Nothing occurred to mar the prosperity of the voyage of the _Evening
Star_. That beautiful little vessel declined to simplify the course of
this history by going to the bottom with Mildred and Arthur, as the
imaginative reader may have perhaps expected. She did not even get into
a terrific storm, in order to give Arthur the opportunity of performing
heroic feats, and the writer of this history the chance of displaying a
profound knowledge of the names of ropes and spars. On the contrary,
she glided on upon a sea so still that even Miss Terry was persuaded to
arouse herself from her torpor, and come upon deck, till at last, one
morning, the giant peak of Teneriffe, soaring high above its circling
clouds, broke upon the view of her passengers.
Here they stopped for a week or so, enjoying themselves very much in
their new surroundings, till at length Arthur grew tired of the
islands, which was of course the signal for their departure. So they
returned, reaching Madeira after an absence of close upon a month. As
they dropped anchor in the little bay, Mildred came up to Arthur, and,
touching him with that gentle deference which she always showed towards
him, asked him if he was not glad to be home again.
“Home!” he said. “I have no home.”
“Oh, Arthur;” she answered, “why do you try to pain me? Is not my home
yours also?”
So soon as they landed, he started off to “Miles’ Hotel,” to see if any
letters had come for him during his absence, and returned, looking very
much put out.
“What is the matter, Arthur?” asked Miss Terry, once again happy at
feeling her feet upon solid soil.
“Why, those idiots at the hotel have returned a letter sent to me by my
lawyer. They thought that I had left Madeira for good, and the letter
was marked, ‘If left, return to Messrs. Borley and Son,’ with the
address. And the mail went out this afternoon into the bargain, so it
will be a month before I can get it back again.”
Had Arthur known that this letter contained clippings of the newspaper
reports of the inquest on George Caresfoot, of whose death even he was
in total ignorance, he would have had good reason to be put out.
“Never mind, Arthur,” said Mildred’s clear voice at his elbow—she was
rarely much further from him than his shadow; “lawyers’ letters are
not, as a rule, very interesting. I never yet had one that would not
keep. Come and see if your pavilion—isn’t that a grand name?—is
arranged to your liking, and then let us go to dinner, for Agatha here
is dying of hunger—she has to make up for her abstinence at sea.”
“I was always told,” broke in that lady, “that yachting was charming,
but I tell you frankly I have never been more miserable in my life than
I was on board your _Evening Star_.”
“Never mind, dear, you shall have a nice long rest before we start for
the coast of Spain.”
And so Arthur soon settled down again into the easy tenor of Madeira
life. He now scarcely made a pretence of living at the hotel, since,
during their cruise, Mildred had had a pavilion which stood in the
garden luxuriously set up for his occupation. Here he was happy enough
in a dull, numb way, and, as the days went on, something of the old
light came back to his eyes, and his footfall again grew quick and
strong as when it used to fall in the corridors of the Abbey House. Of
the past he never spoke, nor did Mildred ever allude to Angela after
that conversation at sea which had ended so strangely. She contented
herself with attempting to supplant her, and to a certain extent she
was successful. No man could have for very long remained obdurate to
such beauty and such patient devotion, and it is not wonderful that he
grew in a way to love her.
But there was this peculiarity about the affair—namely, that the
affection which he bore her was born more of her stronger will than of
his own feelings, as was shown by the fact that, so long as he was
actually with her and within the circle of her influence, her power
over him was predominant; but, the moment that he was out of her sight,
his thoughts would fall back into their original channels, and the old
sores would begin to run. However much, too, he might be successful in
getting the mastery of his troubles by day, at night they would assert
themselves, and from the constant and tormenting dreams which they
inspired he could find no means of escape.
For at least four nights out of every seven, from the moment that he
closed his eyes till he opened them again in the morning, it would seem
to him that he had been in the company of Angela, under every possible
variety of circumstance, talking to her, walking with her, meeting her
suddenly or unexpectedly in crowded places or at dinner-parties— always
her, and no one else—till at last poor Arthur began to wonder if his
spirit took leave of his body in sleep and went to seek her, and, what
is more, found her. Or was it nothing but a fantasy? He could not tell;
but, at any rate, it was a fact, and it would have been hard to say if
it distressed or rejoiced him most.
Occasionally, too, he would fall into a fit of brooding melancholy that
would last him for a day or two, and which Mildred would find it quite
impossible to dispel. Indeed, when he got in that way, she soon
discovered that the only thing to do was to leave him alone. He was
suffering acutely, there was no doubt about that, and when any animal
suffers, including man, it is best left in solitude. A sick or wounded
beast always turns out of the herd to recover or die.
When Mildred saw him in this state of mental desolation, she would
shake her head and sigh, for it told her that she was as far as ever
from the golden gate of her Eldorado. As has been said, hers was the
strongest will, and, even if he had not willed it, she could have
married him any day she wished; but, odd as it may seem, she was too
conscientious. She had determined that she would not marry him unless
she was certain that he loved her, and to this resolution, as yet, she
firmly held. Whatever her faults may have been, Mildred Carr had all
the noble unselfishness that is so common in her sex. For herself and
her own reputation she cared, comparatively speaking, nothing; whilst
for Arthur’s ultimate happiness she was very solicitous.
One evening—it was one of Arthur’s black days, when he had got a fit of
what Mildred called “Angela fever”—they were walking together in the
garden, Arthur in silence, with his hands in his pockets and his pipe
in his mouth, and Mildred humming a little tune by way of amusing
herself, when they came to the wall that edged the precipice. Arthur
leant over it and gazed at the depths below.
“Don’t, dear, you will tumble over,” said Mildred, in some alarm.
“I think it would be a good thing if I did,” he answered, moodily.
“Are you, then, so tired of the world—and me?”
“No, dear, I am not tired of you; forgive me, Mildred, but I am
dreadfully miserable. I know that it is very ungracious and ungrateful
of me, but it is the fact.”
“You are thinking of _her_ again, Arthur?”
“Yes, I have got a fit of it. I suppose that she has not been out of my
mind for an hour altogether during the last forty-eight hours. Talk of
being haunted by a dead person, it is infinitely worse being haunted by
a living one.”
“I am very sorry for you, dear.”
“Do you suppose, Mildred, that this will go on for all my life, that I
shall always be at the mercy of these bitter memories and thoughts?”
“I don’t know, Arthur. I hope not.”
“I wish I were dead—I wish I were dead,” he broke out, passionately.
“She has destroyed my life, all that was happy in me is dead, only my
body lives on. I am sure I don’t know, Mildred, how you can care for
anything so worthless.”
She kissed him, and answered,
“Dearest, I had rather love you as you are than any other man alive.
Time does wonders; perhaps in time you will get over it. Oh! Arthur,
when I think of what she has made you, and what you might have been if
you had never known her, I long to tell that woman all my mind. But you
must be a man, dear; it is weak to give way to a mad passion, such as
this is now. Try to think of something else; work at something.”
“I have no heart for it, Mildred, I don’t feel as though I could work;
and, if you cannot make me forget, I am sure I do not know what will.”
Mildred sighed, and did not answer. Though she spoke hopefully about it
to him, she had little faith in his getting over his passion for Angela
now. Either she must marry him as he was, or else let him go
altogether; but which? The struggle between her affection and her idea
of duty was very sore, and as yet she could come to no conclusion.
One thing there was that troubled her considerably, and this was that,
though Madeira was almost empty, there were enough people in it to get
up a good deal of gossip about herself and Arthur. Now, it would have
been difficult to find anybody more entirely careless of the judgments
of society than Mildred, more especially as her great wealth and
general popularity protected her from slights. But, for all her
oddities, she was a thorough woman of the world; and she knew, none
better, that, in pursuance of an almost invariable natural law, there
is nothing that lowers a woman so much in the estimation of a man as
the knowledge that she is talked about, even though he himself is the
cause of the talk. This may be both illogical and unjust, but it is,
none the less, true.
But, if Mildred still hesitated, Arthur did not. He was very anxious
that they should be married; indeed, he almost insisted on it. The
position was one that was far from being agreeable to him, for all such
intimacies must, from their very nature, necessitate a certain amount
of false swearing. They are throughout an acted lie; and, when the lie
is acted, it must sometimes be spoken. Now, this is a state of affairs
that is repugnant to an honourable man, and one that not unfrequently
becomes perfectly intolerable. Many is the love-affair that comes to a
sudden end because the man finds it impossible to permanently
constitute himself a peregrinating falsehood. But, oddly enough, it has
been found difficult to persuade the other contracting party of the
validity of the excuse, and, however unjust it may be, one has known of
men who have seen their defection energetically set down to more vulgar
causes.
Arthur was no exception to this rule. He found himself in a false
position, and he hated it. Indeed, he determined before long he would
place it before Mildred in the light of an alternative, that he should
either marry her, or that an end should be put to their existing
relations.