CONTENT
"The dead are glad in heaven, the living 'tis who weep."--K. Y. HINKSON.
Philippa followed Isabella down-stairs like one walking in her sleep,
without feeling, without consciousness, save of a dreadful numbness
which seemed to envelop her, body and heart alike.
She walked to the door and opened it, and then she became aware that
her companion was speaking. The words came as if from a great distance
through a mighty void.
"He will need you," Isabella was saying through her tears. "Go back to
him. He must not feel he is alone. See if your love can help him----"
Then her sobs choked her, and she walked quickly away into the
gathering darkness.
The girl returned to the hall and stood in front of the hearth. She
wanted to think and lacked the power to do so. There was something she
must do--what was it?
A servant came and handed her a letter as she stood there, and she took
it mechanically without glancing at it. Her fingers tore it open
automatically, and then she looked--and something burst the icy band
which froze her faculties and a low cry broke from her: "Oh no! not
now--not now."
It was a thin square envelope bearing an Italian stamp--a reply from
her friend to say that the villa should be prepared for her.
It had come--now--when her dream was shattered, and the man she
loved--for whom she had planned the journey to the Magical Island--knew
her only as Jim's girl.
But as sense and feeling returned to her in a burning flood of pain
they brought also a courage as of despair--a courage and a
determination to cling with all her strength to what had been
hers--when--such a little time ago.
Was her love of no avail? It was at least a shelter and a refuge for
him in his loneliness and grief. All jealousy of Phil had vanished
now--there could be no barrier between them now he knew the truth. He
was hers to shield and comfort--surely he would need her now more than
ever before.
Then she remembered what she had wished to do, and crossing to the
writing-table she penned a short note to the doctor. "He has
remembered; I think you had better come." She signed it and fastened
the envelope; her brain was working clearly now. She rang the bell and
ordered the note to be taken at once, and asked for some soup and wine.
Francis would need nourishment, and although he had not appeared ill,
it would be better for the doctor to be at hand in case the agitation
of the afternoon prevented him from sleeping, and some soothing draught
might be advisable. It was wisest to send for him. And she did not
know--indeed how could she?--that the doctor was at the moment watching
by a dying bed many miles away, and that her summons was destined not
to reach him before the next morning.
When the tray was brought she took it up-stairs herself. Francis was
lying on the sofa and did not look up as she entered.
"I have brought you some soup," she said; "I think you must need it."
He raised himself and thanked her courteously, and took the cup from
her hands. Philippa felt encouraged, for she had been half afraid lest
he should repulse her. She stood quietly beside him while he drank,
and then moved to set the tray on a table.
Having done so she returned, to find his eyes fixed on her, and he
watched her while she fetched a chair and sat down by the couch.
Then he asked very gently and kindly, "My dear, why did you do it?"
Philippa had answered this question when Isabella had asked it, and
answered it honestly--or so she had thought at the time, but she was
wiser now.
Looking at him bravely and without a tremor in her voice, for she was
determined to hold herself well in hand, "Because I loved you," she
said simply.
"Poor child! Poor child!"
He murmured the words almost inaudibly. Then after a moment's silence
he added, "I did not know--I did not know--I thought it was Phil.
There was so much I could not understand--I thought it was all part of
my weakness. Then, when we went to Bessmoor, the sight of it was so
familiar, and so many thoughts troubled me--but I had no doubt; and
then, in the afternoon when I was alone, I opened that drawer and
found--so many pictures--of--Phil. I will show you. Will you fetch
them?"
She did as he bade her, and came back to his side with a sheaf of
drawings.
"Look," he said, "I found all these. I suppose now that I did them in
the years that have gone by. But they puzzled me, because I thought
they must be my work, and there are so many--and yet--I could not
remember. Some are very like my little Phil. And the sight of them
seemed to stir my brain, and I wondered more and more. I thought that
you were Phil, and that they were of you--and yet---- Somehow there
was some one else I missed--a blank--so many blanks. I could not
understand, until to-day. Dear mother! What did she feel I wonder,
all those years? How dreadful for her! Did I know her?"
"I do not know. You did not often speak."
"I wonder what made me go there to-day," he continued thoughtfully. "I
was sitting waiting for you, when suddenly something seemed to tell me
to go into the churchyard--and just inside the gate I saw her
grave--and then I knew. It was just as if a veil had been torn from my
eyes--and still I could not understand. For mother was not old when I
saw her last. I was afraid I was mad, until Isabella explained. And I
thought and thought while I was waiting, and I knew you could not be
Phil, for although you are exactly like my memory of her--in face--she
would be much older. And there had been little things which puzzled
me--which are clear now--about you, I mean. Phil could never have been
content to stay indoors all day as you have--she was always a restless
fairy thing--I never remember her still for long--and you are always
working. Phil never did. Oh, I can find many little differences now.
"I cannot think of her as dead--she was so bright--so happy. She is
dead--and I have lived on all these years. I wonder that I did not
know that she was dead. I ought to have known it, for I loved her so.
And all our love lately has been only a dream--and we were so happy.
Oh, why was I not told the truth? why did you not let me die? It would
have been kinder than to let me live to find out for myself--that she
is gone--and I am all alone."
Philippa slipped down upon her knees beside the couch, and cried
passionately, "Oh no, you are not all alone--we have been so happy--I
have made you happy. Can we not be happy again? I love you so--have
you no love for me?"
She was sobbing now, with her face hidden in her hands.
"I do not know," he said. "It is Phil I love--I loved you when I
thought that you were Phil. My dear, my dear, how can I disentangle
the present from the past?"
"Then do not try," she pleaded, raising her tear-stained face. "Oh,
Francis, let us be happy again; let me make you happy. Think of me as
Phil if you will--but let us dream again the dream we found so sweet.
I love you so, and I will comfort you. Think of all we had planned.
Shall we not grasp our dream and make it real? If I may be your
wife--as you asked me--we will go together to the place where it is
always sunshine and you will find that life can hold brightness. I
will make it bright for you. You remember it was all arranged, we were
to go to the Magical Island--that was what you called it. Do not send
me away from you."
He looked at her pityingly. "My dear," he said gently, "it was only a
dream--a dream and a delusion. It is not possible--you are only a
child, while I am old. You are Jim's girl, and Jim was my boyhood's
friend. Your life is all before you, while mine is near the
ending--and--it is Phil I love."
"I am no child." She was pleading desperately now for what was
slipping from her grasp. "I am no child, but a woman, and I love
you--I ask of you nothing more than the right to be with you and care
for you. You say you are all alone--then let me comfort you."
He shook his head. "Phil is dead--my life is over--I did not know--and
she will forgive me my mistake--she must know I love no one but her.
She was so true--I could not but be true to her--and perhaps I may go
to her soon--she will be waiting--and I have lost twenty years of
Paradise."
A fierce temptation assailed Philippa, the fiercest she had ever known
or was ever likely to know--to tell him. To tell him the one thing of
which as yet he was ignorant--that Phil had not been true, that she had
not loved him, that she had been the wife of another man at the time of
her death. Surely if he knew this he would turn to her, whom he had
loved--if only in a dream--for a little while.
The words were almost past her lips when she stifled them, for the next
instant she knew she could never speak them. Out of the wreckage of
his life--of all that he held dear--only one thing was left to him, and
that was his love for Phil, his faith in her. Could she, who loved him
so, destroy the one thing he still possessed simply in the hope to gain
what she herself longed for? Could she deal him another blow, and that
the hardest, bitterest of all--undermine what had been the very
keystone of his life, the one really flawless element in the whole sad
story? Her love--the strength of which she boasted--had been sullied
by jealousy, dimmed by reservations, a paltry thing beside his; and
yet, be that as it might, she knew it was all she had to give. She had
given him her whole heart, irrevocably. Let her prove it by her
silence now.
He must live out his days, sad as they must be, without the added
burden of disillusionment; and for the rest, it was in higher Hands
than hers. She resumed her seat presently very quietly and sat
watching him.
He lay quite still, evidently thinking deeply; he was, outwardly at
least, perfectly calm and composed, but all the vitality, all the
animation which had been so marked in his expression a few short hours
before, had gone from his face, leaving it set and stern. The years
which had passed unheeded in their going took toll of him now, and set
their seal upon his features, altering them strangely.
The slow minutes passed, taking with them all the tattered remnants of
her hope; and little by little it seemed to her in her pain that unseen
hands were pushing her farther and farther from him, building a barrier
between them--a tangible thing which she had only to stretch out her
hands to feel, setting her outside his ken.
The man she loved was going from her, leaving in his place a stranger
she had never known. Francis had been so near to her in their love,
had never glanced at her except with tenderness and welcome; for her
his voice had ever taken a deeply tender tone. Who was this stern,
aged man who looked at her with veiled eyes, and spoke in a voice she
did not know, and which bore little resemblance to the one which had
thrilled her to passionate devotion?
Never again would she know the rapture of his kiss, the exquisite
security of his enfolding arm. The To-come was before her--bleak, grey
and bereft; the roseate hues of love's delight lay all in the Gone-by.
Her love was of no avail. It had fluttered back to her, a wounded,
helpless thing.
The striking of the clock roused her at last. It was the hour at which
she usually bade him good-night, and she rose from her chair.
Following her habit she crossed the room and rang the bell. When she
turned again Francis too had risen, and he took a few steps towards her.
"My dear," he said gently, "if I have been selfish in my great sorrow,
will you forgive me? Believe me I am not ungrateful for your care and
devotion, but it seems to me it would have been a more real kindness to
have told me the truth. Perhaps I am wrong--I cannot think clearly
to-night--I am very tired, and everything is very dark--perhaps
to-morrow will bring light."
He held her hand for a moment and then released it. His eyes wandered
to the picture which stood on the easel in its accustomed place. He
moved towards it and stood looking down at it in silence.
And so she left him.
It was old Goodie who found him next morning. She entered his room
with his cup of tea, prepared just as he liked it, "with two lumps of
sugar and a dash of cream"--and then she saw----
He was lying cold and still, his hands folded on his breast, in the
peace which passeth understanding. The morrow had brought light.
"The sorrow ends, for life and death have ceased.
How should lamps flicker when the oil is spent?
The old sad count is clear, the new is clean.
Thus hath a man content."
THE END
Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, London and Bungay.
End of Project Gutenberg's East of the Shadows, by Mrs. Hubert Barclay