ON THE OLD FOUNDATION
Antony stood very still by the table. Once before he had heard that same
footfall on his path,--a light resolute step. His face had gone quite
white beneath its tan. There was a knock on the door. For one brief
second he paused. Then he crossed the room, and opened the door wide.
"May I come in?" asked the Duchessa.
He moved aside, and she came into the room, standing in the lamplight. He
stood near her, words, conventional words, driven from his lips by the
mad pounding and beating of his heart.
"Might I sit down?" asked the Duchessa a little breathlessly. And she
crossed to the settle. Her face was in shadow here, but Antony had seen
that it was strangely white.
Still Antony had not spoken.
The Duchessa looked up at him.
"I am nervous," said she, an odd little tremor in her voice.
"Nervous!" echoed Antony, surprise lending speech to his tongue.
"Nervous," she replied, the odd little tremor still in her voice. "I owe
you an apology, oh, the very deepest apology, and I don't know how to
begin."
"Don't begin at all," said Antony hoarsely, sternly almost.
"Ah, but I must. Think how I spoke to you. You--we had agreed that trust
was the very foundation of friendship, and I destroyed the foundation at
the outset."
"It was not likely you could understand," said Antony.
She caught her breath, a little quick intake.
"Would you say the same if it had been the other way about? Would _you_
have destroyed the foundation?"
Antony was silent.
"Would you?" she insisted.
"I--I hope not," he stammered.
"And yet you appear to think it reasonable that I should have done so."
He could not quite understand the tone of her words.
"I think it reasonable you did not understand," he declared. "How could
you? Nobody could have understood. It was the maddest, the most
inconceivable situation."
"Possibly. Yet if the positions had been reversed, if it had been you who
had failed to understand my actions, would you not still have trusted?"
"Yes," said Antony, conviction in the syllable. He did not think to ask
her how it was that she understood now. The simple fact that she did
understand swept aside, made trivial every other consideration.
"You mean that a man's trust holds good under any circumstances, whereas
a woman's trust will obviously fail before the first difficulty?" she
demanded.
"I did not mean that," cried Antony hotly.
"No?" she queried mockingly.
"It was not, on my part, a question of _trust_ alone," said Antony
deliberately. He looked straight at her as he spoke the words.
The Duchessa dropped her eyes. A crimson colour tinged her cheeks, crept
upwards to her forehead.
There was a dead silence. Then----
"Will you help me to re-build the foundation?" asked the Duchessa.
"It was never destroyed," said Antony.
"Mine was," she replied steadily. "Will you forgive me?"
"There can be no question of forgiveness," he replied hoarsely.
Her face went to white.
"You refuse?"
"There is nothing to forgive," he said.
Again she drew a quick breath.
"There is," she said.
"I think not," he replied.
The Duchessa looked towards the fire.
"Why do you say that?"
"Because," he replied slowly, "between you and me there can be no
question of forgiveness. To forgive, one must acknowledge a wrong done to
one. I acknowledge none."
She turned towards him.
"You cared so little, you felt none?"
"No," responded Antony, the words leaping to his lips, "I cared so much I
felt none."
"Ah," she breathed, and stopped. "Then you will go back to the old
footing?" she asked.
Antony's heart beat furiously.
"I cannot," he replied.
"Why?" she demanded, speaking very low.
Antony drew a deep breath.
"Because I love you," he said quietly.
Again there was a dead silence. At last Antony spoke quietly.
"Of course I have no right to tell you that," he said. "But you may as
well know the whole truth now. It was because of that love that I agreed
to this business. I had nothing to offer you. Here was my chance to
obtain something. I had no notion then that you lived in this
neighbourhood. When I found out, I was tempted to let you infer that
there was a mystery, some possible explanation of my conduct. It would
have been breaking my contract in the spirit, though not actually in the
letter. Well, I didn't break it at all, and of course you did not
understand. In order to keep my contract I had to deceive you, or at all
events to allow you to believe an untruth. Naturally you scorned my
deceit, as it appeared to you. It was that that mattered of course, not
the social position. I understood that completely. Later, you offered me
your friendship. You were ready to trust without understanding. I could
not accept your trust. A friendship between us must have led others to
suspect that I was not what I appeared to be. That was to be avoided. It
had to be avoided. I hurt you then, knowing what I did." He stopped.
"I think you hurt yourself too," she suggested quietly.
The muscles in Antony's throat contracted.
"Come here," said the Duchessa.
Antony crossed to the hearth. He stood looking down at her.
"Kneel down," said the Duchessa.
Obediently he knelt.
"You are so blind," said the Duchessa pathetically, "that you need to
look very close to see things clearly. Look right into my eyes. Can't you
see something there that will heal that hurt?"
A great sob broke from Antony's throat.
"Ah, don't, dear heart, don't," cried the Duchessa, drawing his head
against her breast.
* * * * *
"Will the new agent agree to live at the Manor House?" asked the
Duchessa, after a long, long interval composed of many silences though
some few words. "Will his pride allow him to accept a small material
benefit for a short time, seeing what a great amount of material benefit
will be his to bestow in the future?"
Antony laughed.
"I told Mr. Danver I wouldn't use a penny of his money for myself," he
said.
"Oh!" She raised her eyebrows in half comical dismay, which hid, however,
a hint of real anxiety. Would his pride accept where it did not bestow in
like kind? For other reason than this the bestowal would signify not at
all.
"You mind?" he asked smiling.
She looked straight at him.
"Not the smallest atom," she declared, utterly relieved, since there was
no shadow of false pride in the laughing eyes which met her own.
"Ah, but," said Antony slowly, and very, very deliberately, "I never said
I would not use it for my wife."
EPILOGUE
An old man was sitting in the library of the big grey house. A shaded
reading-lamp stood on a small table near his elbow. Its light was thrown
on an open book lying near it, and on the carved arms of the oak chair in
which the man was sitting. It shone clearly on his bloodless old hands,
on his parchment-like face and white hair. A log fire was burning in a
great open hearth on his right. For the rest, the room was a place of
shadows, deepening to gloom in the distant corners, a gloom emphasized by
the one small circle of brilliant light, and the red glow of the fire.
Book-cases reached from floor to ceiling the whole length of two walls,
and between the thickly curtained windows of the third. In the fourth
wall was the fireplace and the door.
There was no sound to break the silence. The figure in the oak chair sat
motionless. He might have been carved out of stone, for any sign of life
he gave. He looked like stone,--white and black marble very finely
sculptured,--white marble in head and hands, black marble in the piercing
eyes, the long satin dressing-gown, the oak of the big chair. Even his
eyes seemed stone-like, motionless, and fixed thoughtfully on space.
The big room was very still. An hour ago it had been full of voices and
laughter, amazed questions, and half-mocking explanations.
Later the front door had banged. There had been the sound of steps on the
frosty drive, receding in the distance. Then silence.
Nicholas's eyes turned towards the middle window of the three, surveying
the heavy hanging curtain.
A whimsical smile lighted up his grim old mouth.
"After all, it wasn't a wasted year," he said aloud.
Then he turned and looked round the empty room. It seemed curiously
deserted now.
"And the year is not yet ended," he added. He was amazed at the pleasure
the thought gave him.
THE END.