"Happiness is inextricably interwoven with loyalty, love,
unselfishness, the charity that never fails. In early life we
believe that it is just these qualities in those we love that make
our happiness, just the lack of them that entail our misery. But
later on we find that it is not so. Later on we find that it is our
own loyalty, our own love and charity in which our happiness
abides, as the soul abides in the body. So we discover at last that
happiness is within the reach of all of us, the inalienable
birthright of all of us, and that if by misadventure we have
mislaid it in our youth we know where to seek it in after years.
For happiness is mislaid, but never lost."--M. N.
Janey had the doubtful advantage over other women that men (by men I
mean Roger) always knew where to find her. She was as immovable as the
church or the Rieben. It was absolutely certain that unless Lady Louisa
was worse, Janey would come down to the library at nine o'clock, and
work there beside the lamp for an hour before going to bed. The element
of surprise or uncertainty did not exist as far as Janey was concerned.
And perhaps those who are always accessible, tranquil, disengaged, ready
to lend a patient and sympathetic ear, know instinctively that they will
be sought out in sorrow and anxiety rather than in joy. We do not engage
a trained nurse for picnic parties, or ask her to grace the box seat
when we are driving our four-in-hands. Annette is singled out at once
as appropriate to these festive occasions. If anyone thought of Janey in
connection with them, it was only to remark that she would not care
about them. How many innocent pleasures she had silently wished for in
her time which she had been informed by her mother, by Dick, even by
Roger, were not in her line.
To-night, Janey deviated by a hairbreadth from her usual routine. She
came down, seated herself, and instead of her work took up a book with
the marker half-way through it, and was at once absorbed in it. She was
reading _The Magnet_ for the second time.
Since her conversation with Mr. Stirling in the Hulver garden, Janey had
read _The Magnet_, and her indifference had been replaced by a riveted
attention. She saw now what other people saw in his work, and it seemed
to her, as indeed it seemed to all Mr. Stirling's readers, that his
books were addressed to her and her alone. It did not occur to her that
he had lived for several years in her neighbourhood without her
detecting or even attempting to discern what he was. It did not occur to
her that he might have been a great asset in her narrow life. She was
quite content with being slightly acquainted with every one except
Roger, and her new friend Annette. She tacitly distrusted intimacy, as
did Roger, and though circumstances had brought about a certain intimacy
with Annette, the only girl within five miles, she had always mental
reservations even with her, boundaries which were not to be passed.
Janey had been inclined to take shelter behind these mental
reservations, to raise still higher the boundary walls between them,
since she had known what she called "the truth about Annette." She had
shrunk from further intercourse with her, but Annette had sought her
out, deliberately, persistently, with an unshaken confidence in Janey's
affection which the latter had not the heart to repel. And in the end
Janey had reached a kind of forlorn gratitude towards Annette. Her life
had become absolutely empty: the future stretched in front of her like
some flat dusty high road, along which she must toil with aching feet
till she dropped. She instinctively turned to Annette, and then shrank
from her. She would have shrunk from her altogether if she had known
that it was by Roger's suggestion that Annette made so many little
opportunities of meeting. Annette had been to see her the day before she
went to Noyes, and had found her reading _The Magnet_, and they had had
a long conversation about it.
And now in Janey's second reading, not skipping one word, and going over
the more difficult passages twice, she came again upon the sentence
which they had discussed. She read it slowly.
"_The publican and the harlot will go into the Kingdom before us,
because it is easier for them to flee with loathing from the sins of
the flesh, and to press through the strait gate of humility, than it is
for us to loathe and flee the sins of the spirit, egotism, pride,
resentment, cruelty, insincerity._"
Janey laid down the book. When Annette had read that sentence aloud to
her, Janey had said, "I don't understand that. I think he's wrong. Pride
and the other things and insincerity aren't nearly as bad as--as
immorality."
"He doesn't say one is worse than the others," Annette had replied, and
her quiet eyes had met Janey's bent searchingly upon her. "He only says
egotism and the other things make it harder to squeeze through the
little gate. You see, they make it impossible for us even to _see_
it--the strait gate."
"He writes as if egotism were worse than immorality, as if immorality
doesn't matter," said Janey stubbornly. How could Annette speak so
coolly, so impersonally, as if she had never deviated from the rigid
code of morals in which Janey had been brought up! She felt impelled to
show her that she at any rate held sterner views.
Annette cogitated.
"Perhaps, Janey; he has learnt that nothing makes getting near the gate
so difficult as egotism. He says somewhere else that egotism makes
false, mean, dreadful things ready to pounce on us. He's right in the
order he puts them in, isn't he? Selfishness first, and then pride. Our
pride gets wounded, and then resentment follows. And resentment always
wants to inflict pain. That is why he puts cruelty next."
"How do you know all this?" said Janey incredulously.
"I know about pride and resentment," said Annette, "because I gave way
to them once. I think I never shall again."
"I don't see why he puts insincerity last."
"Perhaps he thinks that is the worst thing that can happen to us."
"To be insincere?" said Janey, amazed.
"Yes. I certainly never _have_ met a selfish person who was sincere,
have you? They have to be giving noble reasons for their selfish
actions, so as to keep their self-respect and make us think well of
them. I knew a man once--he was a great musician--who was like that. He
wanted admiration dreadfully, he craved for it, and yet he didn't want
to take any trouble to be the things that make one admire people. It
ended in----"
"What did it end in?"
"Where insincere people always do end, I think, in a kind of treachery.
Perhaps that is why Mr. Stirling puts insincerity last, because
insincere people do such dreadful things without knowing they are
dreadful. Now, the harlots and the publicans do know. They have the pull
of us there."
Janey's clear, retentive mind recalled every word of that conversation,
the last she had had with Annette, which had left an impression on her
mind that Annette had belittled the frailties of the flesh. Why had she
done that? _Because she had not been guiltless of them herself._
In such manner do some of us reason, and find confirmation of that which
we suspect. Not that Janey suspected her of stepping aside. She was
convinced that she had done so. The evidence had been conclusive. At
least, she did not doubt it when Annette was absent. When she was
present with her she knew not how to believe it. It was incredible. Yet
it was so. She always came back to that.
But why did she and Mr. Stirling both put insincerity as the worst of
the spiritual sins? Janey was an inexorable reader, now that she had
begun. She ruminated with her small hands folded on the open page.
And her honest mind showed her that once--not long ago--she had nearly
been insincere herself: when she had told herself with vehemence that it
was her bounden duty to Roger to warn him against Annette. What an ugly
act of treachery she had almost committed, would have committed if Mr.
Stirling had not come to her aid. She shuddered. Yes, he was right.
Insincerity was the place where all meannesses and disloyalties and
treacheries lurked and had their dens like evil beasts, ready to pounce
out and destroy the wayfaring spirit wandering on forbidden ground.
And she thought of Nurse's treachery for the sake of a livelihood with
a new compassion. It was less culpable than what she had nearly been
guilty of herself. And she thought yet again of Annette. She might have
done wrong, but you could not look at her and think she could be mean,
take refuge in subterfuge or deceit. "She would never lie about it, to
herself or others," Janey said to herself. And she who _had_ lied to
herself, though only for a moment, was humbled.
She was half expecting Roger, in spite of their conference of this
morning, for she knew that he was to see the lawyer about probate that
afternoon, and the lawyer might have given an opinion as to the legality
of Harry's marriage.
Presently she heard his step in the hall, and he came in. She had known
Roger all her life, but his whole aspect was unfamiliar to her. As she
looked at him bewildered, she realized that she had never seen him
strongly moved before, never in all these years until now. There is
something almost terrifying in the emotion of unemotional people. The
momentary confidence of the morning, the one tear wrung out of him by
perceiving his hope of marriage suddenly wiped out, was as nothing to
this.
He sat down opposite to her with chalk-white face and reddened, unseeing
eyes, and without any preamble recounted to her the story that Annette
had told him a few hours before. "She wished you to know it," he said.
An immense thankfulness flooded Janey's heart as she listened. It was
as if some tense nerve in her brain relaxed. He did know at last, and
she, Janey, had not told him. He had heard no word from her. Annette had
confessed to him herself, as Mr. Stirling had said she would. She had
done what was right--right but how difficult. A secret grudge against
Annette, which had long lurked at the back of Janey's mind, was
exorcised, and she gave a sigh of relief.
At last he was silent.
"I have known for a long time that Annette was the woman who was with
Dick at Fontainebleau," she said, her hands still folded on the open
book.
"You might have told me, Janey."
"I thought it ought to come from her."
"You might have told me when you saw--Janey, you must have seen for some
time past--how it was with me."
"I did see, but I hoped against hope that she would tell you herself, as
she has done."
"And if she hadn't, would you have let me marry her, not knowing?"
Janey reflected.
"I am not sure," she said composedly, "what I should have done. But, you
see, it did not happen so. She _has_ told you. I am thankful she has,
Roger, though it must have been hard for her. It is the only thing I've
ever kept back from you. It is a great weight off my mind that you
know. Only I'm ashamed now that I ever doubted her. I did doubt her. I
had begun to think she would never say."
"She's the last person in the world, the very last, that I should have
thought possible----"
He could not finish his sentence, and Janey and he looked fixedly at
each other.
"Yes," she said slowly, "she is. I never get any nearer understanding
how anyone like Annette could have done it."
Roger in his haste with his story had omitted the evil prologue which
had led to the disaster.
"She wished you to know everything," he said, and he told her of
Annette's treacherous lover, and her father's infamy, and her flight
from his house in the dawn.
"She was driven to desperation," said Janey. "When she met Dick she was
in despair. I see it all now. She did not know what she was doing,
Roger. Annette has been sinned against."
"I should like to wring that man's neck who bought her, and her father's
who sold her," said Roger, his haggard eyes smouldering.
There was a long silence.
"But I don't feel that I can marry her," he said, with a groan. "Dick
and her!--it sticks in my throat,--the very thought seems to choke me. I
don't feel that I could marry her, even if she would still have me. She
said I must forget her, and put her out of my life. She feels everything
is over between us. It's all very well," savagely, "to talk of
forgetting anyone--like Annette," and he beat his foot against the
floor.
Janey looked at him in a great compassion. "He will come back to me,"
she said to herself, "not for a long time, but he will come back. Broken
and disillusioned and aged, and with only a bit of a heart to give me.
He will never care much about me, but I shall be all he has left in the
world. And I will take him, whatever he is."
She put out her hand for her work and busied herself with it, knowing
instinctively that the occupation of her hands and eyes upon it would
fret him less than if she sat idle and looked at him. She had nothing to
learn about how to deal with Roger.
She worked for some time in silence, and hope dead and buried rose out
of his deep grave in her heart, and came towards her once more. Was it
indeed hope that stirred in its grave, this pallid figure with the
shroud still enfolding it, or was it but its ghost? She knew not.
At last Roger raised a tortured face out of his hands.
"Of course, she _says_ she is innocent," he said, looking hopelessly at
Janey.
Janey started violently. Her work fell from her hands.
"Annette--says--she--is--innocent," she repeated after him, a flame of
colour rushing to her face.
"Yes. Mary Deane said the same. They always say it."
Janey shook as in an ague.
She saw suddenly in front of her a gulf of infamy unspeakable, ready to
swallow her if she agreed with him--she who always agreed with him. He
would implicitly believe her. The little gleam of hope which had fallen
on her aching, mutilated life went out. She was alone in the dark. For a
moment she could neither see nor hear.
"If Annette says she is innocent, it's true," she said hoarsely, putting
her hand to her throat.
The room and the lamp became visible again, and Roger's eyes fixed on
her, like the eyes of a drowning man, wide, dilated, seen through deep
water.
"If Annette says so, it's true," she repeated. "She may have done wrong.
She says she has. But she does not tell lies. You know that."
"She says Dick did not try to entrap her, that she went with him of her
own accord."
"But don't you see that Dick _did_ take advantage of her, all the same,
a mean advantage, when she was stunned by despair? I don't suppose you
have ever known what it is to feel despair, Roger. But I know what it
is. I know what Annette felt when her lover failed her."
"She told me she meant to drown herself. She said she did not care what
became of her."
"You don't know what it means to feel like that."
Roger heard again the thud and beat of the distant train in the sod
against his ear.
"Yes, I do," he said, looking at her under his heavy brows.
"I don't believe you. If you had, you would understand Annette's
momentary madness. She need not have told you that. She need not have
blackened herself in your eyes, but she did. Can't you see, Roger, will
you never, never understand that you have had the whole truth from
Annette?--the most difficult truth in the world to tell. And why do you
need me to hammer it into you that she was speaking the truth to you?
Can't you see for yourself that Annette is upright, as upright as
yourself? What is the good of you, if you can't even see that? What is
the good of loving her--if you do love her--if you can't see that she
doesn't tell lies? _I'm_ not in love with her,--there have been times
when I've come very near to hating her, and I had reason to believe she
had done a wicked action,--but I knew one thing, and that was that she
would never lie about it. She is not that kind. And if she told you that
in a moment of despair she had agreed to do it, but that she had not
done it, then she spoke the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the
truth."
Roger could only stare at Janey, dumfounded. She who in his long
experience of her had always listened, had spoken so little beyond
comment or agreement, now thrust at him with a sword of determined,
sharp-edged speech. The only two women he thought he knew were becoming
absolute strangers to him.
"If I had been in Annette's place, I would have died sooner than own
that I agreed to do wrong. I should have put the blame on Dick. But
Annette is humbler than I am, more loyal than I am, more compassionate.
She took the blame herself which belongs to Dick. She would not speak
ill of him. If I had been in her place, I should have hesitated a long
time before I told you about the will. It will ruin her good name. I
should have thought of that. But she didn't. She thought only of you,
only of getting your inheritance for you. Just as when Dick was ill, she
only thought of helping him. Go and get your inheritance, Roger. It's
yours, and I'm glad it is. You deserve it. But there's one thing you
don't deserve, and that is to marry Annette. You're not good enough for
her."
Janey had risen to her feet. She stood before him, a small terrible
creature with blazing eyes. Then she passed him and left the room, the
astounded Roger gaping after her.
He waited a long time for her to return, but she did not come back.