Aimer quelqu'un, c'est a la fois lui oter le droit, et lui
donner la puissance de nous faire souffrir.
The following morning the Bishop and Michael were sitting in the library
at Lostford Palace. The Bishop was reading a letter, while Michael
watched him, sunk in an arm-chair.
Presently the Bishop thrust out his under lip, and gave back the letter
to Michael.
"Wentworth has dipped his pen in gall instead of in his inkpot," he
said. "For real quality and strength give me the venom of a virtuous
person. The ordinary sinner can't compete with him. Evil doers are out
of the running in this world as well as in the next. I often tell them
so. That is why I took orders. What do you suppose Wentworth suspects
when he says Alington has suggested a discreditable reason for your
being in the di Collo Alto villa that night, and that he is not going to
allow you to skulk behind a woman any longer? He will be here directly
to extort what he is pleased to call 'the truth.' What are you going to
say?"
"I don't know," said Michael. "That is the worst of me. I never know."
The Bishop frowned and rubbed his chin.
"I see one thing," continued Michael, "and that is that it's all
important that he should not break with Fay."
"That will be his first step--if he knows the truth."
"I am afraid it will, and yet--that's the pity of it, she will last
longer than I shall, and he does like her--a little--which is a great
deal for him. You don't believe it, but he really does. And he'll want
her more than ever--when I'm gone."
The Bishop looked keenly at his godson.
Michael had never before alluded to his precarious hold on life. It was
obvious that he was only considering it now in its bearings on
Wentworth's future.
"Can a man who has grown grey looking at himself in the glass, and
recording his own microscopic experiences in a diary, can such a man
_forgive_?" said the Bishop. "Forgiveness is tough work. It needs
knowledge of human nature. It needs humility. I forgave somebody once
long ago. And it nearly was the death of me. I've never been the same
man since."
"Wentworth will have his chance," said Michael. "It's about all we can
do for him."
"We all know he says he can, but then he says such a lot of things. He
dares to say he loves his fellow men. But I've never yet found that
assertion coincide with any real _working_ regard for them. There are
certain things which those who care for others never say, and that is
one of them. The egoist on the contrary is always asserting of himself
what he ought in common decency to leave others to say of him,--only
they never do. Wentworth actually told me not so long ago that he was
intent on the service of others. I told him it was for those others to
mention that interesting fact, and that nobody had lied about him to
that extent so far in my diocese."
"He always says that there is perfect confidence between us," said
Michael. "I've heard him say so ever since I can remember, and I've
heard him tell people that I always brought him my boyish troubles. But
I never did, even as a boy, even when I got into a scrape at Eton. My
tutor stood by me in that. Wentworth never could endure him. He said he
was such a snob. But snob or not, he was a firm friend to me. And I
never told him even at the first of my love for Fay. I somehow could
not. You simply can't tell Wentworth things. But he has got it into his
head that I always have, and that this is the first time I have kept
anything from him. If I had only Fay's leave to tell him! It is the only
thing to do."
The door opened, and to the astonishment of both men, Fay and Magdalen
came in. Fay looked as exhausted, as hopeless, as she had done three
months ago when Magdalen had brought her to make her confession to the
Bishop in this very room.
She evidently remembered it. She turned her lustreless eyes on him and
said, "Magdalen did not make me come this time. I have come myself. Do
you think, is there any chance, Uncle John, that God will have mercy on
me again, like He did before?"
"Do you mean by God having mercy, that Wentworth will still marry you if
he knows the truth?"
She did not answer. That was of course what she meant.
She looked from one to the other of her three friends with a mute
imploring gaze. Their eyes fell before hers.
"I have not slept all night," she said to the Bishop. "Magdalen stayed
with me. And we came quite early because I had to come. Wentworth must
be told. It isn't because Magdalen says so. She hasn't said so, though I
know she felt he ought to be told from the first. And it isn't because
he's sure to find out. And oh! Michael, it isn't for your sake, to put
you right with him. It ought to be, but it isn't. But I can't let him
kiss me any more, and not say. It makes a kind of pain I can't bear. It
has been getting worse and worse ever since Michael came back, only I
did not know what it was at first, and yesterday----" she stopped short,
shuddering. "He came to see me yesterday," she said in a strangled
voice. "He was so dear and good, so wonderful. There never was anyone
like him. It is in my heart that he will forgive me. And he trusts me
entirely. I can't deceive him any more."
The eyes of Michael and Magdalen met in a kind of shame. Those two who
had loved her as no one else had loved her, who had understood her as no
one else had understood her, saw that they had misjudged her. They had
judged her by her actions, identified her with them. And all the time
the little trembling "pilgrim soul" in her was shrinking from the pain
of those very actions, was growing imperceptibly apart from them, was
beginning to regard them with horror, not because they had caused
suffering to others, but because they had ended by inflicting anguish
upon herself. The red-hot iron of our selfishness with which we brand
others becomes in time hot at both ends. We don't know at first what it
is that is hurting us, why it burns us. But our blistered hands, cling
as they will, must needs drop it at last. Fay's cruel little white hand
had let go.
Michael took it in his and kissed it.
"Wentworth is coming here this morning," said the Bishop gently. "He may
arrive at any moment. Stay here and speak to him. And ask him to forgive
you, Fay. You need his forgiveness."
"I don't know how to tell him," gasped Fay. "I tried yesterday, and I
couldn't."
"Let me tell him," said Michael, and as he spoke, the door opened once
more, and Wentworth was announced.
He had got ready what he meant to say. The venomous sentences which he
had concocted during a sleepless night were all in order in his mind.
Who shall say what grovelling suspicions, what sordid conjectures, had
blocked his inflamed mind as he drove swiftly across the downs in the
still June morning? He meant to extort an explanation from his brother,
to have the whole subject out with him once for all. He should not be
suffered to make Fay his accomplice for another hour. His tepid spirit
burned within him when he thought of Michael's behaviour to Fay. He said
to himself that he could forgive that least of all.
He had expected to find Michael alone, or possibly the Bishop only with
him, the Bishop who _knew_. He was disconcerted at finding Fay and
Magdalen there before him.
A horrible suspicion that Magdalen also knew darted across his mind.
It was obvious to him that he had broken up a conference, a conspiracy.
His bitter face darkened still more.
"I don't know what you are all plotting about so early in the morning,"
he said. "I must apologise for interrupting you. I seem to be always in
the way now-a-days. People are always whispering behind my back. But I
have come over to see Michael. I want a few plain words with him without
delay, and I intend to have them."
"That is well," said the Bishop, "because you are about to have them. We
were speaking of you when you came in."
"I wish to see Michael alone," said Wentworth, stung by the Bishop's
instant admission of being in his brother's confidence.
He looked only at Michael, who, his eyes on the ground, was leaning
white as death against the mantelpiece.
"Do you wish us to go, Michael?" said the Bishop.
"I wish you all to stay," he said, raising his eyes for a moment. His
hand shook so violently that he knocked over a little ornament on the
mantelpiece, and it fell with a crash into the fireplace. His voice
shook, too, but his eyes were steady. His great physical weakness,
poignantly apparent though it was, seemed a thing apart from him, like a
cloak which he might discard at any moment.
"I cannot say all I have to say before others," said Wentworth fiercely,
"even if they are all his confederates in trying to keep me in the dark,
all, that is, except Fay. We know by experience that she can shield a
man who has something to hide even from his best friends. We know by
experience that dust can be thrown in her unsuspecting eyes."
"You have been kept in the dark," said the Bishop with compassion; "you
have not been fairly treated, Wentworth, you have much to forgive."
In spite of himself Wentworth was awed. He had a sudden sense of
impending calamity. He looked again at Michael.
Michael's hand shook. His whole body shook. His lips trembled
impotently.
Wentworth sickened with shame. His love was wounded to the very depths
to see his brother like this, as it had never been wounded even by the
first sight of him in his convict's blouse.
"I always trusted you," he said with a groan, putting up his hand so as
to shut out that tottering figure. "I don't know what miserable secret
you're keeping from me, and I don't care. It isn't _that_ I mind. It is
that--whatever it was, however disgraceful it was, you should have kept
it from me. God knows I only wanted to help you. Surely, surely,
Michael, you might have trusted me. What have I done that you should
treat me as if I were an enemy? I thought I was your friend."
No one spoke.
"After all, I don't know that I care to hear. Why should I care. It's
rather late in the day to hear now what everyone knows except me, what
I've been breaking my heart over, racking my brains over as you well know
for these two endless years, what you aren't even now telling me of your
own accord, what you have been persuaded to by this--this"--Wentworth
looked at the Bishop--"this outsider, this middle man."
A great jealousy and bitterness were compressed into the words "middle
man."
"You have got to hear," said Michael, and the trembling left him.
He turned towards his brother, still supporting himself with one hand on
the mantelpiece. The two stern faces confronted each other, and Magdalen
for the first time saw a likeness between them.
"I have kept things from you. You are right there," said Michael,
speaking in a low, difficult voice. "But I never intentionally deceived
you till the Marchese was murdered. Long before that, four years before
that, I fell in love."
Wentworth's heart contracted. He had always feared that moment for
Michael, had always awaited it with a little store of remedial maxims.
He had felt confident that Michael had never even been slightly
attracted by any woman. How often he had said to himself that if there
had been any attraction he should have been the first to know of it. Yet
the incredible truth was being thrust at him that Michael had struggled
through his first love without drawing upon the deep wells of
Wentworth's knowledge.
"The woman I fell in love with was Fay. She was seventeen. I was
nineteen."
The room went round with Wentworth.
"Fay," he said, in blank astonishment, "Fay!" Then a glare of light
broke in on him.
"Then it was she," he stammered, "not her maid, as that brute Alington
said--it was she--she herself that----"
"It was her I went to see the night I was arrested. I was deeply in love
with her."
Michael paused a moment, and then added gently, "She never cared for
me. I did not see that clearly at the time, because I was blinded by my
own passion. I have seen it since."
Wentworth made no movement.
"I decided to leave Rome. Fay wrote to me that I ought to go. I went to
say good-bye to her in the garden the night the Marchese was murdered.
While I was in the garden, the murder was discovered and the place was
surrounded, and I could not get away. I hid in Fay's boudoir. The Duke
came in and explained to Fay what had happened. It was the first I knew
of it. Then, when they searched the house and I saw that I must be
discovered in another moment, I came out and gave myself up as the
murderer, because I could not be found hiding in Fay's rooms at night.
It was the only thing to do."
Fay took a long breath. What a simple explanation it seemed after all.
Why had she been so terrified? Wentworth could not blame her seriously
now.
"I never tried to shield the Marchesa," Michael went on. "That was her
own idea. I only wanted to shield Fay from being--misconstrued. The Duke
understood. He saw me hiding behind the screen, and tried to save me. He
told me so next day. The Duke was good to me from first to last."
Wentworth turned a fierce, livid face towards his brother.
"Have I really got at the truth at last?" he said. "How can I tell? The
Duke could have told me, but he is dead. Did he really connive at your
romantic passion for his wife? If I may venture to offer an opinion,
that part of the story is not quite so well thought out as the rest,
though it is excessively modern. Anyhow he is dead. You tell me he saw
you behind the screen in his wife's rooms at midnight, and felt no need
of an explanation. How like an Italian. But he is dead. And you forced
your love on another man's wife, though you own she did not return it,
wormed yourself into her rooms at night, and then--_then_--yes, I begin
to see a grain of truth among these heaps of lies--then when by an evil
chance, an extraordinary stroke of bad luck, there was danger of your
being discovered, then you persuaded her, the innocent, inexperienced
creature whom you would have wronged if you could--you worked upon her
feelings, you made her into your accomplice, you persuaded her to hide
you.... You mean cur!... You only sneaked out of your hole when escape
was absolutely impossible. And so the truth, or some garbled part of it,
is choked out of you at last. No wonder you were silent all these years.
No wonder you would not speak. No wonder you let your poor dupe of a
brother break his heart over your silence. Credulous fool that I have
been from first to last. So help me God, I will never speak to you
again."
The violent, stammering voice ceased at last.
Fay shivered from head to foot, and looked at her lover.
Both men had forgotten her. Their eyes never left each other.
Wentworth's fierce face was turned with deadly hatred upon his brother.
Michael met his eye, but he did not speak.
There was death in the air.
Suddenly as in a glass she saw that Michael was saving her again, was
sacrificing himself for a second time at enormous cost, the cost of his
brother's love.
"Michael!" said Fay with a sob, "Michael, I can't bear it. You are
trying to save me again, but I can't bear to be saved any more. I have
had enough of being saved. I won't be saved. It hurts too much. I won't
let you do it a second time. I have had enough of being silent when I
ought to speak, I have had enough of hiding things, and pretending, and
being frightened."
Fay saw at last that the truth was her only refuge from that unendurable
horror which was getting up out of its grave again. She fled to it for
very life, and flung herself upon it.
She took Michael's hand, and turning to Wentworth began to speak
rapidly, with a clearness and directness which amazed Magdalen and the
Bishop.
It all came out, the naked truth; her loveless marriage, the great
kindness of her husband towards her, her determination bred of idleness
and vanity to enslave Michael anew when he came to Rome, his resistance,
his decision to leave Italy, her inveigling him under plea of urgency to
come to the garden at night, his refusal to enter the house, her frantic
desire to keep him, his determination to part from her.
There was no doubt in the minds of those who listened in awed silence
that here was the whole truth at last.
Fay looked full at Wentworth and then said: "He asked me why I had sent
for him, what it was that he could do for me. And I said--I said--'Take
me with you.'"
"No," said Michael, wincing as under a lash, "No, you did not. Fay, you
never said that."
"You did not hear it, but I said it."
Michael staggered against the mantelpiece.
Wentworth had not moved. His face had become frightful, distorted.
"I am a wicked woman, Wentworth," said Fay. "I tried to make him in love
with me. I tried to tempt him. I could make him love me, but not do
wrong. And then I let him take the blame when he was trapped. I had
trapped him there first. He did not want to come. I forced him to come.
I let him spoil his life to save my wretched good name. He is right when
he told you just now that I never loved him. The love was all on his
side. He gave it all. I took it all, and I went on taking it. It was I
who kept him in prison quite as much as the Marchesa. It was I who let
him burn and freeze in his cell. A word from me would have got him out."
Wentworth laughed suddenly, a horrible, discordant laugh.
They had rotted down before his eyes to loathsome unrecognisable
corpses--the man and the woman he had loved.
Fay looked wildly at him.
"But you are good," she said faintly. "You won't, Wentworth, you won't
cast me off like--like I did Michael."
He did not look at her.
He took up his gloves and straightened the fingers as his custom was.
"There is no longer anything which need detain me here," he said to the
Bishop, and he moved towards the door.
"Nothing except the woman whose fate is in your hands," said the Bishop
gently. "What of her? She deserted Michael because her eyes were holden.
Now you can make the balance even if you will. But will you? You can
repay cruelty with cruelty. You can desert her with inhumanity even
greater than hers, because you do it with your eyes open. But will you?
Is it to be an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth? She loves you
and is at your mercy, even as Michael was once at hers. You can crush
her if you will. But will you?"
"Wentworth!" said Fay, and she fell at his feet, clasping his knees.
His face was as flint, as he looked down at her, and tried to push away
her hands.
"Let him go, my child," said the Bishop sternly, and he took Fay's
hands, and held them. "It is no use trying to keep a man who does not
love you. Go, Wentworth. You are right. There is nothing to keep you
here. In this room there are two people, one of whom has sinned and has
repented, and both of whom love you and have spoken the truth to you.
But there is no love and truth in you to rise up and meet theirs. You do
not know what love and truth are, even when you see them very close. You
had better go."
"I will go," said Wentworth, his eyes blazing. And he went out and shut
the door behind him.
Fay's hands slipped out of the Bishop's, her head fell forward, and she
sank down on the floor. The Bishop and Magdalen bent over her.
Michael looked a moment at her, and swiftly left the room. He overtook
Wentworth in the hall, groping blindly for his hat.
"Come in here," said Michael, "I want a word with you," and he half
pushed Wentworth into a room leading out of the hall. It was a dreary
little airless apartment with a broken blind, intended for a
waiting-room but fallen into disuse, and only partially furnished, the
corners piled with great tin boxes containing episcopal correspondence.
Michael closed the door.
"Wentworth," he said breathlessly, "you don't see. You don't understand.
Fay loves you." He looked earnestly at Wentworth as if the latter were
acting in some woeful ignorance, which one word would set right. He
seemed entirely oblivious of Wentworth's insulting words towards
himself.
"I see one thing," said Wentworth, "and that is that I'm not inclined to
marry your cast-off mistress."
Michael closed with him instantly, but not before Wentworth had seen the
lightning in his eyes; and the two men struggled furiously in the dim,
airless little room with its broken blind.
Wentworth knew Michael meant to kill him. The long, scarred hands had
him by the throat, were twisting themselves in the silk tie Fay had
knitted for him. He tore himself out of the grip of those iron fingers.
But Michael only sobbed and wound his arms round him. And Wentworth knew
he was trying to throw him, and break his back.
Wentworth fought for his life, but he was over-matched. The awful,
murderous hands were feeling for his neck again, the sobbing breath was
on his face, the glaring eyes staring into his. The hands closed on his
throat once more, squeezing his tongue out of his mouth, his eyes out of
his head. He made a last frightful struggle to wrench the hands away.
But they remained clutched into his flesh, choking his life out of him.
There was a thin, guttural, sawing noise mixed in with the sobbing. Then
all in a moment the sobbing ceased, he felt the hands relax, and then an
avalanche of darkness crashed down on him, and buried him beneath it.