‘Who would trust slippery chance?’
But, after all, Ella has a card of her own, that is not from Susan, or
Betty, or Carew. Some hours ago the post brought it to her, and she has
gone out into the garden, that is now lovely in its white garments, with
the red berries of the holly-trees peeping through the snow, to read it
and look at it again.
The walks have been swept clear by Denis, who has come down from Dublin
to spend a long (a very long) and happy Christmas week with his wife. A
third person in Mrs. Denis’s kitchen and private apartments might have
questioned about the happiness, but that it is a lively week goes beyond
all doubt.
With Ella’s card a little line had come too. Mr. Wyndham was coming down
by the afternoon train, to see to something for Crosby, who had written
to him from Carlsbad, and he hoped to call at the Cottage before his
return. Ella reads and re-reads the little note. The afternoon train
comes in at one o’clock. It is now after twelve. Soon he will be here!
How kind he is to her! How good! And to remember that Christmas card!
She had heard Susan and Betty talking of Christmas cards, and they had
sent her one, each of them, and Carew had sent one, too. They also were
kind, so kind; but that Mr. Wyndham should remember her, with all his
other friends to think of!
Alone in this dear garden, with no one to hear or see her, she gives way
to her mood. Miss Manning has gone up to Dublin to spend her Christmas
Day with an old friend, urged thereto by Ella, who, indeed, wished to be
alone after her post had come. Now she can walk about here, and speak to
her own heart without interruption, Mrs. Denis being engaged in that
intellectual game called ‘words’ with her husband. Oh, how happy she
feels—how extraordinarily happy! She laughs aloud, and, lifting her
arms, crosses them with lazy delight behind her head, and amongst the
warm furs that encircle her neck. This action draws her head
backwards—her eyes upwards——
Upwards! To the top of the wall on that far distant corner. There her
eyes rest as if transfixed, and then grow frozen in this awful horror
that has come to her. Where is the happiness now in the eyes—the young,
glad joy?
She stands as if stricken into stone, staring into a face that is
staring back at her.
On the wall close to the old tree, from which she loves to look into the
Rectory garden and wave a handkerchief to the children there to come to
her, sits Moore, the man from whom she had fled; the man whom she dreads
most of all things upon earth; the man who wanted to marry her!
Oh dear, dear Heaven, is all her good time ended? Such a little, little
time, too—such a transient gleam of light—and all so black behind it!
Like a flash her life spreads itself out before her. What a childhood!
Unmothered, unloved! What a cold, terrible girlhood! and then a few
short months of quiet rest and calm, and now again the old, hideous
misery.
It seems impossible for her to remove her eyes from those above her—to
move in any way. Her brain grows at last confused, and only three words
seem to be clear—to din themselves with a cruel persistency in her ears:
‘All is over! All is over!’
They have neither sense nor meaning to her in her present state, but
still they go on repeating themselves: ‘All is over! All, all, all is
over!’
The man has caught a branch of the tree now, and with a certain
activity, considering the squareness and the bulk of his body, has swung
himself into it, and so on to the ground.
He is coming towards her. The girl still stands immovable, as if rooted
to the gravel walk; but her mind has returned to her. Alas! it brings no
hope with it. This man, who has been a terror to her from her childhood,
has now again come into the circle of her daily life. She draws back as
he approaches her—her first movement since her frightened eyes met
his—and holds up her hands, as a child might, to ward off mischief. This
coming face to face with him is a horrible shock as well as an
awakening. She had believed herself mistress of her fears of him, though
her horror might still obtain, and now, now she knows that both her
horror and her fear are still rampant.
‘Well, I’ve found you at last,’ says the man, advancing across the
grass. ‘And here!’ There is something terrible in his tone and in the
look of scorn he casts at the pretty surroundings, beautiful always,
though now wrapped in their snowy shrouds. ‘Four months ago I was here,’
says he, after a lengthened pause. ‘I was on your track then, but a mere
chance put me off it. Four months ago I might have dragged you out of
this sink of iniquity—had I but known!’
Ella is silent. That day when she had run back from the Rectory and
fancied she saw him turn the corner of the road. That fancy had been no
delusion, then! Ah! why had she played with it?
‘Have you nothing to say?’ asks he slowly, sullenly, gazing at her with
hard, compelling eyes. ‘No excuse to make, or are you trying to get up a
story? I tell you, girl, it will be useless. This speaks for itself.’
Again he looks round him, at the charming cottage, the tall trees, the
dainty garden and winding walks.
‘There is no story,’ says Ella at last. Her voice is dry and husky; she
can hardly force the words between her lips.
‘You lie!’ says the man fiercely. ‘There is a story, and a most —— one
for you.’ His eyes light with a sudden fury, and he looks for a moment
as though he would willingly fall upon her and choke the life out of her
slender body. His manner is distinctly brutal, but yet there is
something about it that speaks of honesty. It is rough, cruel, hateful,
but honest for all that. A certain belief in himself is uppermost.
He is a tall man, very strong in build, and with strong features too.
His dress is that of the comfortable, half-educated artisan; but he
shows some neatness in his attire. His shirt is immaculate, his hair
well cut, and altogether he might suggest to the unimpassioned observer
that he was a man who had dreamt many dreams of rising above the life to
which he had been born. He is, at all events, not an ordinary man of any
type, and distinctly one to be feared, if only for the enormous strength
he had put forth to fight with his daily surroundings, and with his past
(a more difficult enemy still), so as to gain a footing on the ladder
that will raise him above his fellows.
The girl shrinks from him, frightened even more by the wild light in his
eyes than by his words, and as she shrinks he advances, contempt mingled
with menace in his eyes.
‘You thought I should never find you,’ says he, with cruel slowness.
‘But mine you were from the beginning, and mine you are still.’
Ella makes a faint and trembling protest.
‘Deny it!’ cries he. ‘Deny it if you can! Your own mother left you to
me—a mother who was ashamed to tell her real name. She left you—a waif,
a stray—to my charity, and so, of my charity, I bought you through my
wife. You are mine, I tell you. Hah! well you may hide your face! Child
of infamy, now sunk in infamy!’
His strong, horrible face is working. The girl, as if petrified by fear,
has fallen back into a garden-chair, and is sitting there cowering, her
face hidden in her shaking hands.
‘So,’ continues the man in mocking accents, the very mockery of it
betraying the intolerable love he had borne her in her sad past—a love
now deadened, but still half alive, and quick with revengeful wrath,
‘you ran away from me, not so much from hatred of me, but for love of
him.’
‘Of him?’ Ella lifts her haggard face at this.
‘Ay, girl, of him! The man who has dragged you down to this—who has
brought you here to be a bird in his gilded cage. D’ye think to blind me
still? I’ve followed you, I tell you, step by step. You didn’t reckon on
my staying powers, perhaps. But I had sworn by the heaven above
me’—lifting his hand, large and rough and powerful, to the sky—‘that I
would have you, dead or alive!’ He pauses. ‘When you left me, I thought
at first that I had been too harsh to you. But I was wrong: such as you
require harshness.’ Again he grows silent. ‘You ran to him, then,
because you loved him! Such as you love easily; has it occurred to you,
however, to ask yourself how long he will love you?’
‘I—someone must have been telling you strange things. All this is
impossible,’ says the girl, pressing her hands against her beating
heart. ‘No one loves me—no one.’
‘And you do not love anyone? Answer that,’ says Moore.
‘No. No—except——’ She hesitates miserably. She had thought of Susan—she
had meant to declare her love for Susan as her sole love, but another
form had suddenly risen between her and Susan, and she loses herself.
‘Another lie,’ says Moore, with a sneer. ‘Lies become fine ladies, and
you seem to be making yourself into one in a hurry. But you’ll find
yerself out there’—with all his care he sometimes drops into his earlier
form of speech, and that ‘yerself’ betrays him. ‘You’re not built for a
fine lady. You—you’—furiously—‘who came out of the gutter! Yet I can see
you have been doing the fine lady very considerably of late—so
considerably that you can now lie like the best of them. But’—with a
touch of absolute ferocity—‘I tell you, your lies will be of little use
to you with me. I’ve dropped on the truth of your story, and there shall
be an end of it. To my dead wife your dead mother left you, and from my
dead wife you have come to me again. To me you belong; I am your
guardian; you are bound by law to follow me.’
Ella makes a terrified gesture, then sinks back upon her seat, pale and
chilled to her heart’s core.
‘To follow you?’ The words come from between her lips, whispered rather
than uttered; but he hears them.
‘Ay, to follow me. You shall not stay in this home of infamy another
hour if I can prevent it. And prevent it I shall.’
His rugged, disagreeable face, so full of strength, lights up as he
speaks these words of command.
‘I cannot go,’ says the girl faintly.
She puts out her hands again with that old, childish movement as if to
ward off something hateful to her. There is so much aversion in this act
that Moore’s temper fails him.
‘Hate me as much as you will, still, come with me you shall!’ says he.
‘Do you imagine——’ Here he takes a step towards her, and, catching her
by the wrist, swings her to and fro with distinct brutality, then lets
her go. ‘Do you think, having once found you, I shall let you go? No;
though’—he makes a pause, and, standing before her, pours his words into
her unwilling, nay, but half-understanding, ears—‘though I so despise
you that I would now consider my name dishonoured if joined with
yours—even now when I know you not to be worth the picking up—still, I
will not let you go. You are mine, and with me you shall leave this old
country and seek another. I start for Australia to-morrow week, and you
shall start with me. Together we shall seek that land.’
‘I cannot go,’ repeats Ella feebly. She looks magnetized. The old terror
is full upon her, and it is but a dying effort to resist him that she
now makes. ‘I—I——’ She stops again, and then bursts out: ‘It would kill
me! Oh!’—holding out her hands wildly—‘why do you want me to go away?
Why do you want me to leave this place? How’—miserably—‘can I be of any
help to you? Of any use? You know’—in softest, most piteous
accents—‘that I hate you—why, then, take me with you? Why not let me
stay here in peace?’
‘In sin you mean,’ says Moore, his harsh voice now filled with a new
virulence. ‘Make an end of this, girl—for come with me you shall.
What’—violently—‘you would not live with me, who would have honourably
married you; but you would live with him, who will never marry you!’
‘I do not desire that he should marry me,’ says the girl, drawing
herself up. Even in this terrible moment, when all her senses feel
dulled, a look of pride grows upon her beautiful face. ‘And he does not
live here.’
‘Enough of that!’—gruffly. ‘You have told lies sufficient for one
morning. Get up, and come with me.’
‘Come with you?’
‘Ay—and at once!’
‘But’—she has risen, as if in strange unreasoning obedience to his
command, being fully beneath the spell born of her horror and fear of
him—‘but—I must have time—to write—to leave a word. He has been so
kind—so kind. Give me’—her face is deadly white now, her tone
anguished—‘only one moment to go in and write a line of good-bye to
him.’
‘Not one!’ says Moore sternly. ‘I shall not even wait for you to take
off those garments—the garments of sin—that you are wearing. You shall
come as you are—and now.’
He lays his hand upon her arm, and draws her towards the gate; still, as
in a dream, she follows him. The bitterness of death is on her, yet she
goes with him calmly—quietly. Perhaps there is a hope in her heart that
as she had run away from him once, she might be able to do so again. But
could she? Would he not, having been warned by her first escape, take
pains to guard against a second? She knows that in her dreams, when he
is not here, she can defy him, elude him, but to defy him when he is
present would be too much for her; and, besides, he is her lawful
guardian; he has said so. Her own mother had left her to him. He might
call in the policeman in the village, and so compel her in that way. But
oh, to go without saying good-bye to Mr. Wyndham!
He had said he would come to-day! But all hope of his coming now is at
an end. And Mrs. Denis! Not even to see her—she might have helped her.
And not to say one word to her, or to Susan! What—what will they all
think of her?
At this moment they come to the hall-door of the Cottage, and she stops
suddenly, and makes a little rush towards it, but the clutch on her arm
is strong.
‘To say one word to Mrs. Denis,’ she gasps imploringly, damp breaking
out upon her young forehead. ‘Oh!’—beating her hands with miserable
agony upon her chest—‘think how it will be! They will for ever and ever
remember me as ungrateful—unloving—a creature who had taken their love,
and abused it. They will be glad to forget me.’
‘I hope so,’ says he coldly, utterly unmoved—nay, knowing even pleasure
in her grief. ‘The sooner they forget you, and you them, the better.
“They!”’ He repeats the word. ‘Why don’t you say “he” and be done with
it?’ cries he furiously. ‘What a —— hypocrite you are!’
He almost drags her to the gate. Ella, half fainting, finds herself at
it. It is the last step. In here lies safety and happiness and peace—out
there—— Moore turns the key in the lock, and pulls at the handle of the
door. Yes, it is all over. The door opens. At this instant a long, low,
passionate cry escapes from Ella.
Wyndham is standing in the roadway just outside the gate!