She approached--their gaze met--he had bowed, and passed her. Perhaps
it had lasted a second, the mental convulsion in which he looked in
her eyes; he did not know. He found a seat and sank into it, staring
at the sky and sea, acutely conscious of nothing but her nearness. He
could not tell whether it was despair or rejoicing that beat in him; he
knew nothing but that the world had swayed, that life was in an instant
palpitating and vivid--that he had seen her!
Then he knew that, in the intensity of emotion that shook him body and
brain, there was a thrill of joy, inexplicable but insistent. But when
he rose at last, he dreaded that he might see her again.
He did not see her till the evening--when he drew back at the door of
the saloon as she came out. His features were imperturbable now and
betrayed nothing, though her own, before her head drooped, were piteous
in appeal.
He noted that she looked pale and ill, and that she wore a black dress
with crape on it. He wondered whether she had lost her father, or her
aunt. Next morning he understood that it was her father, for he saw
her sitting beside Mrs. Baines. So Dick Cheriton was dead. He had once
been fond of Dick Cheriton.... The stranger in the black frock had once
slept in his arms, and borne his name.... The sadness of a lifetime
weighed on his soul.
He perceived that she shunned him by every means in her power. But they
were bound to meet; and then across her face would flash the same look
that he had seen at the foot of the companion-way; its supplication
and abasement wrung him. Horrible as the continual meetings grew, in
the reading-room, on deck, or below, their lines crossed a dozen times
between breakfast and eleven o'clock at night. It became as torturous
to Heriot as to her. He felt as if he had struck her, as he saw her
whiten and shrink as he passed her by. Soon he hated himself for being
here to cause her this intolerable pain.
It was on the evening of the third day that her endurance broke down
and she made her petition. With a pang he recognised the voice of her
messenger before he turned.
"Mrs. Baines!"
"You're surprised I should address you, Mr. Heriot," she said. "I
shouldn't have, but _she_ wants me to beg you to speak to her, if it's
only for five minutes. She implores you humbly to let her speak to you.
She made me ask you; I couldn't say 'no.'"
His pulses throbbed madly, and momentarily he couldn't reply.
"What purpose would it serve?" he said in tones he struggled to make
firm.
"She can't bear it, Mr. Heriot--_Sir_ Heriot, I should say; I was
forgetting, I'm sure I beg your pardon! She 'implores you humbly to let
her speak to you'; I was to use those words. Won't you consent? She is
ill, she's dying."
"Dying?" whispered Heriot by a physical effort.
She nodded slowly. "The doctor has told her. She won't be here long,
poor girl. But whether she's to be pitied for it or not, it's hard to
say; I don't think she'll be sorry to go.... My brother is gone, Sir
Heriot."
His answer was inarticulate.
"We got there just at the end. If we had been too late, she----She has
been ailing a long while, but we didn't know it was so serious. When
she saw you, it was awful for her. I---- Oh, what am I to tell her?
She's waiting now!"
"Where?" said Heriot, hoarsely.
"Will you come with me?"
"Show me," he said; "show me where she is."
He still heard the knell of it--"Dying!" He heard it as the lonely
figure in the darkness rose:
"Thank you, I am grateful."
The familiar voice knocked at his heart.
"Mrs. Baines has told me you are ill. I am grieved to learn how ill you
are."
"It doesn't matter. It was good of you to come; I thought you would.
I--I have prayed to speak to you again!"
"It wasn't much to ask," he said; "I--am human."
He could see that she trembled painfully. He indicated the chair that
she had left, and drew one closer for himself. Then for a minute there
was silence.
"Do you hate me?" she said.
He shook his head. "Should I have come to tell you so?"
"But you can never forgive me?"
"Why distress yourself? If for a moment I hesitated to come, it was
because I _knew_ it would be distressing for you. Perhaps a refusal
would have been kinder after all."
"No, no; I was sure you wouldn't refuse. She doubted; but _I_ was sure.
I said you'd come when you heard about me."
"Is it so serious? What is it? Tell me; I know nothing."
"It's my lungs: they were never very strong, you remember. The doctor
told me in Duluth: 'Perhaps a year,' if I am 'very careful.' I'm _not_
very careful--it'll soon be all over. Don't look like that! Why should
you care? _I_ don't care--I don't want to live a bit. Only----Do you
think, if--if there's anything afterwards, that a woman who's gone
wrong like me will be punished?"
"For God's sake," he said, "don't talk so!"
"But _do_ you? It makes one think of these things when one knows one
has only a very little time to live. _You_ can't forgive me--you said
so."
"I do," he said; "I forgive you freely. If I could undo your
wretchedness by giving my life for you, I'd give it. You don't know how
I loved you--what it meant to me to find you gone! Ah, Mamie, how could
you do it?"
The tears stood in her eyes, as she lifted her white face to him.
"I'm ashamed!" she moaned. "What can I say?"
"Why?" said Heriot, at the end of a tense pause. "Why? Did you care for
him so much? If he had lived and married you, would you be happy?"
"Happy!" she echoed, with something between a laugh and a sob.
"Tell me. I hoped you'd be happy. That's true. I never wanted you to
suffer for what you'd done. I suffered enough for both."
"I don't think I should have married him. I don't know; I don't think
so. I knew I'd made a mistake before--oh, in the first month! If _you_
haven't hated me, I have hated myself."
"And since? You've been with _her_?"
"Ever since. My poor father wanted me to go home. I wish I had! You
know I've lost him--she told you that? He wanted me to go home, but I
couldn't--where everybody knew! You understand? And then she moved to
Balham, and we never left it till two months ago, when the cable came.
We were in time to see him die. My poor father!"
He touched her hand, and her fingers closed on it.
"You oughtn't to be up here at night," he said huskily, looking at her
with blinded eyes. "Didn't the man tell you that the night air was bad?
And that flimsy wrap--it's no use so! Draw it across your mouth."
"What's the difference?--there, then! Shall you--will you speak to me
again after this evening, or is this the last talk we shall have? I
had so much to say to you, but I don't seem able to find it now you're
here.... If you believe that I ask your pardon on my knees, I suppose,
after all, that that's everything. If ever a man deserved a good
wife it was you; I realise it more clearly than I did while we were
together--though I think I knew it then.... You never married again?"
"No," he answered; "no, I haven't married."
"But you will, perhaps? Why haven't you?"
"I'm too old, and--I cared too much for _you_."
The tears were running down her face now; she loosed his hand to wipe
them away.
"Don't say I've ruined your life," she pleaded; "don't say that! My
own--yes; my own--it served me right! but I've tried so hard to believe
that _you_ had got over it. When I read of your election, and then that
you were made Solicitor-General, I was glad, ever so glad. I thought,
'He's successful; he has his career.' I've always wanted to believe
that your work was enough--that you had forgotten. It wasn't so?"
"No, it wasn't so. I did my best to forget you, but I couldn't."
"Aunt Lydia said you weren't cut up at all when she saw you. You
deceived her very well. 'A worthless woman,' you called me; I 'wasn't
any loss'! It was quite true; but I knew you couldn't feel like
that--not so soon. 'Worthless'! I've heard it every day since she told
me.... I meant to do my duty when I married you, George; if I could
have foreseen----" She broke off, coughing. "If I could have foreseen
what the end would be, I'd have killed myself rather than become your
wife. I was always grateful to you; you were always good to me--and I
only brought you shame."
"Not 'only,'" he said; "you gave me happiness first, Mamie--the
greatest happiness I've known. I loved you, and you came to me. You
never understood how much I did love you--I think that was the trouble."
"'There's a word that says it all: I worship you'! do you remember
saying that? You said it in the train when you first proposed to me. I
refused you then--why did I ever give way!... How different everything
would be now! You 'worshipped' me, and I----"
Her voice trailed off, and once more only the pounding of the engine
broke the stillness on the deck. The ocean swelled darkly under a
starless sky, and he sat beside her staring into space. In the steerage
someone played "Robin Adair" on a fiddle. A drizzle began to fall, to
blow in upon them. Heriot became conscious of it with a start.
"You must go below," he said; "it's raining."
She rose obediently, shivering a little, and drawing the white scarf
more closely about her neck.
"Good-night," she said, standing there with wide eyes.
He put out his hand, and her clasp ran through his blood again.
"Good-night," he repeated gently. "Sleep well."
Was it real? Was he awake? He looked after her as she turned
away--looked long after she had disappeared. The fiddle in the steerage
was still scraping "Robin Adair"; the black stretch of deck was
desolate. A violent impulse seized him to overtake her, to snatch her
back, to hold her in his arms for once, with words and caresses of
consolation. "Dying"! He wondered if Davos, Algiers, the Cape, anything
and everything procurable by money, could prolong her life. Then he
remembered that she did not wish to live. But that was horrible! She
should consult a specialist in town, and follow his advice; he would
make her promise it. With the gradual defervescence of his mood, he
wondered if she was properly provided for, and he resolved to question
Mrs. Baines on the point. He would elicit the information the following
day, and something could be arranged, if necessary--if not with Mamie's
knowledge, then without it.
The morning was bright, and Mamie was in her chair when he came up
from the saloon after breakfast. As he approached, she watched him
expectantly, and it was impossible to pass without a greeting. It was
impossible, when the greeting had been exchanged, not to remain with
her for a few minutes.
"How are you feeling?" he asked; "any better?"
"I never feel very bad; I'm just the same to-day as yesterday, thank
you." The "thank you" was something more than a formula, and he felt
it. It hurt him to hear the gratitude in her tone, natural as it might
be.
"I want you to go to a good physician when you arrive," he said, "say,
to Drummond; and to do just as he tells you. You _must_ do that; it is
a duty you owe to yourself."
She shrugged her shoulders. "What for? That I may last two years,
perhaps, instead of one? It is kind of you to care, but I'm quite
satisfied as things are. Don't bother about me."
"You will have to go!" he insisted. "Before we land I shall speak to
your aunt about it."
He had paused by her seat with the intention of resuming his saunter
as soon as civility permitted, but her presence was subversive of the
intention. He sat down beside her as he had done the previous evening.
But now it was inevitable that they should speak of other subjects than
infidelity and death. The sky was blue, and the white deck glistened in
the sunshine. The sea before them tumbled cheerfully, and to right and
left were groups of passengers laughing, flirting, doing fancy-work, or
reading novels.
"You haven't told me how it was you came to the States?" she said
presently; "were you in New York all the time?"
Heriot did not answer, and she waited with surprise.
"I'll tell you, if you wish," he said hastily. "I came out half meaning
to marry."
"Oh!" she said, as if he had struck her.
"I thought I might be happier married. The lady and her mother were
going to New York, and I travelled with them. I--I was mistaken in
myself."
They were not looking at each other any longer, and her voice trembled
a little as she replied:
"You weren't fond enough of her?"
"No," he said. "I shall never marry again; I told you so last night."
After a long pause, she said:
"Was she pretty?... Prettier than _I_ used to be?"
"She was handsome, I think. Not like you at all. Why talk about it?...
I'm glad I came, though, or I shouldn't have seen you. I shall always
be glad to have seen you again. Remember that, after we part. For me,
at least, it will never be so bitter since we've met and I've heard you
say you're sorry."
"God bless you," she murmured almost inaudibly.
He left her after half an hour, but drifted towards her again in the
afternoon. Insensibly they lost by degrees much of their constraint in
talking together. She told him of her father's illness, of her own life
in Balham; Heriot gave her some details of his appointment, explaining
that it was the duty of an Attorney-General and Solicitor-General to
reply to questions of law in the House, to advise the Government,
and conduct its cases, and the rest of it. By Wednesday night it was
difficult to him to realise that their first interview had occurred
only forty-eight hours ago. It had become his habit on deck to turn his
steps towards her, to sip tea by her side in the saloon, to saunter
with her after dinner in the starlight. Even at last he felt no
embarrassment as he moved towards her; even at last she came to smile
up at him as he drew near. Moments there could not fail to be when such
a state of things seemed marvellous and unnatural--when conversation
ceased, and they paused oppressed and tongue-tied by a consciousness
of the anomaly of their relations. Nevertheless such moments were but
hitches in an intercourse which grew daily more indispensable to them
both.
How indispensable it had become to herself the woman perceived as the
end of the voyage approached; and now she would have asked no better
than for them to sail on until she died. When she undressed at night,
she sighed, "Another day over"; when she woke in the morning, eagerness
quickened her pulses. On Saturday they would arrive; and when Friday
dawned, the reunion held less of strangeness than the reflection that
she and Heriot would separate again directly. To think that, as a
matter of course, they would say good-bye to each other, and resume
their opposite sides of an impassable gulf, looked more unnatural to
her than the renewed familiarity.
Their pauses were longer than usual on Friday evening. Both were
remembering that it was the last. Heriot had ascertained that Cheriton
had been able to leave her but little; and the notion of providing her
with the means to winter in some favourable climate was hot in his mind.
"It is understood," he said abruptly, "that you go to Drummond and do
exactly as he orders? You'll not be so mad as to refuse at the last
moment?"
"All right!" she answered apathetically, "I'll go. Shall I--will you
care to hear what he says?"
"Your aunt has promised to write to me. By the way, there's something
I want to say to-night. If what he advises is expensive, you must let
me make it possible for you. I claim that as my right. I intended
arranging it with Mrs. Baines, but she tells me you--you'd be bound to
know where the money came from. He'll probably tell you to live abroad."
"Thank you," she said after a slight start, "I could not take your
money. It is very good of you, but I would rather you didn't speak of
it. If you talked forever, I wouldn't consent."
"Mamie----"
"The very offer turns me cold. Please don't!"
"You're cruel," he said. "You're refusing to let me prolong your life.
Have I deserved that from you?"
"Oh!" she cried, in a tortured voice, "for God's sake, don't press me!
Leave me something--I won't say 'self-respect,' but a vestige, a grain
of proper pride. Think what my feelings would be, living on money from
you--it wouldn't prolong my life, George; it would kill me sooner.
You've been generous and merciful to me; be merciful to me still and
talk of something else."
"You are asking me to stand by and see you die. _I_ have feelings, too,
Mamie. I can't do it!"
"I'm dying," she said; "if it happens a little sooner, or a little
later, does it matter very much? If you want to be very kind to me,
to--to brighten the time that remains as much as you can, tell me that
if I send to you when--when it's a question of days, you'll come to the
place and see me again. I'd bless you for that! I've been afraid to ask
you till now; but it would mean more to me than anything else you could
do. Would you, if I sent?"
"Why," said Heriot labouredly, after another pause, "why would it mean
so much?"
They were leaning over the taffrail; and suddenly her head was bent,
and she broke into convulsive sobs that tore his breast.
"Mamie!" he exclaimed. "Mamie, tell me!" He glanced round and laid a
trembling touch on her hands. "Tell me, dear!" he repeated hoarsely.
"Do you love me, then?"
Her figure was shaken by the shuddering sobs. His touch tightened to a
clasp; he drew the hands down from the distorted face, drew the shaken
figure closer, till his own met it--till her bosom was heaving against
his heart.
"Do you love me, Mamie?"
"Yes!" she gasped. And then for an instant only their eyes spoke, and
in the intensity of their eyes each gave to the other body and soul.
"Yes, I love you," she panted; "it's my punishment, I suppose, to
love you too late. I shall never see you after to-morrow, till I am
dying--if then--but I love you. Remember it! It's no good to you, you
won't care, but remember it, because it's my punishment. You can say,
'When it was too late, she knew! She died detesting herself, shrinking
at her own body, her own loathsome body that she gave to another man!'
Oh!"--she beat her hands hysterically against his chest--"I hate him,
I hate him! God forgive me, he's in his grave, but I hate him when I
think what's been. And it wasn't his fault; it was mine, mine--my own
degraded, beastly self. Curse me, throw me from you! I'm not fit to be
standing here; I'm lower than the lowest woman in the streets!"
The violence of her emotion maddened him. He knew that _he_ loved
_her;_ the truth was stripped of the disguise in which he had sought
for years to wrap it--he knew that he had never ceased to love her; and
a temptation to make her his wife again, to cherish and possess her
so long as life should linger in her veins, flooded his reason. Their
gaze grew wider, deeper still; he could feel her quivering from head
to foot. Another moment, and he would have offered his honour to her
keeping afresh. Some men left the smoking-room; there was the sharp
interruption of laughter--the slam of the door. They both regained some
semblance of self-possession as they moved apart.
"I must go down," she said. And he did not beg her to remain.
It was their real farewell, for on the morrow they could merely
exchange a few words amid the bustle of arrival. Liverpool was reached
early in the morning, and when he saw her, she wore a hat and veil and
was already prepared to go ashore. In the glare of the sunshine the
veil could not conceal that her eyes were red with weeping, however,
and he divined that she had passed a sleepless night. To Mrs. Baines
he privately repeated his injunctions with regard to the physician,
for he was determined to have his way; and the widow assured him that
she would write to Morson Drummond for an appointment without loss of
time. The delays and shouts came to an end while he was speaking to
her; and the gangway was lowered, and Mamie moved forward to her side.
He saw them again in the custom-house, but for a minute only, and from
a distance. Evidently they got through without trouble, for when he
looked across again, they had gone.
As he saw that they had gone, a sensation of blankness fell upon
Heriot's mood, where he stood waiting among the scattered luggage. His
life felt newly empty and the day all at once seemed cold and dark.