About three o’clock that afternoon Arthur returned to the Quinta,
having lunched on board the _Roman_. He found Mildred sitting in her
favourite place on the museum verandah. She was very pale, and, if he
had watched her, he would have seen that she was trembling all over,
but he did not observe her particularly.
“Well,” he said, “it is all nonsense about half the crew being drowned;
only one man was killed, by the fall of a spar, poor chap. They ran
into Vigo, as I thought. The other mail is just coming in— but what is
the matter, Mildred? You look pale.”
“Nothing, dear; I have a good deal to think of, that is all.”
“Ah, yes! Well, my love, have you made up your mind?”
“Why did I refuse to marry you before; for your sake, or mine, Arthur?”
“You said—absurdly, I thought—for mine!”
“And what I said I meant, and what I meant, I mean. Look me in the
face, dear, and tell me, upon your honour as a gentleman, that you love
me, really love me, and I will marry you to-morrow.”
“I am very fond of you, Mildred, and I will make you a good and true
husband.”
“Precisely; that is what I expected, but it is _not_ enough for me.
There was a time when I thought that I could be well satisfied if you
would only look kindly upon me, but I suppose that _l’appetit vient en
mangeant_, for, now you do that, I am not satisfied. I long to reign
alone. But that is not all. I will not consent to tie you, who do not
love me, to my apron-strings for life. Believe me, the time is very
near when you would curse me, if I did. You say”—and she rose and
stretched out her arm—“that you will either marry me or go. I have made
my choice. I will not beat out my heart against a stone. I will _not_
marry you. Go, Arthur, go!”
A great anxiety came into his face.
“Do you fully understand what you are saying, Mildred? Such ties as
exist between us cannot be lightly broken.”
“But I will break them, and my own heart with them, before they become
chains so heavy that you cannot bear them. Arthur”—and she came up to
him, and put her hands upon his shoulders, looking, with wild and
sorrowful eyes, straight into his face—“tell me now, dear—do not
palter, or put me off with any courteous falsehood—tell me as truly as
you will speak upon the judgment-day, do you still love Angela
Caresfoot as much as ever?”
“Mildred, you should not ask me such painful questions; it is not right
of you.”
“It is right; and you will soon know that it is. Answer me.”
“Then, if you must have it, _I do_.”
Her face became quite hard. Slowly she took her hands from his
shoulders.
“And you have the effrontery to ask me to marry you with one breath,
and to tell me this with the next. Arthur, you had better go. Do not
consider yourself under any false obligation to me. Go, and go
quickly.”
“For God’s sake, think what you are doing, Mildred!”
“Oh! I have thought—I have thought too much. There is nothing left but
to say good-bye. Yes, it is a very cruel word. Do you know that you
have passed over my life like a hurricane, and wrenched it up by the
roots?”
“Really, Mildred, you mystify me. I don’t understand you. What can be
the meaning of all this?”
She looked at him for a few seconds, and then answered, in a quiet,
matter-of-fact voice.
“I forgot, Arthur; here are your English letters;” and she drew them
from her bosom and gave them to him. “Perhaps they will explain things
a little. Meanwhile, I will tell you something. Angela Caresfoot’s
husband is dead; indeed, she was never _really_ married to him.” And
then she turned, and slowly walked towards the entrance of the museum.
In the boudoir, however, her strength seemed to fail her, and she sank
on a chair.
Arthur took the letter, written by the woman he loved, and warm from
the breast of the woman he was about to leave, and stood speechless.
His heart stopped for a moment, and then sent the blood bounding
through his veins like a flood of joy. The shock was so great that for
a second or two he staggered, and nearly fell. Presently, however, he
recovered himself, and another and very different thought overtook him.
Putting the letters into his pocket, he followed Mildred into the
boudoir. She was sitting, looking very faint, upon a chair, her arms
hanging down helplessly by her side.
“Mildred,” he said, hoarsely.
She looked up with a faint air of surprise.
“What, are you not gone?”
“Mildred, beyond what you have just said I know nothing of the contents
of these letters; but whatever they may be, here and now, before I read
them, I again offer to marry you. I owe it to you and to my own sense
of what is right that I should marry you.”
He spoke calmly, and with evident sincerity.
“Do you know that I read your letter just now, and had half a mind to
burn it; that I am little better than a thief?”
“I guessed that you had read it.”
“And do you understand that your Angela is unmarried, that she was
never really married at all—and that she asks nothing better than to
marry you?”
“I understand.”
“And you still offer to make me your wife?”
“I do. What do you say?”
A flood of light filled Mildred’s eyes as she rose and confronted him.
“I say, Arthur, that you are a very noble gentleman, and, that though
from this day I must be a miserable woman, I shall always be proud to
have loved you. Listen, my dear. When I read that letter, I felt that
your Angela towered over me like the Alps, her snowy purity stained
only by the reflected lights of heaven. I felt that I could not compete
with such a woman as this, that I could never hope to hold you from one
so calmly faithful, so dreadfully serene, and I knew that she had
conquered, robbing me for Time, and, as I fear, leaving me beggared for
Eternity. In the magnificence of her undying power, in the calm
certainty of her command, she flings me your life as though it were
nothing. ‘Take it,’ she says; ‘he will never love you—he is mine; but I
can afford to wait. I shall claim him before the throne of God.’ But
now, look you, Arthur, if you can behave like the generous- hearted
gentleman you are, I will show you that I am not behind you in
generosity. I will _not_ marry you. I have done with you; or, to be
more correct,” and she gave a hard little laugh, “you have done with
me. Go back to Angela, the beautiful woman with inscrutable grey eyes,
who waits for you, clothed in her eternal calm, like a mountain in its
snows. I shall send her that tiara as a wedding-present; it will become
her well. Go back, Arthur; but sometimes, when you are cloyed with
unearthly virtue and perfection, remember that a _woman_ loved you.
There, I have made you quite a speech; you will always think of me in
connection with fine words. Why don’t you go?”
Arthur stood utterly confused.
“And what will you do, Mildred?”
“I!” she answered, with the same hard laugh. “Oh, don’t trouble
yourself about me. I shall be a happy woman yet. I mean to see life
now—go in for pleasure, power, ritualism, whatever comes first.
Perhaps, when we meet again, I shall be Lady Minster, or some other
great lady, and shall be able to tell you that I am very, very happy. A
woman always likes to tell her old lover that, you know, though she
would not like him to believe it. Perhaps, too”—and here her eyes grew
soft, and her voice broke into a sob—“I shall have a consolation you
know nothing of.”
He did not know what she meant; indeed, he was half-distracted with
grief and doubt.
For a moment more they stood facing each other in silence, and then
suddenly she flung her arms above her head, and uttering a low cry of
grief, turned, and ran swiftly down the stone passage into the museum.
Arthur hesitated for a while, and then followed her.
A painful sight awaited him in that silent chamber; for there—
stretched on the ground before the statue of Osiris, like some hopeless
sinner before an inexorable justice, with her brown hair touched to
gold by a ray of sunlight from the roof—lay Mildred, as still as though
she were dead. He went to her, and tried to raise her, but she wrenched
herself loose, and, in an abandonment of misery, flung herself upon the
ground again.
“I thought it was over,” she said, “and that you were gone. Go, dear,
or this will drive me mad. Perhaps, sometimes, you will write me.”
He knelt beside her and kissed her, and then he rose and went.
But for many a year was he haunted by that scene of human misery
enacted in the weird chamber of the dead. Never could he forget the
sight of Mildred lying in the sunlight, with the marble face of mocking
calm looking down upon her, and the mortal frames of those who, in
their day, had suffered as she suffered, and ages since had found the
rest that she in time would reach, scattered all around—fit emblems of
the fragile vanity of passions which suck their strength from earth
alone.