FROM THE BEGINNING
A woman stood, in the midst of a salt wilderness, gazing seaward. Around
her was a long stretch of wet sand and of seaweed-stained rocks, rising
from little pools of water left by the tide; and beyond, the flat,
marshy country was broken only by that line of low cliffs, from which
the little tufts of grass sprouted feebly. The waves which rolled almost
to her feet were barely ripples, breaking with scarcely a visible effort
upon the moist sand. Above, the sky was grey and threatening; only a few
minutes before a cloud of white mist had drifted in from the sea and
settled softly upon the land in the form of rain. The whole outlook was
typical of intense desolation. The only sound breaking the silence,
almost curiously devoid of all physical and animal noises, was the soft
washing of the sand at her feet, and every now and then the jingling of
silver harness, as the horses of her carriage, drawn up on the road
above, tossed their heads and fidgeted. The carriage itself seemed
grotesquely out of place. The coachman, with powdered hair and the dark
blue Deringham livery, sat perfectly motionless, his head bent a little
forward, and his eyes fixed upon his horses' ears. The footman, by their
side, stood with folded arms, and expression as wooden as though he were
waiting upon a Bond Street pavement. Both were weary, and both would
have liked to vary the monotony by a little conversation; but only a few
yards away the woman was standing whose curious taste had led her to
visit such a spot.
Her arms were hanging listlessly by her side, her whole expression,
although her face was upturned towards the sky, was one of intense
dejection. Something about her attitude bespoke a keen and intimate
sympathy with the desolation of her surroundings. The woman was unhappy;
the light in her dark eyes was inimitably sad. Her cheeks were pale and
a little wan. Yet Lady Deringham was very handsome--as handsome as a
woman approaching middle age could hope to be. Her figure was still slim
and elegant, the streaks of grey in her raven black hair were few and
far between. She might have lived hand in hand with sorrow, but it had
done very little to age her. Only a few years ago, in the crowded
ball-room of a palace, a prince had declared her to be the handsomest
woman of her age, and the prince had the reputation of knowing. It was
easy to believe it.
How long the woman might have lingered there it is hard to say, for
evidently the spot possessed a peculiar fascination for her, and she had
given herself up to a rare fit of abstraction. But some sound--was it
the low wailing of that seagull, or the more distant cry of a hawk,
motionless in mid-air and scarcely visible against the cloudy sky, which
caused her to turn her head inland? And then she saw that the solitude
was no longer unbroken. A dark object had rounded the sandy little
headland, and was coming steadily towards her. She looked at it with a
momentary interest, her skirt raised in her hand, already a few steps
back on her return to the waiting carriage. Was it a man? It was
something human, at any rate, although its progression was slow and
ungraceful, and marked with a peculiar but uniform action. She stood
perfectly still, a motionless figure against the background of wan,
cloud-shadowed sea and gathering twilight, her eyes riveted upon this
strange thing, her lips slightly parted, her cheeks as pale as death.
Gradually it came nearer and nearer. Her skirt dropped from her
nerveless fingers, her eyes, a moment before dull, with an infinite and
pitiful emptiness, were lit now with a new light. She was not alone,
nor was she unprotected, yet the woman was suffering from a spasm of
terror--one could scarcely imagine any sight revolting enough to call
up that expression of acute and trembling fear, which had suddenly
transformed her appearance. It was as though the level sands had yielded
up their dead--the shipwrecked mariners of generations, and they all,
with white, sad faces and wailing voices, were closing in around her.
Yet it was hard to account for a terror so abject. There was certainly
nothing in the figure, now close at hand, which seemed capable of
inspiring it.
It was a man with a club foot--nothing more nor less. In fact it was
Mr. Sabin! There was nothing about his appearance, save that ungainly
movement caused by his deformity, in any way singular or threatening. He
came steadily nearer, and the woman who awaited him trembled. Perhaps
his expression was a trifle sardonic, owing chiefly to the extreme
pallor of his skin, and the black flannel clothes with invisible stripe,
which he had been wearing for golf. Yet when he lifted his soft felt hat
from his head and bowed with an ease and effect palpably acquired in
other countries, his appearance was far from unpleasant. He stood there
bare-headed in the twilight, a strangely winning smile upon his dark
face, and his head courteously bent.
"The most delightful of unexpected meetings," he murmured. "I am afraid
that I have come upon you like an apparition, dear Lady Deringham! I
must have startled you! Yes, I can see by your face that I did; I am so
sorry. Doubtless you did not know until yesterday that I was in
England."
Lady Deringham was slowly recovering herself. She was white still, even
to the lips, and there was a strange, sick pain at her heart. Yet she
answered him with something of her usual deliberateness, conscious
perhaps that her servants, although their heads were studiously averted,
had yet witnessed with surprise this unexpected meeting.
"You certainly startled me," she said; "I had imagined that this was the
most desolate part of all unfrequented spots! It is here I come when I
want to feel absolutely alone. I did not dream of meeting another fellow
creature--least of all people in the world, perhaps, you!"
"I," he answered, smiling gently, "was perhaps the better prepared. A
few minutes ago, from the cliffs yonder, I saw your carriage drawn up
here, and I saw you alight. I wanted to speak with you, so I lost no
time in scrambling down on to the sands. You have changed marvellously
little, Lady Deringham!"
"And you," she said, "only in name. You are the Mr. Sabin with whom my
son was playing golf yesterday morning?"
"I am Mr. Sabin," he answered. "Your son did me a good service a week or
two back. He is a very fine young fellow; I congratulate you."
"And your niece," Lady Deringham asked; "who is she? My son spoke to me
of her last night."
Mr. Sabin smiled faintly.
"Ah! Madame," he said, "there have been so many people lately who have
been asking me that question, yet to you as to them I must return the
same answer. She is my niece!"
"You call her?"
"She shares my name at present."
"Is she your daughter?"
He shook his head sadly.
"I have never been married," he said, with an indefinable mournfulness
in his flexible tones. "I have had neither wife, nor child, nor friend.
It is well for me that I have not!"
She looked down at his deformity, and woman-like she shivered.
"It is no better, then?" she murmured, with eyes turned seaward.
"It is absolutely incurable," he declared.
She changed the subject abruptly.
"The last I heard of you," she said, "was that you were in China. You
were planning great things there. In ten years, I was told, Europe was
to be at your mercy!"
"I left Pekin five years ago," he said. "China is a land of Cabals. She
may yet be the greatest country in the world. I, for one, believe in her
destiny, but it will be in the generations to come. I have no patience
to labour for another to reap the harvest. Then, too, a craving for just
one draught of civilisation brought me westward again. Mongolian habits
are interesting but a little trying."
"And what," she asked, looking at him steadily, "has brought you to
Deringham, of all places upon this earth?"
He smiled, and with his stick traced a quaint pattern in the sand.
"I have never told you anything that was not the truth," he said; "I
will not begin now. I might have told you that I was here by chance, for
change of air, or for the golf. Neither of these things would have been
true. I am here because Deringham village is only a mile or two from
Deringham Hall."
She drew a little closer to him. The jingling of harness, as her horses
tossed their heads impatiently, reminded her of the close proximity of
the servants.
"What do you want of me?" she asked hoarsely.
He looked at her in mild reproach, a good-humoured smile at the corner
of his lips; yet after all was it good humour or some curious outward
reflection of the working of his secret thoughts? When he spoke the
reproach, at any rate, was manifest.
"Want of you! You talk as though I were a blackmailer, or something
equally obnoxious. Is that quite fair, Constance?"
She evaded the reproach; perhaps she was not conscious of it. It was the
truth she wanted.
"You had some end in coming here," she persisted. "What is it? I cannot
conceive anything in the world you have to gain by coming to see me. We
have left the world and society; we live buried. Whatever fresh schemes
you may be planning, there is no way in which we could help you. You are
richer, stronger, more powerful than we. I can think," she added, "of
only one thing which may have brought you."
"And that?" he asked deliberately.
She looked at him with a certain tremulous wistfulness in her eyes, and
with softening face.
"It may be," she said, "that as you grow older you have grown kinder;
you may have thought of my great desire, and you were always generous,
Victor, you may have come to grant it!"
The slightest possible change passed over his face as his Christian name
slipped from her lips. The firm lines about his mouth certainly relaxed,
his dark eyes gleamed for a moment with a kindlier light. Perhaps at
that minute for both of them came a sudden lifting of the curtain, a
lingering backward glance into the world of their youth, passionate,
beautiful, seductive. There were memories there which still seemed set
to music--memories which pierced even the armour of his equanimity. Her
eyes filled with tears as she looked at him. With a quick gesture she
laid her hand upon his.
"Believe me, Victor," she said, "I have always thought of you kindly;
you have suffered terribly for my sake, and your silence was
magnificent. I have never forgotten it."
His face clouded over, her impulsive words had been after all ill
chosen, she had touched a sore point! There was something in these
memories distasteful to him. They recalled the one time in his life
when he had been worsted by another man. His cynicism returned.
"I am afraid," he said, "that the years, which have made so little
change in your appearance, have made you a sentimentalist. I can assure
you that these old memories seldom trouble me."
Then with a lightning-like intuition, almost akin to inspiration, he
saw that he had made a mistake. His best hold upon the woman had been
through that mixture of sentiment and pity, which something in their
conversation had reawakened in her. He was destroying it ruthlessly and
of his own accord. What folly!
"Bah! I am lying," he said softly; "why should I? Between you and me,
Constance, there should be nothing but truth. We at least should be
sincere one to the other. You are right, I have brought you something
which should have been yours long ago."
She looked at him with wondering eyes.
"You are going to give me the letters?"
"I am going to give them to you," he said. "With the destruction of this
little packet falls away the last link which held us together."
He had taken a little bundle of letters, tied with a faded ribbon, from
his pocket and held them out to her. Even in that salt-odorous air the
perfume of strange scents seemed to creep out from those closely written
sheets as they fluttered in the breeze. Lady Deringham clasped the
packet with both hands, and her eyes were very bright and very soft.
"It is not so, Victor," she murmured. "There is a new and a stronger
link between us now, the link of my everlasting gratitude. Ah! you were
always generous, always quixotic! Someday I felt sure that you would do
this."
"When I left Europe," he said, "you would have had them, but there was
no trusted messenger whom I could spare. Yet if I had never returned
they were so bestowed that they would have come into your hands with
perfect safety. Even now, Constance, will you think me very weak when I
say that I part with them with regret? They have been with me through
many dangers and many strange happenings."
"You are," she whispered, "the old Victor again! Thank God that I have
had this one glimpse of you! I am ashamed to think how terrified I have
been."
She held out her hand impulsively. He took it in his and, with a glance
at her servants, let it fall almost immediately.
"Constance," he said, "I am going away now. I have accomplished what I
came for. But first, would you care to do me a small service? It is
only a trifle."
A thrill of the old mistrustful fear shook her heart. Half ashamed of
herself she stifled it at once, and strove to answer him calmly.
"If there is anything within my power which I can do for you, Victor,"
she said, "it will make me very happy. You would not ask me, I know,
unless--unless----"
"You need have no fear," he interrupted calmly; "it is a very little
thing. Do you think that Lord Deringham would know me again after so
many years?"
"My husband?"
"Yes!"
She looked at him in something like amazement. Before she could ask the
question which was framing itself upon her lips, however, they were
both aware of a distant sound, rapidly drawing nearer--the thunder of
a horse's hoofs upon the soft sand. Looking up they both recognised the
rider at the same instant.
"It is your son," Mr. Sabin said quickly; "you need not mind. Leave me
to explain. Tell me when I can find you at home alone?"
"I am always alone," she answered. "But come to-morrow."