"There's a woman like a dewdrop, she's so purer than the purest;
And her noble heart's the noblest, yes, and her sure faith's the surest:
And this woman says, 'My days were sunless and my nights were moonless,
Parched the pleasant April herbage, and the lark's heart's outbreak tuneless,
If you loved me not!' And I, who--(ah, for words of flame!) adore her!
Who am mad to lay my spirit prostrate palpably before her."
Lady Perivale's victoria was standing at Miss Rodney's gate, but before
she could step into it her path was intercepted by the last person she
expected to see at that moment, though he had so recently left her. It
was Haldane, who had been pacing the avenue in front of Miss Rodney's
windows, and who crossed the road hurriedly as Grace came out of the
gate.
"Will you let your carriage wait while you walk with me for a few
minutes in the Park, Lady Perivale?" he asked gravely. "I have
something to say to you--that--that I want very much to say," he
concluded feebly, the man whose distinction of style the critics
praised finding himself suddenly at a loss for the commonest forms of
speech.
Grace was too surprised to refuse. She gave a tacit assent, and they
crossed the road side by side, and went into the Park, by a turnstile
nearly opposite Miss Rodney's house. They walked along the quiet
pathway between two rows of limes that were just beginning to flower,
and through whose leafy boughs the evening light showed golden. They
walked slowly, in a troubled silence, neither of them venturing to look
at the other, yet both of them feeling the charm of the hour, and that
more subtle charm of being in each other's company.
"Lady Perivale, when I left Miss Rodney's drawing-room just now, my
mind was so overwhelmed with trouble that I wanted to be alone--wanted
time to think. I have been pacing this pathway ever since, not long,
perhaps, in actual moments, but an age in thought, and--and--the end of
it all is that, in the most profound humility and self-contempt, I have
to implore your pardon for having suffered my thoughts to wrong you. My
judgment has been to blame--not my heart. That has never wavered."
"Oh, Mr. Haldane, was it worth while to apologize? You have acted like
all my other society friends--except one. People who have known me ever
since my marriage choose to believe that I have made myself unworthy of
their acquaintance. I cannot call it friendship, for no friend could
believe the story that has been told of me."
"You cut me to the heart. No friend, you say! And I--I who have so
honoured you in the past, I was fool enough to believe the slander that
was dinned into my ear, chapter and verse, with damning iteration. I
struggled against that belief--struggled and succumbed--because people
were so sure of their facts, and because--well, I confess, I believed
the story. But I thought there might have been a marriage--that for
some reason of your own you wanted to keep it dark. I could not think
of you as other people thought, but I believed that you were lost to
me for ever. I had seen Rannock at your house, seen him about with
you--and--and I thought you cared for him."
"You were mistaken. I know now that I was foolish in receiving him upon
such a friendly footing."
"Only because the man is unworthy of any woman's confidence or regard.
Lady Perivale, I think last year you must have had some suspicion that
I was fighting a battle with my own heart."
"I don't quite follow you."
"I must be a better actor than I fancy myself if you did not know that
I loved you."
"I can see no reason for fighting battles--if--if that were so."
"Can you not? You don't know--or you did not know then--how malevolent
the world can be--this modern world, which measures everything in life
by its money value. You are rich, and I have just enough to live upon
comfortably without watching my bank-book. From the society point of
view I am a pauper."
"What would other people's opinion matter if I knew you were sincere?"
"Yes, that is the question. That was why I kept silence. My pride could
not endure that you should rank me with such men as Rannock. And there
were others of the class pursuing you--ruined spendthrifts, to whom
your fortune would mean a new lease of profligate pleasures. I saw
Rannock favoured by you----"
"He was never favoured. I liked his society because he was unlike the
rest of the world. I was sorry for him, for his disappointment, his
lost opportunities. I thought him a broken-hearted man."
"Broken-hearted? Yes, that is the reprobate's last card; and
unfortunately it often wins the game. Broken-hearted!--as if that
battered heart could break! A man who has lived only to do mischief, a
man whose friendship meant ruin for younger and better men."
"Women know so little of men's lives."
"Not such women as you."
"I confess that he interested me. He seemed a creature of whim and
fancy, fluctuating between wild fun and deepest melancholy. I thought
him generous and large-minded; since he showed no unkindly feeling when
I refused to marry him, as other men had done whom I once thought my
friends."
"Rannock looks longer ahead than other men. Be sure he did not love you
for your refusal, and that he hung on in the hope you would change your
mind. No man of that stamp was ever a woman's friend."
"Don't let us talk of him. I hate the sound of his name."
"Yet you pronounced it so bravely just now in Miss Rodney's
drawing-room, and looked me in the face, as if you defied me to think
ill of you."
"Well, it was something like a challenge perhaps. And did that convince
you?"
"_You_ convinced me. I rushed from the house in a tumult of wonder and
doubt. But I had seen you, and could not go on doubting. Your eyes,
your voice, the pride in your glance, the pride of wounded innocence,
defiant, yet pathetic! Who that had seen you could go on doubting? Lady
Perivale--Grace--can you forgive a jealous fool who made his love for
you a rod to scourge him, whose thoughts have been cruel to you, but,
God knows, how much more cruel to himself?"
"I am glad you are beginning to think better of me," she answered
quietly.
"Beginning! I have not the shadow of a thought that wrongs you. I
am humbled in the dust under your feet. I ask for nothing but to be
forgiven, to be restored to your friendship, to help you as a friend,
brother, father might help you, in any difficulty, in any trouble."
"Thank you," she said quietly, holding out her hand to him; and their
hands met in a firm and lingering grasp, which meant something more
than everyday friendliness.
"I am very glad you trust me, in the face of that odious rumour," she
said. "I confess that I felt your unkindness--for it was unkind to
hold yourself aloof like other people whose friendship I had never
particularly valued. As to their preposterous story about me, it
would be easy to answer it with an alibi, since I was at my villa
on the Italian Riviera from November to April, and have not seen
Colonel Rannock since the last Goodwood, when we were both in Lady
Carlaverock's house party."
They walked up and down the little avenue of limes till the golden
light took a rosier glow and shone upon a lower level, and until Lady
Perivale's servants thought she had gone home in somebody else's
carriage, and forgotten that her own was waiting for her.
She told Haldane all that had happened to her since her return to
London--her indignation, her contempt for her false friends, Lady
Morningside's kindness, her engagement of Faunce, the detective, and
her hope that she would be able to refute the slander in a court of law.
"Everybody in London has seen my disgrace, and everybody in London must
know of my rehabilitation," she said; and then, in a contemptuous tone,
"Is it not absurd that I must take all this trouble simply because
another woman happens to be like me?"
"And because a man happens to be a villain. I believe the thing was a
deep-laid scheme of Rannock's."
"But why should he do such a vile thing?"
"Because he wanted to be even with you--that would be his
expression--for your refusing to marry him."
"Oh, surely no man could be capable of anything so diabolical."
"I know a good deal about Rannock's antecedents, and I believe _he_
could."
"But, even if he were capable of such baseness, how could he plan the
thing so as to be met by people who know me?"
"That was not difficult. He had only to watch the papers, and throw
himself in people's way. He knew that wherever he went there would be
travellers who knew you. He chose Algiers, Corsica, Sardinia, as less
public than Cannes or Nice, and so affected an air of avoiding the rush
of tourists. God forgive me, if I wrong the man--I hate him too much to
reason fairly about him, but the fact of his absence from London this
season counts against him. It looks as if, having fired his shot, he
kept himself clear of the consequences."
"Nobody would have cut him if he had been in London!" Lady Perivale
said scornfully.
"Not more than usual. He was not liked--by the best people!"
"No! But he was so clever, so amusing, played the 'cello divinely--and
he flattered me by telling me his troubles, and how hardly the world
had used him. I thought him a victim. Oh, what an idiot I have been!"
"No, no. You have only been not quite a woman of the world."
"And I thought I was one. I thought I had learnt everything in my
half-dozen years of society, and that the pristine simplicity of my
father's parsonage was a thing of the past. And I suffered myself to be
talked about, my name bandied about."
"Give me the privilege of your friendship till you think me worthy
of a dearer bond, and I will protect you from all the errors of
unworldliness. I would not have you one jot more of a worldling than
you are. I have worldly wisdom enough for both of us--the wisdom of
Mayfair and Belgravia, which the angels call folly."
He took her to her carriage, but he did not ask to be allowed to call
upon her.
"I shall be leaving town shortly," he said, "but I hope we may meet in
the autumn."
"Are you going abroad?"
"I think so, but I have not determined the direction. I will write to
you from--wherever I am--if you will allow me."
"I shall be pleased to hear from you," she answered gently. "I am very
glad we are friends again."
On this they clasped hands and parted, lovers half avowed.
Grace went home radiant. She had always liked him. It might be that
she had always loved him. His coldness had cut her to the heart, yet
now that he was at her feet again, she respected him for having held
himself aloof while there was a shadow of doubt in his mind. The
fortune-hunter would have taken advantage of her isolation, and pursued
her all the more ardently while she was under a cloud. And she was
touched by his surrendering at once to her personal influence, to the
eyes and voice that he loved. He could not meet her face to face, and
go on doubting her.