dropped one hand upon the dressing-table, leant
her weight upon it, and motioned him back with the other. 'I am not
ill; I only was faint, just for a moment. I am all right now. There,
that's a long breath; I can speak quite properly again. You see, it
was only a passing faintness. I must have fallen asleep by the window.
I was enjoying the lovely night, and that must have done it. There, I
am only tired now, and want--sleep!'
* * * * *
That acid had been applied, and not in drops. Its work was complete.