LOVE OR TRUST.
Caspar turned away. For a moment he felt mortally sick, as if from a
pang of acute physical pain. Distrust from an old friend is always a
hard thing to bear. And so, for a moment or two, he did not speak.
"I was not surprised," said Mrs. Romaine, quickly. "I had been looking
for something of the kind. I won't say that you were not justified--in a
certain sense. Oliver acted abominably, I know. He told me what he was
going to do beforehand."
"Told you what he was going to do?"
"Yes--to make Lesley fall in love with him. He did not mean to marry
her. He meant to gain her affections and then to--to--leave her, to
break her heart. I suppose that is what you found out. I do not wonder
that you were surprised."
"No doubt you have good authority for what you are saying," said Mr.
Brooke, very coldly, "but your account does not tally with what I have
gathered from other sources."
"From Lesley herself?"
Caspar bowed his head. He was conscious of a violent dislike to bringing
Lesley's name into the discussion. Mrs. Romaine went on rapidly.
"As to Lesley, of course I cannot say. I don't know whether he failed or
succeeded. Oliver very seldom failed with women when he tried. But, of
course, he was going to marry Ethel; and that meant that if he _had_
succeeded Lesley had been thrown over. It is not like me to put things
so baldly, is it? I see that I disgust you. But I do not know that I
need apologize. You are man of the world enough to understand that at
certain crises we are obliged to speak our minds, to face the truth
boldly and see what it means. Is it not so?"
"It may be so, but I am not aware that the present crisis demands such
plain speaking."
"Then you must be blind," said his hearer, with a burst of indignation,
"blind--blind--_blind_! Or mad? is that it? What sort of crisis do you
expect? What can be worse than the present state of things? Are not your
life and her character at stake? Why do you not take your present
opportunity and save her and yourself? Look the matter in the face and
decide?"
"I would rather not discuss it," said Caspar. "The course you indicate
is not one that could be taken by any honorable man. It is--it
is--absurd." The last word was evidently the substitute for a much
stronger one in his mind. "I see no use in talking about the matter. We
are only giving ourselves useless pain."
There was a short silence. Mrs. Romaine drew her veil more tightly round
her face, and seemed to deliberate. Caspar threw a longing glance--which
she intercepted--towards the door.
"Men are such cowards," she said at last, in a low and bitter tone. "I
have proved _that_ in every way: I ought to be prepared for
cowardice--even from you. They want to slip out of every unpleasant
position, and leave some woman to bear the brunt of it. You, for
instance, want to go now, this minute, because I have said one or two
things that pain you. You don't care enough for what I think to make you
wish to alter my opinion--to fight it out and conquer me; you only want
to get away and leave me to 'cool down,' as you would call it. You are
mistaken. I am not speaking from any momentary irritation: what I say to
you to-day is the result of long thought, long consideration, long
patience. It would be better for you to have the courage and the
manliness to listen to me."
"You talk in a very extraordinary way, Rosalind,", said Caspar. "I do
not understand it, and I fail to see its justice towards me. I have
never refused to listen to you, have I? As for cowardice--it seemed to
me that you were trying to persuade me to do a very cowardly thing just
now; but perhaps I was mistaken. I will hear all that you have to say:
if I was anxious to go, it was only that I might save you from tiring or
hurting yourself."
"It matters so much whether I am tired or hurt, does it not?" she said,
with the faintest possible flicker of a smile on her white lips. "That
is what you all think of--whether one suffers--suffers physically. It is
my soul that is hurt, my heart that is tired--but you don't concern
yourself with that sort of thing."
"I assure you that I am very sorry----," he began, and then he stopped
short. She had made it very difficult for him to say anything so
commonplace, and yet so true.
"If you are sorry," she said, in a softer tone, "and if you want to make
me happier--_save yourself_."
"No," said Caspar, roughly--almost violently--"by Heaven, I won't do
that."
"You don't wish to save yourself?"
"Not at that price--the price of my honor."
"Listen to me," she said, drawing nearer to him and speaking very
softly. "I have made it my business during the last day or two--when I
gathered that you would be let out on bail--to collect all the
information that might be useful to you. You could get away to-morrow or
next day by a vessel that leaves Southampton at the time I have marked
on this paper. It is not an ordinary steamer--not a passenger-ship at
all--and no one will know that you are on board. It would take you to
Oporto. You would be safe enough in the interior--a friend of mine who
went there once told me that there were charming palaces and half-ruined
castles to let, where one could live as in paradise, amidst the
loveliest gardens, full of fountains and birds and flowers."
Her voice took on a caressing tone, as if she were dreaming of perfect
happiness. "How like a woman," thought Caspar to himself, "to think only
of the material side of life?" Then he corrected himself: "Like some
women: not like all, thank-God!"
"So you would condemn me to exile and loneliness as well as to
dishonor?" he said. It was as much as he could do not to laugh outright
at the chimerical idea.
"It is no exile to a cosmopolitan like yourself to live out of England,"
she answered, scornfully. "As to dishonor--what will you not have to
suffer if you stay in England? Where is your reputation now? And as to
loneliness--don't you know--do you not see--that you need not
go--alone?"
She put her left hand gently on his arm, and for a moment there was
silence in the room. Her heart beat so loudly that she was afraid of his
hearing it. But she need not have feared; his mind was far too much
occupied with more important matters to be able to take cognizance of
such a detail as the state of Mrs. Romaine's pulse.
His first impulse was one of intense indignation and anger. His second
was one of pity. These feelings alternated in him when at last he forced
himself to speak. Which of the two predominated he hardly knew. Perhaps
pity: because it drove him, almost as a matter of self-respect, to make
a pretence of not knowing what she meant.
"Anything is exile to a man who leaves his home," he said sternly. "To a
man who leaves his wife and daughter--do you understand? As for the
dishonor of such a course, it seems as if you could not comprehend that:
my feelings on the subject are evidently beyond your ken. But you can
understand this--first, that I should go nowhere into no exile, into no
new home, without my wife; and, secondly, that _she_, at least, trusts
me--she knows that I have not your brother's blood upon my hands."
Rosalind's fingers had slipped from his arm when he began to speak: she
knew that if she had not removed them then they would have been shaken
off. He could see them amongst the folds of black lace at her
breast--clutching, tearing, as if she had not room to breathe.
"Your wife!" she said, with a gasp. "I did not know.... She has been
beforehand with me, then! And it is she--she--that you will take--to
Spain?"
"There is no question of Spain. I mean to stay here in England and fight
the matter out. My wife would be the first person to tell me so. I
cannot imagine her speaking to me again if I were coward enough to run
away."
"She would not do for you what I have done!" cried the unhappy woman,
now, as it seemed, beside herself. "If she believes you innocent, so
much the easier for her! But I--I--believe you guilty--yes, Caspar
Brooke, I believe that you killed my brother--and I do not care! I loved
him, yes; but I love you--_you_--a thousand times more!"
"You do not know what you are saying. You are mad. Be silent, Rosalind,"
said Caspar Brooke, in a deep tone of anger. But she raved on.
"Have I not been silent for years? And who is as faithful to you as I
have been? It is easy to love a man who is innocent; but not a man who
is guilty! Guilty or not--I do not care. It is you that I care for--and
you may have as many sins as you please upon your soul--but they are
nothing to me. I am past anything now but speaking the truth. Have you
no pity for a woman to whom you are dearer than her own soul?"
She would have thrown herself at his feet, if he had not prevented her.
He was touched a little by her suffering, but he was also immeasurably
angered and disgusted. An exhibition of uncontrolled feeling was not the
way to charm him. His one desire now became the desire to escape.
"I should have no pity," he said, gravely, "for my own selfishness and
cowardice, if I took advantage of this moment of weakness on your part.
It _is_ weakness, I hope--I will not call it by any other name. You will
recover from it when the stress of this painful time is over, and you
will be glad to forget it as I shall do. Believe me, I will not think of
it again. It shall be in my mind as though you had not said it; and,
though it will be impossible for us to continue on our former terms of
friendship, I shall always wish for your welfare, and hope that time
will bring you happiness and peace."
She made no answer. She lay where he had placed her, her head buried
amongst the cushions, crushed to the very earth. She would not look at
him, would not make semblance to have heard. And he, without hesitation,
went deliberately to the door and let himself out. He gained the street
without being intercepted, and drew a long breath of relief when he felt
the soft night air playing on his heated brow. The moralist would have
said that he came off victor; but he had a sense, as he went out along
the pavement, of being only a defeated and degraded man. There was not
even the excitement of gratified vanity, for an offered love which did
not include perfect trust in his honor was an insult in itself. And
Caspar Brooke's integrity of soul was dear to him.
It was perhaps impossible for him--a mere man--to estimate the extent of
suffering to which his scorn had subjected the woman that he left
behind. Rosalind remained as he had seen her, crouching on the ground,
with her head on the sofa cushions, for full two hours or more. When she
rose she went to her own room and lay upon her bed, refusing for many
hours either to eat or to speak. She did not sleep: she lay broad awake
all night, recalling every tone of Caspar's voice, and every passing
expression of his face. She was bitterly humiliated and ashamed. But she
was not ashamed in the sense of shame for wrong-doing: she was only
ashamed because he had rebuffed her. She was sick with mortification.
She had offered him everything in her power--peace, safety, love: she
had offered him _herself_ even, and been rejected with scorn. Nothing
crushes a woman like this humiliation. And in some women's natures such
an experience will produce dire results; for loss of self-respect is
resented as the worst injury that man can inflict, and is followed by
deadly hatred to the man who has inflicted it. It may be argued by the
more logical male that the woman has brought it all upon herself; but no
affronted, humiliated, shame-stricken woman will ever allow this to be
the fact. The sacrifice she conceives to have been all her own; but the
pain has come from _him_.
This was the way in which Rosalind looked at the matter. And mistaken as
she was in her view of the moralities and proprieties of the situation,
she suffered an amount of pain which may well arouse in us more pity
than Caspar Brooke felt for her. The burning, stinging sense of shame
seemed to make her whole soul an open wound. It was intolerable. The
only way out of it, she said to herself at first, is to die. There was
an old song that rang in her ears continually, as if somebody were
repeating it over and over again. She could not remember it all--only a
line here and there. "When lovely woman stoops to folly," it began, what
art can wash her tears and stains and shame away? And the answer was
what Rosalind herself had already given: the only way "to rouse his
pity" was "to die!" She almost laughed at herself for repeating the
well-worn, hackneyed, century-old ditty. People did not die now-a-days,
either of broken hearts or of chloral, when their lovers deserted them.
And Caspar Brooke had never been her lover. No, he had only given her
pain; and she wished that she could make him suffer, too. "Revenge" was
too high-flown a word; but if she could see him heartbroken, ruined,
disgraced, she would be--not satisfied, but she would feel her pain
allayed.
Caspar Brooke walked for an hour before he was calm enough to remember
that he ought to go home. When this idea once occurred to him, he felt
a pang of shame for his own forgetfulness. What would Alice think of
him? And this was the first day that she had been with him in his house
for so many years. He must go home and make his apologies. Not that she
would expect very much attention from him. Had she not said that she was
only trying to do her duty? Probably she disliked him still.
He let himself in with his latch-key, and walked straight into the
study. A shaded lamp had been lighted, and but faintly illuminated the
corners of the room. But there was light enough for him to see that Lady
Alice was sitting in his chair. He came up to the table, and looked at
her without speaking. There was a strange tumult of feeling in his
heart. He wished that he could tell her how gratified he was by her
trust in him, how much he prized the very things that had once irritated
him against her--her reserve, her fine perception, her excellent
fastidiousness of taste, even that little air of coldness that became
her so well. To come into her presence was like entering a fragrant
English garden, after stifling for an hour in a conservatory where the
air was heavy with the perfume of stephanotis.
She rose, as he continued silent, and stood on the rug, almost face to
face with him. She did not find it easy to speak, and there was
something in his air which frightened her a little. She made a trivial
remark at last, but with great difficulty.
"You have been away a long time," she said.
She was not prepared for the answer. He put out his hand and drew her
close to him. "You were away a great deal longer," he said, looking down
at her fair, serious face. She could not reply. "Twelve years, is it
not?" he went on. "That's a long time out of one's life, Alice. I feel
myself an old man now."
"No, no, Caspar!" she said, tremulously.
"What was it all about, Alice? You know I never really understood it.
Can't you make me understand? Was it that I was simply unbearable? too
disagreeable to be put up with any longer."
"No, it was not that. I will speak the truth now, Caspar. I was
jealous--I thought you cared for Rosalind Romaine."
"But you know now--surely--that that was not true?"
"Could you swear it?" she asked, suddenly and sharply, with a quick look
into his face.
For a moment he was annoyed. Then his brow cleared, and he answered,
very gravely--
"I can and will, if you like. But I thought--having trusted me so
far--that you could trust me without an oath. Alice, I never loved any
woman but one: and that one was yourself. Have you been as true to me as
I have been to you?"
"I don't think I ever knew that I loved you until now," said Alice,
laying her head with a deep sigh upon her husband's breast.
"Love is not enough, though it is a great deal: do you trust me?"
"Implicitly--now that I have looked at you again."
Caspar gave a little laugh.
"Then I must never let you go away from me, or you will begin to
disbelieve in me," he said.