“THOUGH LOVE AND LIFE AND DEATH SHOULD COME AND GO.”
Isola was alone in the spacious Roman drawing-room, its wide windows
open to the soft, warm air. The sun was off that side of the house
now, and the Venetian shutters had been pushed back; and between the
heavy stone pillars of the loggia she saw the orange and magnolia trees
in the garden, and the pale gold of the mimosas beyond. The sun was
shining full upon the Hill of Gardens, that hill at whose foot Nero
was buried in secret at dead of night by his faithful freedman and the
devoted woman who loved him to the shameful end of the shameful life;
that hill whose antique groves the wicked Cæsar’s ghost had once made a
place of terror. The wicked ghost was laid now. Modern civilization had
sent Nero the way of all phantoms; and fashionable Rome made holiday on
the Hill of Gardens. A military band was playing there this afternoon
in the golden light, and the familiar melodies in Don Giovanni were
wafted ever and anon in little gusts of sweetness to the loggia where
the vivid crimson of waxen camelias and the softer rose of oleander
blossoms gave brightness and colour to the dark foliage and the cold
white stone.
Isola heard those far-off melodies faint in the distance--heard without
heeding. The notes were beyond measure familiar, interwoven with the
very fabric of her life, for those were the airs Martin Disney loved,
and she had played them to him nearly every evening in their quiet,
monotonous life. She heard, unheeding, for her thoughts had wandered
back to the night of the ball at Lostwithiel and all that went after
it--the fatal night that struck the death-knell of peace and innocence.
How vividly she remembered every detail--her fluttering apprehensions
during the long drive on the dark road, up hill and down hill; her
eagerness for the delight of the dance, as an unaccustomed pleasure--a
scene to which young beauty flies as the moth to the flame; her
remorseful consciousness that she had done wrong in yielding to the
temptation which drew her there; the longing to see Lostwithiel once
more--Lostwithiel, whom she had vowed to herself never to meet again of
her own free will. She had gone home that afternoon resolved to forego
the ball, to make any social sacrifice rather than look upon that man
whose burning words of love, breathed in her ear before she had enough
of nerve or calmness to silence him, had left her scathed and geared
as if the lightning had blasted her. She had heard his avowal. There
was no room now to doubt the meaning of all that had gone before, no
ground now for believing in a tender, platonic admiration, lapping her
round with its soft radiance--a light, but not a fire. That which had
burnt into her soul to-day was the fierce flame of a dishonouring love,
the bold avowal of a lover who wanted to steal her from her husband,
and make her a sinner before her God.
She knew this much--had brooded upon it all the evening--and yet she
was going to a place where she must inevitably meet the Tempter.
She was going because it was expedient to go; because her persistent
refusal to be there might give rise to guesses and suspicions that
would lead to a discovery of the real reason of her absence. She
had often seen the subtle process, the society search-light by
which Trelasco and Fowey could arrive at the innermost working of a
neighbour’s heart, the deepest mysteries of motive.
She was going to the ball after all, fevered, anxious, full of dim
forebodings; and yet with an eager expectancy; and yet with a strange
over-mastering joy. How should she meet him? How could she avoid
him, without ostentatious avoidance, knowing how many eyes would be
quick to mark any deviation from conventional behaviour? Somehow or
other she was resolved to avoid all association with him; to get her
programme filled before he could ask her to dance; or to refuse in any
case if he asked her. He would scarcely venture to approach her after
what had been said in the lane, when her indignation had been plainly
expressed with angry tears. No, he would hardly dare. And so--in a
vague bewilderment at finding she was at her journey’s end--she saw the
lights of the little town close upon her, and in the next few minutes
her carriage was moving slowly in the rank of carriages setting down
their freight at the door of the inn.
Vaguely, as in a dream, she saw the lights and the flowers, the satin
gowns and the diamonds, the scarlet and white upon the walls, brush
and vizard, vizard and brush. He was not there. She looked along the
crowd, and that tall figure and that dark head were absent. She ought
to have been glad at this respite, and yet her heart grew heavy as lead.
Later he was there, and she was waltzing with him. At the last moment
when he was standing before her, cool, self-possessed, as it were
unconscious of that burning past, she had no more power to refuse to
be his partner than the bird has to escape from the snake. She had
given him her hand, and they were moving slowly, softly to the music
of the soft, slow waltz. Myosotis, myosotis--mystic flower which means
everlasting remembrance! Would she ever forget this night? Their
last meeting--safest possible meeting-place here in the shine of the
lamps--in the sight of the multitude. Here she could so easily hold him
at a distance. Here she might speak to him lightly, as if she too were
unconscious of the past. Here she was safe against his madness and her
own weak unstable heart, which fluttered at his smallest word.
And so the night wore on, and she danced with him more times than she
could count, forgetting, or pretending to forget, other engagements;
going through an occasional waltz with another partner just for
propriety’s sake, and hardly knowing who that partner was; knowing so
well that there was some one else standing against the wall, watching
her every movement, with the love-light in his eyes.
Then came the period after supper when they sat in the ante-room and
let the dances go by, hearing the music of waltzes which they were to
have danced together, hearing and heeding not. And then came a sudden
scare at the thought of the hour. Was it late?
Late, very late!
The discovery fluttered and unnerved her, and she was scarcely able to
collect her thoughts as he handed her into the carriage and shut the
door.
“Surely it was a grey horse that brought me!” she exclaimed, and
in the next minute she recognized Lostwithiel’s brougham, the same
carriage in which she had been driven home through the rain upon that
unforgotten night when his house sheltered her, when she saw his face
for the first time.
Yes, it was his carriage. She knew the colour of the lining, the little
brass clock, the reading-lamp, the black panther rug. She pulled at the
check-string, but without effect. The carriage drove on, slowly, but
steadily, to the end of the town. She let down the window and called to
the coachman. There was only one man on the box, and he took no notice
of her call.
Yes, he had heard, perhaps, for he drew up his horse suddenly by the
road-side, a little way beyond the town. A man opened the door and
sprang in, breathless after running. It was Lostwithiel.
“You put me into your carriage!” she cried distractedly. “How could you
make such a mistake? Pray tell him to go back to the inn directly.”
They were driving along the country road at a rapid pace, and he had
seated himself by her side, clasping her hand. He pulled up the window
nearest her, and prevented her calling to the coachman.
“Why should you go back? You will be home sooner with my horse than
with the screw that brought you.”
“But the fly will be waiting for me--the man will wonder.”
“Let him wonder. He won’t wait very long, you may be assured. He will
guess what has happened. In the confusion of carriages you took the
wrong one. Isola, I am going to leave Cornwall to-night--to leave
England--perhaps never to return. Give me the last few moments of my
life here. Be merciful to me. I am going away--perhaps for ever.”
“Take me home,” she said. “Are you really taking me home? Is this the
right way?”
“Of course it is the right way. Do you suppose I am going to drive you
to London?”
He let down the glass suddenly, and pointed into the night.
“Isola, do you see where we are? There’s the sign-post at the cross
roads. There’s the tower of Tywardreath Church, though you can hardly
see it in this dim light. Are you satisfied now?”
He had drawn up the glass again. The windows were clouded by the mist
of their mingled breath; the atmosphere was faint with the odour of the
faded chrysanthemums on her gown and the carnation in the lapel of his
coat. All that she could see of the outer world was the blurred light
of the carriage lamps. The high-spirited horse was going up and down
the hills at a perilous pace. At this rate the journey could not take
long.
And then--and then--he came back to the prayer he had breathed in her
ear more than twelve hours ago in the wintry lane. He loved her, he
loved her, he loved her! Could she refuse to go away with him--having
woven herself into his life, having made him madly, helplessly in love
with her? Could she refuse? Had any woman the right to refuse? He
appealed to her sense of honour. She had gone too far--she had granted
too much already, granting him her love. She was in his arms in the dim
light, in the faint, dream-like atmosphere. He was taking possession of
her weak heart by all that science of love in which he was past master.
Honour, conscience, fidelity to the absent, piety, innocence were being
swept away in that lava flood of passion. Helpless, irresolute, she
faltered again and again. “Take me home, Lostwithiel! Have mercy! Take
me home.”
He stopped those tremulous lips with a kiss--the kiss that betrays. The
carriage dashed down a steep bill, rattled along a street so narrow
that the wheels seemed to grind against the house-fronts on each side,
down hill again, and then the horse was pulled up suddenly in a stony
square, and the door opened, and the soft, fresh sea-breeze blew among
her loosened hair, and upon her uncovered neck, and she heard the
gentle plish-plash of a boat moored against the quay at her feet.
“This is not home!” she cried piteously.
“Yes, it is home, love, our home for a little while--the home that can
carry us to the other end of the world, if you will.”
The quay, and the water, and the few faint lights here and there grew
dark, and she knew no more, till she heard the sailors crying, “Yeo,
heave, yeo,” and the heavy sails flapping, and the creak of the boom as
it swayed in the wind, and felt the dancing motion of the boat as she
cut her way through the waves, felt the strong arm that clasped her,
and heard the low, fond voice that murmured in her ear, “Isola, Isola,
forgive me! I could not live without you.”
* * * * *
That which came afterwards had seemed one long and lurid dream--a
dream of fair weather and foul; of peril and despair; of passionate,
all-conquering love.
To-day, as she lay supine in the afternoon silence--lying as Tabitha
had left her, in a fevered sleep--the vision of that past came back
upon her in all its vivid colouring, almost as distinctly as it had
re-acted itself in her hours of delirium, when she had lived that
tragic chapter of her life over again, and had felt the fury of the
waves and breathed the chill, salt air of the tempest-driven sea, and
had seen the moon riding high amidst the cloud-chaos--now appearing,
now vanishing, as if she too were a storm-driven bark in a raging sea.
Oh God! how vividly those hours came back! The awful progress from
Ushant to Arcachon; the darkness of the brief day; the horror of the
long night; the shuddering yacht, with straining spars, and broadside
beaten by a heaving mass of water, that struck her with the force of a
thousand battering-rams, blow after blow, each blow seeming as if the
next must always be the last--the final crash and end of all things.
The pretty, dainty vessel, long and narrow, rode like an eggshell on
those furious waters--here a long wall of inky blackness, rising like a
mountain-ridge, and bearing down on the doomed ship, and beyond, as far
as the eye could reach, a waste of surf, livid in the moonlight. What
helpless insignificance, as of a leaf tossed on a whirlpool, when that
mountainous mass took the yacht and lifted her on cyclopean shoulders,
and shook her off again into the black trough of the sea, as into the
depths of hell! And this not once only, nor a hundred times only, but
on through that endless-seeming night, on in the sickly winter dawn
and in the faint yellow gleam of a rainy noontide--on through day that
seemed mixed and entangled with night, as if the beginning of creation
had come round again, and the light were not yet divided from the
darkness.
Oh, those passionate, never-to-be-forgotten moments, when she had
stood with him at the top of the companion, looking out upon those
livid waters; fondly believing that each moment was to be their last;
that the gates of death were opening yonder--a watery way, a gulf to
which they must go down, in a moment, in a little moment, in a flash,
in a breath, at the next, or the next, or the next mad plunge of that
hurrying bark. Yes, death was there, in front of them--inevitable,
imminent, immediate--and life and sin, shame, remorse, were done with,
along with the years that lay behind them, a page blotted and blurred
with one passionate madness, which had changed the colour of a woman’s
life. She knew not how she bore up against the force of that tempest;
clinging to him with her bare, wet arms; held up by him; crouching
against the woodwork, which shook and rattled with every blow of the
battering-rams. She only knew that his arms were round her, that she
was safe with him, even when the leaping surf rose high above her head,
wrapping her round like a mantle, blinding, drowning her in a momentary
extinction. She only knew that his lips were close to her ear, and that
in a momentary lull of those awful voices he murmured, “We are going
to die, Isola! The boat cannot live through such a storm! We shall go
down to death together!” And her lips turned to him with a joyful cry,
“Thank God!” Then again, in a minute’s interval, he pleaded, “Forgive
me, love; my stolen love, forgive me before we die!” And again, “Was it
a crime, Isola?” “If it was, I forgive you!” she whispered, clinging to
him as the blast struck them.
* * * * *
Cruel revulsion of feeling, bitter irony of Fate, when the great grim
waves--which had seemed like living monsters hurrying down upon them
with malignant fury to tear and to devour--when the awful sea began to
roar with a lesser voice, and the thunder of the battering-rams had
a duller sound, and the bows of the yacht no longer plunged straight
down into the leaden-coloured pit; no longer climbed those inky ridges
with such blind impetus, as of a cockle-shell in a whirlpool. Bitter
sense of loss and dismay when the grey, cold dawn lighted a quieter
sea, and she heard the captain telling Lostwithiel that they had seen
the worst of the storm, and that there was no fear now. He was going to
put on more canvas: and hadn’t the lady better go below, where it was
warm. She needn’t feel anyway nervous now. They would soon be in the
roadstead of Arcachon.
She had not felt the chill change from night to morning. She had not
felt the surf that drenched her loose, entangled hair. She hardly know
when or how Lostwithiel had wrapped her in his fur-lined coat; but
she found that she was so enveloped presently when she stumbled and
staggered down to the cabin, and flung herself face downward upon the
sofa, in a paroxysm of impotent despair.
Death would have delivered her. The tempest was her friend; and the
tempest had passed her by, and left her lying there like a weed, more
worthless than any weed that over the sea cast up to rot upon the
barren rocks. Yes, she was left there; left in a life that sin had
blighted; loathsome to herself, hateful to her God.
She locked herself in the cabin, while the hurrying footsteps overhead
told her that Lostwithiel was working with the sailors.
An hour later, and he was at the cabin door, pleading for one kind
word, entreating her to let him see her, were it only for a few
moments, to know that she was not utterly broken down by the peril she
had passed through. He pleaded in vain. She would give no answer--she
would speak no word. Indeed, in that dull agony of shame and despair
it seemed to her as if a dumb devil had entered into her. Her parched
lips seemed to have lost the power of speech. She lay there, staring
straight before her at all the swinging things on the cedar panel--the
books and photographs--and lamps and frivolities, vibrating with
every movement of the sea. Her hands were clenched until the nails
cut into the flesh. Her heart was throbbing with a dull, slow beat
that made itself torturingly audible. Did God create His creatures
for such agony? Had she been foredoomed everlastingly--in that awful
incomprehensible ante-natal Eternity--foredoomed to this fallen state,
to this unutterable shame?
Hours went by, she knew not how. Again and again Lostwithiel came to
her door, and talked and entreated--Heaven knows how tenderly--with
what deep contrition, with what fond pleading for pardon. But the dumb
devil held her still. She wrapped herself in a sullen despair--not
anger, for anger is active. Hers was only a supine resistance.
At last she heard him come with one of the sailors, and she could make
out from their whispering talk that they were going to force open the
door. Then she started up in a fury, and went and flung herself against
the cedar panels.
“If you don’t leave me alone in my misery I will kill myself!” she
cried.
The long night was over; and the sun was high. It seemed as if they
were sailing over a summer sea, and through the scuttle port she saw a
little foreign town nestling under the shelter of pine-clad hills.
She woke from brief and troubled slumbers to see this smiling shore,
and at first she fancied they must have sailed back to Cornwall, and
that this was some unknown bay upon that rock-bound coast; but the
sapphire sea and the summer-like sunshine suggested a fairer clime than
rugged Britain.
While she was looking out at the crescent-shaped bay, and the long
line of white villas, the anchor was being lowered. The sea was almost
as smooth as a lake, and those tranquil waters had the colour and the
sheen of sapphire and emerald. She thought of the jasper sea--the
sea of the Apocalypse, the tideless sea beside that land of the New
Jerusalem where there are no more tears, where there can be no more
sin, a city of ransomed souls, redeemed from all earth’s iniquity.
A boat was being lowered. She heard the scroop of the ropes in the
davits; she heard footsteps on the accommodation-ladder, and then
the dip of oars, and presently the boat passed between her and the
sunlit waters, and she saw Lostwithiel sitting in the stern, with the
rudder-lines in his hands, while two sailors were bending to their
oars, with wind-blown hair and cheery, smiling faces, broad and red in
the gay morning sunshine.
He was gone, and she breathed more freely. There was a sense of release
in his absence; and for the first time she looked round the cabin,
where beautiful and luxurious things lay, thrown here and there in
huddled masses of brilliant colour. A Japanese screen, a masterpiece
of rainbow-hued embroidery on a sea-green ground, flung against the
panelling at one end--Persian curtains wrenched from their fastenings
and hanging awry--satin pillows that had drifted into a heap in one
corner--signs of havoc everywhere. She stood in the midst of all this
ruin, and looked at her own reflection in a Venetian glass riveted to
the panelling, about the only object that had held its place through
the storm.
Her own reflection. Was that really herself, that ghastly image which
the glass gave back to her? The reflection of a woman with livid cheeks
and blanched lips, with swollen eyelids, and dark rings of purple round
the haggard eyes, and hair rough and tangled as Medusa’s locks, and
bare shoulders from which the stained satin bodice had slipped away.
Her wedding-gown! Could that defiled garment--the long folds of the
once shining satin, draggled and dripping with sea-water--could these
tawdry rags be the wedding-gown she had put on in her proud and happy
innocence in the old bedroom at Dinan, with mother, and servants, and a
useful friend or two helping and hindering?
Oh, if they could see her now, those old friends of her unclouded
childhood, the mother and father who had loved and trusted her, who had
never spoken of evil things in her hearing, had never thought that sin
could come near her! And she had fallen like the lowest of womankind.
She had forfeited her place among the virtuous and happy for ever. She,
Martin Disney’s wife! That good man, that brave soldier who had fought
for Queen and country--it was his wife who stood there in her shame,
haggard and dishevelled!
She flung her arms above her head and wrung her hands in a paroxysm
of despair. Then, with a little cry, she plucked at the loose wild
tresses as if she would have torn them from her head; and then she
threw herself upon the cabin floor in her agony, and grovelled there, a
creature for whom death would have been a merciful release.
“If I could die--if I could but die, and no one know!” she moaned.
She lifted herself up again upon her knees, and, with one hand upon
the floor, looked round the walls of the cabin--looked at a trophy
of Moorish and Italian arms which decorated the panelling, searching
for some sharp dagger with which she might take her hated life. And
then came the thought of what must follow death, not for her in
the dim incomprehensible eternity, but for those who loved her on
earth, for those who would have to be told how she had been found,
in her draggled wedding-gown, stabbed by her own hand on board Lord
Lostwithiel’s yacht. What a story of shame and crime for newspapers
to embellish, and for scandal-lovers to gloat over! No! She dared not
destroy herself thus. She must collect her senses, escape from her
seducer, and keep the secret of her dishonour.
She took off her gown, and rolled train and bodice into a bundle as
small as she could make them. Then she looked about the cabin for some
object with which to weight her bundle. Yes, that would do. A little
brass dolphin that was used to steady the open door. That was heavy
enough, perhaps. She put it into the middle of her bundle, tied a
ribbon tightly round the whole, and then she opened the scuttle port
and dropped her wedding-garment into the sea. The keen fresh wind, the
wind from pine-clad hills and distant snow mountains, blew in upon
her bare neck and chilled her; but it helped to cool the fever of her
mind, and she sat down and leant her head upon her clasped hands, and
tried to think what she must do to free herself from the toils in which
guilty love had caught her.
She must escape from the yacht. She must go back to England--somehow.
She thought that if she were to appeal to Lostwithiel’s honour
some spark of better feeling would prevail over that madness which
had wrecked her, and he would let her go, he would take her back
to England, and facilitate her secret return to the home she had
dishonoured. But could she trust herself to make that appeal? Could
she stand fast against his pleading, if he implored her to stay with
him, to live the life that he had planned for her, the life that he had
painted so eloquently, the dreamy, beautiful life amidst earth’s most
romantic scenes, the life of love in idleness? Could she resist him
if he should plead--it might be with tears--he, whom she adored, her
destroyer and her divinity? No, she must leave the yacht before he came
back to her. But how?
There were only men on board. There was no woman to whose compassion
she could appeal, no woman to lend her clothes to cover her. She
saw herself once again in the Venetian glass, in her long trained
petticoat of muslin and lace, so daintily fresh when she dressed for
the ball--muslin and lace soddened by the sea, torn to shreds where
her feet had caught in the flounces as she stumbled down the companion
during last night’s storm. A fitting costume in which to travel from
Arcachon to London, verily! She opened a door leading to an inner
cabin, which contained bed and bath, and all toilet appliances. Hanging
against the wall there were three dressing-gowns, the lightest and
least masculine of the three being a robe of Indian camel’s hair,
embroidered with gray silk--a shapeless garment with loose sleeves and
a girdle.
Here, within locked doors, she made her hurried toilet, with much cold
water. She brushed her long, ragged hair with one of the humblest of
the brushes. She would not take so much as a few drops from the great
crystal bottle of eau de Cologne which was held in a silver frame
suspended from the ceiling. Nothing of his would she touch, nothing
belonging to the man who wanted to pour his fortune into her lap, to
make his life her life, his estate her estate, his name her name, could
she but survive the ordeal of the divorce court, and shake off old ties.
She rolled her hair in a large coil at the back of her head. She put
on the camel’s hair dressing-gown, and tied the girdle round her long,
slim waist, and having done this she looked altogether a different
creature from that vision of haggard shame which she had seen just
now with loathing. She had a curious Puritan air in her sad coloured
raiment, and braided hair.
Scarcely had she finished when she heard the dip of oars, and looking
out in an agony of horror at the apprehension of Lostwithiel’s return,
she saw a boat laden with two big milliner’s baskets, and with a woman
sitting in the stem. The men who were rowing this boat were not of the
crew of the _Vendetta_.
She had not long to wonder. She unlocked her door, and went into the
adjoining cabin, while the boat came alongside, and woman and baskets
were hauled upon the deck.
Three minutes afterwards the cabin-boy knocked at her door, and told
her that there was a person from Arcachon to see her, a dressmaker with
things that had been ordered for her.
She unlocked the door, for the first time since she locked it at dawn,
and found herself face to face with a smiling young person, whose black
eyes and olive complexion were warm with the glow of the south, golden
in the eyes, carnation on the plump, oval cheeks.
This young person had the honour to bring the trousseau which Monsieur
had sent for Madame’s inspection. Monsieur had told her how sadly
inconvenienced Madame had been by the accident by which all her luggage
had been left upon the quay at the moment of sailing. In truth it must
have been distressing for Madame, as it had evidently been distressing
for Monsieur in his profound sympathy with Madame, his wife. In the
meantime she, the young person, had complied with Monsieur’s orders,
and had brought all that there was of the best and most delicate and
refined for Madame’s gracious inspection.
The cabin-boy brought in the two baskets, which the milliner opened
with an air, taking out the delicate lingerie, the soft silk and softer
cashmere--peignoirs, frilled petticoats, a fluff and flutter of creamy
lace and pale satin ribbons, transforming simplest garments into things
of beauty. She spread out her wares, chattering all the while, and then
looked at Madame for approval.
Isola scarcely glanced at all the finery. She pointed to the only
plain walking-gown among all the delicate prettinesses, the silks and
cashmeres and laces--a grey tweed tailor-gown, with no adornment
except a little narrow black braid.
“I will keep that,” she said, “and one set of under-linen, the
plainest. You can take all the rest of the things back to your shop.
Please help me to dress as quickly as you can--I want to go on shore in
the boat that takes you back.”
“But, Madame, Monsieur insisted that I should bring a complete
trousseau. He wished Madame to supply herself with all things needful
for a long cruise in the south.”
“He was mistaken. My luggage is safe enough. I shall have it again in a
few days. I only want clothes to wear for a day or two. Kindly do what
I ask.”
Her tone was so authoritative that the milliner complied, reluctantly,
and murmuring persuasive little speeches while she assisted Madame to
dress. All that she had brought was of the most new--expressly arrived
from Paris, from one of the most distinguished establishments in the
Rue de la Paix. Fashions change so quickly--and the present fashions
were so enchanting, so original. She must be pardoned if she suggested
that nothing in Madame’s wardrobe could be so new or so elegant as
these latest triumphs of an artistic _faiseur_. Madame took no heed of
her eloquence, but hurried through the simple toilet, insisted upon all
the finery being replaced in the two baskets, and then went upon deck
with the milliner.
“I am going on shore to his lordship,” she said, with quiet authority,
to the captain.
It was a deliberate lie--the first she had told, but not the last she
would have to tell.
She landed on the beach at Arcachon--penniless, but with a diamond
ring on her wedding finger--her engagement ring--which she knew, by a
careless admission of Martin Disney’s, to have cost fifty pounds. She
left the milliner, and went into the little town, dreading to meet
Lostwithiel at every step. She found a complacent jeweller who was
willing to advance twenty-five Napoleons upon the ring, and promised
to return it to her on the receipt of that sum, with only a bagatelle
of twenty francs for interest, since Madame would redeem her pledge
almost immediately.
Furnished with this money she drove straight to the station, and waited
there in the most obscure corner she could find till the first train
left for Bordeaux. At Bordeaux she had a long time to wait, still in
hiding, before the express left for Paris--and then came the long,
lonely journey--from Bordeaux to Paris--from Paris to London--from
London to Trelasco. It seemed an endless pilgrimage, a nightmare dream
of dark night and wintry day, made hideous by the ceaseless throb of
the engine, the perpetual odour of sulphur and smoke. She reached
Trelasco somehow, and sank exhausted in Tabitha’s arms.
“What day is it?” she asked faintly, looking round the familiar room,
as if she had never seen it before.
“Thursday, ma’am. You have been away ten days,” the old servant
answered coldly.
It was only the next day that Tabitha told her mistress she must leave
her.
“There is no need to talk about what has happened,” she said. “I have
kept your secret. I have let no one know that you were away. I packed
Susan off for a holiday the morning after the ball. I don’t believe any
one knows anything about you--unless you were seen yesterday on your
way home.”
Then came stern words of renunciation, a conscientious but rather
narrow-minded woman’s protest against sin.