"Except this man who turned up here in George's own camp--and in the
village, two months ago, but whom I never saw till this week--_this
week_--Armistice Day--John Dempsey. That was a queer chance, wasn't it?
The sort of thing nobody could have expected. I was coming back from
Millsborough. I was--well, just that evening, I was awfully happy. I
expected nothing. And then--within twenty minutes--"
She told the story to Janet's astounded ears, of the two apparitions in
the road, of her two interviews--first with Dempsey, and the following
evening with Delane--and of her own attempts to bribe them both.
And at that her composure broke down.
"Why did I do it?" she said wildly, springing to her feet. "It was
idiotic! Why didn't I just accept the boy's story, and say quietly, 'Yes,
I was staying with the Tanners'? And why didn't I defy Roger--go straight
to George, and hand him over to the police? Don't you see why? Because it
is true!--_it's true!_--and I'm terrified. If I lost George, I should
kill myself. I never thought I should be--I could be--in love with
anybody like this. But yet I suppose it was in me all the time. I was
always seeking--reaching out--to somebody I could love with every bit of
me, soul and body--somebody I could follow--for I can't manage for
myself--I'm not like you, Janet. And now I've found him--and--Do you know
what that is?"
She pulled a letter out of her pocket, and looked at Janet through a mist
of despairing tears.
"It's a letter from George. It came this morning. He wants me to marry
him at once--next week. He's got some new work in France, and he saw that
I was miserable because he was going away. And why shouldn't I? _Why
shouldn't I?_ I love him. There's nothing wrong with me, except that
wretched story. Well, there are two reasons. First"--she spoke with slow
and bitter emphasis--"I don't believe for a moment Roger will keep his
word. I know him. He is frightfully ill. He says he's dying. He may
die--before he's got through this money. That would be the best thing
that could happen to me--wouldn't it? But probably he won't die--and
certainly he'll get through the money! Then he'll come back--and I shall
begin bribing him again--and telling lies to hide it from George--and
in the end it'll be no use--for Roger's quite reckless--you can't appeal
to him through anything but money. He'll see George, whatever I do, and
try it on with him. And then--George will know how to deal with _him_, I
dare say--but when we are alone--and he asks _me_--"
She sank down again on the floor, kneeling, and put her hands on Janet's
knees.
"You see, Janet, don't you? You see?"
It was the cry of a soul in anguish.
"You poor, poor thing!"
Janet, trembling from head to foot, bowed her head on Rachel's, and the
two clung together, in silence, broken only by two deep sobs from Rachel.
Then Janet disengaged herself. She was pale, but no longer agitated, and
her blue eyes which were her only beauty were clear and shining.
"You'll let me say just what I feel, Rachel?"
"Of course."
"You can't marry him without telling him. No, no--you couldn't do that!"
Rachel said nothing. She was, sitting on the floor, her eyes turned away
from Janet.
"You couldn't do that, Rachel," Janet resumed, as though she were
urgently thinking her way; "you'd never have a happy moment."
"Oh, yes, of course," said Rachel, throwing up her head with a half
scornful gesture. "One says that--but how do you know? I might never
think of it again--if Roger and that man Dempsey were out of the way.
It's dead--it's _dead_! Why do we trouble about such things!"
"It would be dead," said Janet in a low voice, "if you'd told him--and
he'd forgiven!"
"What has he to do with it?" cried Rachel, stubbornly, "it was before he
knew me. I was a different being."
"No--it is always the same self, which we are making, all the time. Don't
you see--dear, dear Rachel!--it's your chance now to put it all behind
you--just by being true. Oh, I don't want to preach to you--but I see it
so clearly!"
"But it isn't as a man would see it--a man like George," said Rachel,
shaking her head. "Look there"--she pointed to a little bundle of letters
lying on the table--"there are letters from his people which he brought
me this morning. It's awful!--how they take me at his valuation--just
because he loves me. I must be everything that's good, because he says
so. And you can see what kind of people they are--what they think of
him--and what they imagine about me--what they think I _must_ be--for
him to love me. I don't mean they're prigs--they aren't a bit. It's just
their life coming out, quite naturally. You see what they are--quite
simply--what they can't help being, and what they expect from him and the
woman he marries. And he's got to take me home to them--some time--to
present me to them. The divorce is difficult enough. Even if they think
of me as quite innocent, it will be hard for them, that George should
marry a divorced woman."
"What have they to do with it?" interrupted Janet. "It's only George that
matters--no other person has any right whatever to know! You needn't
consider anybody else."
"Yes--but think of _him_. It's bad enough that I should know something he
doesn't know--but at least _he's_ spared. He can take me home to his
mother--whom he adores--and if _I_ know that I'm a cheat and a sham--he
doesn't--it will be all easy for him."
Janet was silenced for the moment by the sheer passion of the voice. She
sat, groping a little, under the stress of her own thought, and praying
inwardly--without words--for light and guidance.
"And think of _me_, please!" Rachel went on. "If I tell him, it's
done--for ever. He'll forgive me, I think. He may be everything
that's dear, and good, and kind"--her voice broke--"but it'd hit him
dreadfully hard. A man like that can't forget such a thing. When I've
once said it, I shall have changed everything between us. He must
think--some time--when he's alone--when I'm not there--'It was Dick
Tanner once--it will be some one else another time!' I shall have been
pulled down from the place where he puts me now--even after he knows
all about Roger and the divorce--pulled down for good and all--however
much he may pity me--however good he may be to me. It will be love
perhaps--but another kind of love. He can't trust me again. No one could.
And it's that I can't bear--I can't _bear_!"
She looked defiantly at Janet, and the little room with its simple
furnishings seemed too small a stage for such an energy of fear and
distress.
"Yes--that you could bear," said Janet quietly, "with him to help
you--and God. It would all straighten out in the end--because the first
step would be right."
Rachel turned upon her.
"Now that I've told you," she cried, "can _you_ ever think the same of me
again? You know you can't!"
Janet caught her cold hands, and held them close, looking up to her.
"Not the same--no, not the same! But if I cared for you before, Rachel--I
care for you ten thousand times more now. Don't you see?--it will be the
same with him?"
Rachel shook her head.
"No--a _man's_ different," she repeated, "a man's different!"
"Anyway, you _must_," said Janet resolutely, "you know you must. You
don't need me to tell you."
Rachel wrenched herself away with a little moan and hid her face in her
hands as she leaned against the mantelpiece. Janet, looking up, and
transfigured by that spiritual energy, that ultimate instinctive faith
which was the root force in her, went on, pleading.
"Dear Rachel, one goes on living side by side--doing one's daily
work--and thinking just one's ordinary thoughts--and all the time one
never speaks of the biggest things of all--the only things that matter,
really. Isn't it God that matters--and the law in our hearts? If we break
it--if we aren't true--if we wrong those that love us--if we injure and
deceive--how will it be when we grow old--when we come to die? Whatever
our gain--we shall have lost our souls?"
"You think I should injure him by marrying him?" cried Rachel.
"No--no! A thousand times, no! But by deceiving him--by not trusting
him--with all your heart, and all your life--that would be the worst
injury."
"How do you know all there may have been in his life?" said Rachel,
vehemently--"I don't ask."
"I think you do know."
Rachel considered the words, finally dropping her face again out of
sight.
"Well, I dare say I do!" she said wearily. "Of course he's a hundred
times too good for me."
"Don't turn it off like that! It's for oneself one has to think--one's
own fulfilling of the law. Love--_is_ the fulfilling of the law. And love
means trust--and truth."
Janet's voice sank. She had said her say. Rachel was silent for some
time, and Janet sat motionless. The clock and the fire were the only
sounds. At last Rachel moved. With a long sigh, she pressed back the
ruffled hair from her temples, and standing tiptoe before a small mirror
that hung over the mantelpiece, she began to pin up some coils that had
broken loose. When that was done, she turned slowly towards Janet.
"Very well. That's settled. How shall it be done? Shall I write it or say
it?"
Janet gasped a little between laughing and crying. Then she caught
Rachel's cold unresisting hand, and laid it tenderly against her own
cheek.
"Write it."
"All right." The voice was that of an automaton. "How shall I send it?"
"Would you--would you trust me to take it?"
"You mean--you'd talk to him?"
"If you gave me leave."
Rachel thought a little, and then made a scarcely perceptible sign of
assent. A few more words passed as to the best time at which to find
Ellesborough at leisure. It was decided that Janet should aim at catching
him in the midday dinner hour. "I should bicycle, and get home before
dark."
"And now let's talk of something else," said Rachel, imperiously.
She found some business letters that had to be answered, and set to work
on them. Janet wrote up her milk records and dairy accounts. The fire
sank gently to its end. Janet's cat came with tail outstretched, and
rubbed itself sociably, first against Janet's skirts, and then against
Rachel. No trace remained in the little room, where the two women sat at
their daily work, of the scene which had passed between them, except in
Rachel's pallor, and the occasional shaking of her hand as it passed over
the paper.
Then when Janet put up her papers with a look at the clock, which was
just going to strike ten o'clock, Rachel too cleared away, and with that
instinct for air and the open which was a relic of her Canadian life, and
made any closed room after a time an oppression to her, she threw a cloak
over her shoulders, and went out again to breathe the night. There was a
young horse who, on the previous day, had needed the vet. She went across
the yard to the stable to look at him.
All was well with the horse, whose swollen hock had been comfortably
bandaged by Hastings before he left. But as she stood beside him, close
to the divided door, opening on the hill, of which both the horizontal
halves were now shut, she was aware of certain movements on the other
side of the door--some one passing it--footsteps. Her nerves gave a
jump. Could it be?--_again_! Impetuously she went to the door, threw open
the upper half, and looked out. Nothing--but the faint starlight on the
hill, and the woods crowning it.
She called.
"Who's there?" But no one answered.
Fancy, of course. But with the knowledge she now had, she could not bring
herself to go round the farm. Instead she carefully closed the stable
shutter, and ran back across the yard into the shelter of the house,
locking the front door behind her, and going into the sitting-room and
the kitchen, to see that the windows were fastened.
Janet was waiting for her at the top of the stairs. They kissed each
other gravely, in silence, like those who feel that the time for speech
is done. Then Rachel went into her room, and Janet heard her turn the
key. Janet herself slept intermittently. But whenever she woke, it seemed
to her that there was some slight sound in the next room--a movement or
a rustle, which showed that Rachel was still awake--and up?
It was a night indeed which left Rachel with that sense of strange
illuminations, of life painfully enlarged and deepened, which love and
suffering may always bring to the woman who is capable of love and
suffering. She had spent the hours in writing to Ellesborough, and in
that letter she had unpacked her heart to its depths, Janet guessed. When
she received the letter from Rachel on the morrow, she handled it as a
sacred thing.