‘IS THERE NO GRACE? IS THERE NO REMEDIE?’
When the door closed on Madoline, Daphne rose and changed her
crumpled muslin for a dressing-gown, and brushed the bright silky
hair and rolled it up in a loose knot at the back of her head, and
bathed her feverish face, and put on a fresh gown, and made herself
altogether a respectable young person. Then she seated herself before
a dressing-table, which was littered all over with trinket-boxes and
miscellaneous trifles more or less indispensable to a young lady’s
happiness.
She had acquired a larger collection of jewellery than is usually
possessed by a girl of eighteen.
There were all Madoline’s birthday and New Year gifts: rings, lockets,
bracelets, brooches, all in the simplest style, as became her youth,
but all valuable after their kind. And there were Edgar’s presents: a
broad gold bracelet, set with pearls, to match her necklace; a locket
with her own and her lover’s initials interwoven in a diamond monogram;
a diamond and turquoise cross; and the engagement ring—a half-hoop of
magnificent opals.
‘I wonder why he chose opals,’ mused Daphne, as she put the ring into
the purple-velvet case in which it had come from the jeweller’s.
‘Most people think them unlucky; but it seems as if my life was to be
overshadowed with omens.’
She put all her lover’s presents together, and packed them neatly in a
sheet of drawing-paper, the largest and strongest kind of wrapper she
could find. Then, when she had lighted her taper and carefully sealed
this packet, she wrote upon it: ‘For Edgar, with Daphne’s love’—a
curious way in which to return a jilted lover’s gifts.
Then she sat for some time with the rest of her treasures opened out
before her on the table where she wrote her letters, and finally she
wrapped up each trinket separately, and wrote on each packet. On one:
‘For Madame Tolmache;’ on another: ‘For Miss Toby;’ on a third: ‘For
Martha Dibb.’ On a box containing her neatest brooch she wrote: ‘For
dear old Spicer.’ There were others inscribed with other names. She
forgot no one; and then at the last she sat looking dreamily at a
little ring, the first she had ever worn—best loved of all her jewels,
a single heart-shaped turquoise set in a slender circlet of plain gold.
Madoline had sent it to her on her thirteenth birthday. The gold was
worn and bent with long use, but the stone had kept its colour.
‘I should like him to have something that was mine,’ she said to
herself; and then she put the ring into a tiny cardboard box, and
sealed it in an envelope, on which she wrote: ‘For Mr. Goring.’
This was the last of her treasures, except the pearl necklace which she
always wore—her amulet, as she called it—and now she put all the neat
little packages carefully away in her desk, and on the top of them she
laid a slip of paper on which she had written:
‘If I should die suddenly, please let these parcels be given as I have
directed.’
This task being accomplished at her leisure, and the desk locked, she
went once more to the open window, and looked out at the lake. The
atmosphere and expression of the scene had changed since she looked
at it last. The vivid dancing brightness of morning was gone, and the
mellow light of afternoon touched all things with its pensive radiance.
The joyousness of the picture had fled. Its beauty was now more in
harmony with Daphne’s soul. While she was standing there in an idle
reverie, a peremptory tap came at the door.
‘Come in,’ she answered mechanically, without turning her head.
It was Mowser, whose severe countenance appeared round the half-open
door.
‘If you please, Miss Daphne, Sir Vernon wishes to speak to you,
immediate, in his study.’
Seldom in Daphne’s life had such a message reached her. Sir Vernon had
not been in the habit of seeking private conferences with his younger
daughter. He had given her an occasional lecture _en passant_, but
however he might have disapproved of the flightiness of her conduct, he
had never summoned her to his presence for a scolding in cold blood.
‘Is there anything wrong?’ she asked hurriedly; but Mowser had
disappeared.
She went slowly down the broad shallow staircase, and to the room which
her father had made his private apartment. It was one of the best rooms
in the house, facing the lake, and sheltered from the glare of the sun
by a couple of magnificent magnolia trees, which shaded the lawn in
front of the windows. It was a large room with a polished floor, and
pretty Swiss furniture, carved cabinets, and a carved chimney-piece,
and a little blue china clock set in a garland of carved flowers.
Sir Vernon was seated at his writing-table, grim, stern-looking, his
open despatch-box before him in the usual official style. A little way
off sat Edgar Turchill, his folded arms resting on the back of a high
chair, his face hidden. It was the attitude of profound despondency,
or even of despair. One glance at her father’s face, and then at that
lowered head and clenched hands, told Daphne what was coming.
‘You sent for me,’ she faltered, standing in the middle of the bare
polished floor, and looking straight at her father, fearlessly, for
there is a desperate sorrow which knows not fear.
‘Yes, madam,’ replied Sir Vernon in his severest voice. ‘I sent for
you to tell you, in the presence of the man who was to have been your
husband, that your abominable treachery has been discovered.’
‘I am not treacherous,’ she answered, ‘only miserable, the most
miserable girl that ever lived.’
Edgar lifted up his face, and looked at her, with such a depth of
tender reproachfulness, with such ineffable pity as made his homely
countenance altogether beautiful.
‘I hoped I should have made you happy,’ he said. ‘God knows I have
tried hard enough.’
She neither answered nor looked at him. Her eyes were fixed upon her
father—solemn tearless eyes, a marble passionless face—she stood
motionless, as if awaiting judgment.
‘You are the falsest and the vilest girl that ever lived,’ retorted Sir
Vernon. ‘Perhaps I ought hardly to be surprised at that. Your mother
was——’
‘For God’s sake, spare her!’ cried Edgar huskily, stretching out
his arm as if to ward off a blow, and the word on Sir Vernon’s lips
remained unspoken. ‘That is no fault of hers. Let her bear her own
burden.’
‘She ought to find it heavy enough, if she has a heart or a
conscience,’ cried Sir Vernon passionately. ‘But I don’t believe she
has either. If she had a shred of self-respect, or common gratitude,
or honour, or womanly feeling, she would not have stolen her sister’s
lover.’
‘I did not steal him,’ answered Daphne resolutely. ‘His heart came
to me of its own accord. We both fought hard against Fate. And even
now there is no harm done; it has been only a foolish fancy of Mr.
Goring’s; he will forget all about it when I am—far away. I will never
look in his face again. I will go to the uttermost end of the earth,
to my grave, rather than stand between him and Madoline. Oh father,
father, you who have always been so hard with me, do you remember that
day at South Hill, directly after Mr. Goring came home, when I begged
you, on my knees, to send me back to school, to France, or Germany,
anywhere, so that I should be far away from my happy home—and from him?’
Her tears came at this bitter memory. Yes, she had fought the good
fight: but so vainly, to such little purpose!
‘I knew that I was weak,’ she sobbed,’and I wanted to be saved from
myself. But I am not so wicked as you think. I never tried to steal
Mr. Goring’s heart. I have never imagined the possibility of my being
in any way the gainer by his inconstancy. I have told myself always
that his love for me was a passing folly, of which he would be cured,
as a man is cured of a fever. I do not know what you have been told
about him and me, or who is your informant; but if you have been told
the truth you must know that I have been true to my sister—even in my
misery.’
‘My informant saw you in Mr. Goring’s arms; my informant heard his
avowal of love, and your promise to run away with him, and be married
at Geneva.’
‘It is false. I made no such promise. I never meant to marry him. I
would die a hundred deaths rather than injure Madoline. I am glad you
know the truth. And you, Edgar, I have tried to love you, my poor dear;
I have prayed that I might become attached to you, and be a good wife
to you in the days to come. I have been honest, I have been loyal.
Ask Mr. Goring, by-and-by, if it is not so. He knows, and only he can
know, the truth. Father, Madoline need never be told that her lover has
wavered. She must not know. Do you understand? She must not! It would
break her heart, it would kill her. He will forget me when I am far
away—gone out of his sight for ever. He will forgot me; and the old,
holier, truer love will return in all its strength and purity. All this
pain and folly will seem no more to him than a feverish dream. Pray do
not let her know.’
‘Do you think I would do her so great a wrong as to let her marry a
traitor? a false-hearted scoundrel, who can smile in her face, and make
love to her sister behind her back. She is a little too good to have
your leavings foisted upon her.’
‘If you tell her, you will break her heart.’
‘That will lie at your door. I would rather see her in her coffin than
married to a villain.’
Edgar rose slowly from his seat and moved towards the door. He had
nothing to do with this discussion. His mind could hardly enter into
the question of Gerald Goring’s treachery. It was Daphne who had
betrayed him; Daphne who had deceived him, and mocked him with sweet
words; Daphne whose liking had seemed more precious to him than any
other woman’s love, because he believed that no other man had ever
touched the virginal unawakened heart. And now he was told that she
could love passionately, that she could give kiss for kiss, and rain
tears upon a lover’s breast, that from first to last he had been her
victim and her dupe!
‘Good-bye, Daphne!’ he said, very quietly. ‘I am going home as fast
as train and boat can take me. I would have been contented to accept
something less than your love, believing that I should win your heart
in time, but not to take a wife whose heart belonged to another man.
You told me there was no one else; you told me your heart was free.’
‘I told you there was no one else who had ever cared for me,’ faltered
Daphne, remembering her equivocating answer that evening at South Hill.
‘I don’t want to reproach you, Daphne. I am very sorry for you.’
‘And I am very sorry that an honest man whom I respect should have
been fooled by a worthless girl,’ said Sir Vernon. ‘Give him back his
engagement ring. Understand that all is over between you and him,’ he
added, turning to his daughter.
‘I wish it to be so. I have put all your presents together in a parcel,
Edgar,’ answered Daphne. ‘You will receive them in due course.’
‘It is best to be off with the old love before we are on with the new,’
quoted Sir Vernon scornfully; ‘and she says she did not mean to run
away with Goring, in spite of this deliberate preparation.’
Edgar was gone. Daphne and her father were alone, the girl still
standing on the very spot where she had stood when she first came into
the room.
‘I have told you nothing but the truth,’ she said. ‘Why are you so hard
with me?’
‘Hard with you!’ he echoed, getting up from before his desk and looking
at her with vindictive eyes as he moved slowly towards the door. ‘How
can I be hard enough to you? You have broken my daughter’s heart.’
‘Father!’ she cried, falling on her knees and clinging to him in her
despair. ‘Father, is she to have all your love? Have you no tenderness,
no pity left for me? Am I not your daughter too?’
‘Your mother was my wife,’ he answered curtly, pushing her out of his
way as he passed from the room.
He was gone. She knelt where he had left her, a desolate figure in the
spacious bright-looking room, the afternoon sun making golden bars upon
the brown floor, her yellow hair touched here and there with glintings
of yellow light.
She remained in the same attitude for some minutes, her heavy eyelids
drooping over tearless eyes, her arms hanging listlessly, her hands
loosely clasped. Her mind for a little while was a blank: and then
there came into it unawares a verse, taken at random, from a familiar
hymn:
‘The trials that beset you,
The sorrows ye endure,
The manifold temptations,
That death alone can cure.’
‘That death alone can cure,’ she repeated slowly, pushing back the
loose hair from her eyes; and then she rose from her knees and went out
through an open window into the garden.
It was about five o’clock. There was a look of exquisite repose over
all the scene, from the snow-bound summit of the Dent du Midi yonder,
down to the gardens that edged the lake, like a garland of summer
flowers encircling that peerless blue. It was abright glad-looking
world, and passing peaceful. Far away beyond that grand range of hills
lay the ice-fields of Savoy, the everlasting glaciers, gliding with
impalpable motion in obedience to some mysterious law which is still
one of Nature’s secrets, the wilderness of snow-clad peaks and wild
moraines, the gulfs and caverns, the unfathomable abysses of silence
and of death. Daphne thought of those unseen regions with a thrill of
awe as she walked slowly down the slope of the lawn.
‘I have seen so little of Switzerland after all,’ she said to herself,
‘so little of this wide wonderful world.’
She went to the toy _châlet_, the dainty opera-stage boat-house where
her boat was kept. There was no friendly Bink here to launch the
skiff for her, but the lower part of the boat-house jutted out over
the gable, and the boat was always bobbing about in the limpid water.
She had only to go down the wooden steps, unmoor her boat, and row
away over that wide stretch of placid water which she had never seen
disturbed by a tempest.
As she was stepping into the boat, the dog Monk came bounding and
leaping across the grass, and bounced into her arms, putting his huge
fore-feet on her shoulders, and swooping an affectionate tongue over
her pallid face. He had not seen her since her return from the hills,
and was wild with rapture at the idea of reunion.
‘No, Monk, not to-day,’ she said gently, as he tried to get into the
boat with her; ‘not to-day, dear faithful old Monk.’
The huge creature could have upset the boat with one bound; and
the little hand stretched out to push him back must have been as a
fluttering rose-leaf against his sinewy breast; but there was a moral
force in the blanched face and the steady eye which dominated his brute
power. He recoiled, and lifted up his head with a plaintive howl as the
boat shot off, the twin sails, the white and scarlet awning, flashing
in the sun.
A little way from the shore Daphne paused, resting on her oars, and
looking back at the bright garden, with its roses and magnolias, and
many-coloured flower-beds, the white villa gay with its crimson-striped
blinds; and then with one wide gaze she looked round the lovely
landscape, the long range of hills, in all their infinite variety of
light and shadow, verdant slopes streaked with threads of glittering
water, vineyards and low gray walls, rising terrace above terrace,
quaint Vevey, and gray old Chillon, the black gorge that lets in the
turbid Rhone; churches with square towers and ivy-covered walls; and
yonder the inexorable mountains of Savoy. For a little while her
eye took in every detail of the scene: and then it all melted from
her troubled gaze, and she saw not that grand Alpine chain, showing
cloudlike amid the clouds, but the brown Avon and its dipping willows,
the low Warwickshire hills and village gables, the distant spire of
Stratford above the many-arched bridge, the water-meadows at South
Hill, and the long fringe of yellow daffodils waving in the March wind.
‘Oh for the reedy banks and shallow reaches of the Avon!’ she thought,
her heart yearning for home.
Then with bowed head she bent over her oars, and the light boat shot
away across the wake of a passing steamer; it shot away, far away to
the middle of the lake; it vanished like a feather blown by a summer
breeze; and it never came back again.
* * * * *
The empty boat drifted ashore at Evian in the gray light of morning,
while Gerald Goring, with a couple of Swiss boatmen, was rowing about
the lake, stopping to make inquiries at every landing-place, sending
scouts in every direction, in quest of that missing craft. No one ever
knew, no one dared to guess, how it had happened: but every one knew
that in some dark spot below that deep blue water Daphne was at rest.
The dog had been down by the boat-house all night, howling fitfully
through the dark silent hours. He had not left the spot since Daphne’s
boat glided away from the steps.
It had been a night of anguish and terror for all that household at
Montreux—a night of agitation, of alternations of hope and fear. Even
Sir Vernon was profoundly moved by anxiety about the daughter to whom
he had given so little of his love. He knew that he had been hard and
merciless in that last interview. He had thought only of Madoline; and
the knowledge that Madoline had been wronged—that the elder sister’s
love had been tempted to falsehood by the arts and coquetries of the
younger sister—had stung him to a frenzy of anger. Nothing could be
too bad for the ingrate who had sinned against the best of sisters. He
was too hard a man to give the sinner the benefit of the doubt, and
to believe that she had sinned unconsciously. In his mind Daphne had
wickedly and deliberately corrupted the heart of her sister’s affianced
husband. Angry as he had felt with Gerald, his indignation against the
weaker vessel was fiercer than his wrath against the stronger.
Mowser had told her story with truth as to the main facts; but with
such embellishments and heightened colouring as made Daphne appear
the boldest and most depraved of her sex. In Mowser’s version of that
scene in the pine-wood there was no hint of temptation resisted, of
a noble soul struggling with an unworthy passion, of a tender heart
trying to be faithful to sisterly affection, while every impulse of a
passionate love tugged the other way. All Mowser could tell was that
Miss Daphne had sobbed in Mr. Goring’s arms, that he had kissed her,
as she, Mowser, had never been kissed, although she had kept company
and been on the brink of marriage with a builder’s foreman; and that
they had talked of being married at Geneva—leastways Mr. Goring had
asked Miss Daphne to run away with him for that purpose, and she
had not said no, but had only begged him to give her twenty-four
hours—naturally requiring that time to pack her clothes and make all
needful preparation for flight.
Passionately attached to his elder daughter, and always ready to think
evil of Daphne, Sir Vernon needed no confirmation of Mowser’s story.
It was only the realisation of what he always feared—the mother’s
falsehood showing itself in the daughter—hereditary baseness. It was
the girl’s nature to betray. She had all her mother’s outward graces
and too fascinating prettiness. How could he have hoped that she would
have any higher notions of truth and honour?
Moved to deepest wrath at the wrong done to Madoline, Sir Vernon’s
first impulse had been to send for Gerald Goring, in order to come
to an immediate understanding with that offender. He was told that
Mr. Goring had gone to Geneva, and was not expected home before eight
o’clock. He then sent for Edgar, and to that unhappy lover bluntly
and almost brutally related the story of Daphne’s baseness. Edgar was
inclined to disbelieve, nay, even to laugh Mowser’s slander to scorn;
but Mowser, summoned to a second interview, stuck resolutely to her
text, and was not to be shaken.
‘I can’t believe it,’ faltered Edgar, stricken to the heart, ‘unless I
hear it from her own lips.’
‘Go and fetch her,’ said Sir Vernon to Mowser, and then had followed
Daphne’s appearance, and those admissions of hers which told Edgar only
too clearly how he had been deceived.
The two men, Gerald and Edgar, passed each other on the railway between
Lausanne and Geneva—Edgar on his way to the city, Gerald going back to
Montreux. Mr. Goring wondered at seeing his friend’s pale face glide
slowly by as the two trains crossed at the junction.
‘It looks as if she had given him his quietus already,’ he said to
himself. ‘My brave little Daphne!’
He was going back to Montreux with his heart full of hope and gladness.
He had taken all the needful measures at Geneva to make his marriage
with Daphne an easy matter, would she but consent to marry him. And
he had no doubt of her consent. Could a girl love as she loved, and
obstinately withhold herself from her lover?
He forgot the pain he must inflict on one who had been so dear; forgot
the woman who had been the guiding star of his boyhood and youth;
forget everything except that one consummate bliss which he longed
for—the triumph of a passionate love. That crown of life once snatched
from reluctant Fate, all other things would come right in time.
Madoline’s gentle nature would forgive a wrong which was the work of
destiny rather than of man’s falsehood. Sir Vernon would be angry and
unpleasant, no doubt; but Gerald Goring cared very little about Sir
Vernon. The world would wonder; but Gerald cared nothing for the world.
He only desired Daphne, and Daphne’s love; having all other good things
which life, looked at from the worldling’s standpoint, could give.
The sun was setting as he approached Montreux, and all the lake was
clothed in golden light. Rose-hued mountains, golden water, smiled at
him as if in welcome.
‘What a lovely world it is!’ he said to himself; ‘and how happy Daphne
and I will be in it—in spite of Fate and metaphysical aid. There I go,
quoting the Inevitable, as usual!’
He walked quickly from the station to the villa, eager to see Daphne,
to hear her voice, to touch the warm soft hand, and be assured that
there was such a being, and that he had not been the dupe of some
vision of intangible loveliness, as Shelley’s Alastor was in the
cavern. That last look of Daphne’s haunted him—so direct, so solemn a
gaze, so unlike the shy glance of conscious love. Nay, it resembled
rather the look of some departed spirit, returning from Pluto’s drear
abode to take its last fond farewell of the living.
The vestibule stood open to the road, an outer hall filled with plants
and flowers, an airy Italian-looking entrance. Gerald walked straight
in, and to the drawing-room. It was striking eight as he entered.
‘I hope you won’t wait for me,’ he began, looking round for Daphne;
‘I am a dusty object, and I don’t think I can make myself presentable
under twenty minutes. The train dawdled abominably.’
Mrs. Ferrers and Madoline were standing by the open window, looking
out. Lina turned, and at the first glimpse of her pale face Gerald
knew that there was something wrong. There had been a scene, perhaps,
between the sisters. Daphne had betrayed herself and him. Well! The
truth must be told very soon now. It were best to precipitate matters.
‘We are frightened about Daphne,’ said Lina; ‘she went out in her boat
a little before five—the gardener saw her leave—and she has not come
back yet.’
Three hours. It was long, but she was fond of solitary excursions on
the lake.
‘I don’t think there is much cause for alarm in that,’ he said, trying
to speak lightly, yet with a strange terror at his heart. ‘Shall I get
a boat and go after her? I had better, perhaps; she cannot be very far
off—dawdling about by Chillon, I daresay. Those dank stone walls have a
fascination for her.’
‘Yes, I shall be glad, if you don’t mind going. My father seems uneasy.
It is so strange that she should stay away three hours without leaving
word where she was going. Edgar is out. My aunt and I have not known
what to do, and when I told my father just now he looked dreadfully
alarmed.’
‘I will go this instant, and not come back till I have found her,’
answered Gerald huskily.
That last look of Daphne’s was in his mind. That never-to-be-forgotten
look from her dark eyes lifted fearlessly, with sad and steady gaze.
‘Oh God! did it mean farewell?’
He was out on the lake all night, with two of the most experienced
boatmen in the district, and it was only in the gray of morning that he
heard of the empty boat blown ashore a little below Evian—Evian, where
they had landed so merrily once from the same cockleshell boat, on a
sunny morning, for a pilgrimage to a drowsy village on the hills, a
cluster of picturesque homesteads sheltered by patriarchal walnut and
chestnut trees, where looking downward through the rich foliage they
saw the blue lake below.
The evening had been calm. There had been no accident or collision of
any kind on the lake; the little boat showed no sign of injury. It lay
on the shingly shore, just as the fishermen had pulled it in; an empty
boat. That was all.
Gerald stayed at Evian, and from Evian wrote briefly to Madoline
telling her all.
‘My life for the last six months has been a tissue of lies,’ he wrote;
‘and yet, God knows, I have tried to be true and honest, just as she
tried; but she with more purpose, yes, poor child! with much more
fidelity than mine. I wanted to tell you the truth when we were at
Fribourg, to make an end of all shams and deceptions, but she would not
let me. She meant to hold to her bond with Edgar—to be true to you. She
would have persevered in this to the end, if I had let her. But I would
not, and she has died rather than do you a wrong; it is my guilt—mine
alone. The brand of Cain is on me: and, like Cain, I shall be a
wanderer till I die. I do not ask you to forgive me, for I shall never
forgive myself; or to pity me, for mine is a grief which pity cannot
touch. If I could hope that you could ever forget me there would be
comfort in the thought; but I dare not hope for that. You might forget
your false lover, but how can you forget Daphne’s murderer?’
To this letter Madoline answered briefly: ‘You have broken my sister’s
heart and mine. A little honesty, a little truth, would have spared us
both. You might have been happy in your own way, and I might have kept
my sister. You are right—I can neither forget nor forgive. I thought
till this trouble came upon me that I was a Christian; I know now, God
help me! how far I am away from Christian feeling. All I can hope or
pray about you is that we two may never see each other’s face again. I
send you Daphne’s legacy.’
Enclosed in the letter was the little packet containing the turquoise
ring, with ‘For Mr. Goring’ written on the cover in Daphne’s dashing
penmanship. The hand had not trembled, though the heart beat high, when
that superscription was penned.
* * * * *
Sir Vernon stayed at Montreux for more than a month after that fatal
summer day, though the very sight of lake and mountain in their
inexorable beauty, so remote from all human trouble or human pity,
was terrible to him. Madoline urged him to stay. There were hours in
which, after many tears and many prayers, faint gleams of hope visited
her sorrowful soul. Daphne might not be dead. She might have landed
unnoticed at one of those quiet villages, and made her way to some
distant place where she could live hidden and unknown. Those farewell
gifts left in her desk must needs mean a deliberate departure: but they
need not mean death. She might be hiding somewhere, little knowing the
agony she was inflicting on those who had loved her, fearing only to be
found and taken home. Madoline could fancy her sister self-sacrificing
enough to live apart from home and kindred all her days, to earn her
bread in a stranger’s house. Oh, if it were thus only, and not that
other and awful fate—a young life flung away in its flower, a young
soul going forth unbidden to meet God’s judgment, burdened with the
deadly sin of self-murder!
‘Let us stay a few days longer, father,’ she pleaded. ‘We may hear
something. There may be some good news.’
‘God grant that it may be so,’ answered Sir Vernon, without a ray of
hope.
What of his remorse whose hardness had pressed so heavily upon his
child in that last hour of her brief life, whose bitter words had
perhaps confirmed the sinner in her desperate resolve, making it very
clear to her that this earth held no peaceful haven, that for her there
was no fatherly breast on which she could pour out the story of her
weakness and her struggle—no friend with the father’s sacred name from
whom she could ask counsel or seek protection? Alone in her misery, she
had sought the one refuge which remained for her—death; believing that
by that fatal deed she would secure her sister’s peace.
‘His heart will return to its truer nobler love when I am gone,’
she said to herself. Poor shallow soul, unsustained by any deep
sense of religion, or by any firm principle; tender heart, strong in
unquestioning fidelity. It was easy to follow out the train of false
reasoning which made her believe that death would be best; that in
throwing away her fair young life she was making a sacrifice to love
and honour.
* * * * *
They remained at Montreux till the beginning of October, till autumnal
tints were stealing over the landscape, and the happy vintage-time had
begun, making all those gentle slopes alive with picturesque figures,
every turn in the road a scene for a painter. It was a dreary time
for Madoline and her father. Edgar was with them; called back from
Geneva by a telegram on the night of Daphne’s disappearance. He, like
his rival, had been unweary in his endeavour to obtain some knowledge
of Daphne’s fate. He had been from village to village, had made his
inquiries at every landing-place along the lake—had availed himself
of every local intelligence; but all to no purpose. One of the Vevey
boatmen had seen Daphne’s light skiff as she rowed swiftly towards
the middle of the lake. He saw the little boat dancing in the wake of
a steamer, watched it and its girl-owner till it floated into smooth
water, and then saw the boat never more.
There had been no reason for an accident upon that particular
afternoon; no sudden gust of wind; no mysterious rising of the lake;
nothing. In a sultry calm the little boat had last been seen gliding
smoothly over the smooth blue water.
Had she rowed to the end of the lake, where the tumultuous Rhone rushes
in from rocky St. Maurice, and been swamped by those turbid waters? Who
could tell? The stranded boat bore no sign of having been under water.
The time came when they must go back, when to remain any longer by the
lake seemed mere foolishness, a persistent brooding upon sorrow; more
especially as Sir Vernon’s health had become much worse since this
calamity had fallen upon him, and a change of some kind was imperative.
Aunt Rhoda had gone home a week after the fatal day, though to the last
expressing herself willing to remain and comfort Madoline.
‘You are very kind, Aunt, but you could not comfort me. You did not
care for her,’ Lina answered, with a touch of bitterness.
So Mrs. Ferrers, aggrieved at this rebuff, had gone back to her Rector,
whom she found more painfully affected by Daphne’s evil fate than she
thought consistent with his clerical character.
‘I shall never look at the garden in summer-time without thinking of
that bright face and girlish figure flitting about among the roses,
as I have seen her in the days that are gone,’ he said; ‘a man of my
age is uncomfortably reminded of his shortening lease of life when the
young are taken before him.’
And now that bitter day came upon which Madoline was obliged to leave
the banks of the fatal lake, and turn her sad face homewards, to South
Hill. South Hill without Daphne, without Gerald—those two familiar
figures gone out of her life for ever; the house empty of laughter and
gladness for evermore! All the sweetest things of life proved false,
every hope crushed, every possibility of future happiness gone from her
for ever! She could imagine no new hopes, no fresh beginning of life.
To do her duty to an invalid father; to use her ample fortune for the
comfort and advantage of the friendless and the needy, was all that
remained to her; a narrow round of daily tasks not less monotonous than
the humblest char’s, because she wore a silk gown and lived in a fine
house. So far her prayer had been granted. She and Gerald Goring had
never met since Daphne’s death. He had been heard of at Evian and then
at Vevey; but none of the South Hill people had seen him.
Edgar went back with them, a man so changed by grief that it would be
hard for the mother, who had seen him go forth in the strength and
gladness of happy youth, to recognise the haggard hopeless countenance
of the son who returned to her. He had borne his trouble bravely,
asking comfort from no one, anxious to console others whenever
consolation seemed possible. He had tried his best to persuade Madoline
that Daphne’s boat had been overturned by the current, that the sweet
young life had been lost by accident. Those carefully-sealed packets in
the desk hinted at a darker doom; yet it might be that they had been
prepared by Daphne under some vague idea of leaving home, in order to
escape the difficulties of her position; an intention to be carried out
at some indefinite time.
Hawksyard in the autumn, with white vapours stealing over the
low meadows at sunrise and sunset, with the large leaves of the
walnut-trees drifting heavily down, seemed a fitting place for a man
to nurse his grief and meditate upon the greatness of his loss. Edgar
roamed about the gardens and the fields like an unquiet spirit, or rode
for long hours in the lonely lanes, keeping as much as possible aloof
from all who knew him. Even the approach of the hunting season gave him
no pleasure.
‘I shall not hunt this year,’ he told his mother. ‘Indeed I doubt if I
shall ever follow the hounds again.’
‘Don’t say that, Edgar,’ cried Mrs. Turchill plaintively. ‘Wretched
as I am every day you are out with the hounds, I should be still more
miserable if you were to deprive yourself of your favourite amusement.
But you will think differently next October, I hope, dear. It isn’t
natural for young people to go on grieving for ever.’
‘Isn’t it, mother?’ asked her son bitterly. ‘Isn’t it natural for a
watch to stop when its mainspring is broken?’
The application of this inquiry was beyond Mrs. Turchill, so she made
no attempt to answer it.
She had been very good to her son since his sorrowful home-coming, not
tormenting him with futile consolations, but offering him that silent
sympathy which has always healing in it. Of Daphne’s fate she knew no
more than that the girl had gone out on the lake one sunny afternoon
and had never come back again. The announcement in _The Times_ had
said: ‘Accidentally drowned in the Lake of Geneva,’ and Mrs. Turchill
had never thought of seeking to know more. But she was much exercised
in her mind as the autumn wore into winter at the prolonged absence of
Gerald Goring.
‘Why does not Mr. Goring come back?’ she inquired of Edgar. ‘I should
think poor Miss Lawford must need his society now more than ever. It is
natural that the wedding should be postponed for a few months; but Mr.
Goring ought not to be away.’
‘That engagement is broken off, mother,’ her son answered briefly.
‘Broken off! But why?’
‘I can’t tell you. That concerns no one but Miss Lawford and Mr.
Goring. Don’t trouble about it, mother.’
At any other time Mrs. Turchill would have troubled very much about
such a piece of intelligence, would have insisted upon knowing the
rights and wrongs of the matter, and of expatiating upon it at her
leisure. But her respect for Edgar’s grief made her very discreet; and
seeing that the subject was painful to him, she said no more about
it No more to him, that is to say, but very much more to Deborah, to
whom she discoursed freely upon the extraordinary fact, delicately
suggesting that as Deborah was on intimate terms with the upper
servants at South Hill, she would no doubt hear all the ins and outs of
the story in due time.
‘I should be the last person to encourage gossip,’ remarked the matron
with dignity, ‘but there are some things which people cannot help
talking about, especially where a young lady is as much beloved and
respected as Miss Lawford.’
Deborah went to South Hill on her next Sunday out, and drank tea in the
housekeeper’s room, where Mrs. Spicer, though unable to speak with dry
eyes of Miss Daphne, was nevertheless much interested in the fit and
fashion of her black gown, the quality of which Deborah both appraised
and admired. But Mrs. Spicer only knew that Miss Lawford’s engagement
was broken off. She knew nothing as to the why and the wherefore, but
she surmised, somewhat vaguely, that Miss Lawford had turned against
Mr. Goring after her sister’s death.
Only one of the South Hill servants could have explained the cause of
that cancelled engagement, and she had been dismissed with a handsome
pension, and had gone to live in the outskirts of Birmingham, with her
own kith and kin. Sir Vernon could never endure the presence of the
faithful Mowser after Daphne’s death. ‘You did your duty, according to
your lights, I have no doubt,’ he said, when he sent her away; ‘but I
can never look at you without regretting that you did not hold your
tongue. You have told Miss Lawford nothing—about—that scene in the
pine-wood, I hope?’
Mowser protested that she would have had her tongue cut out rather than
speak one such word to her mistress.
‘I am glad of that. She knows too much already—enough to make her life
miserable. We must spare her what pain we can.’
Mowser assented, with a convulsion of her elderly throat, which looked
like a repressed sob. The pension promised was liberal; but it was a
hard thing to be dismissed, to be told that life at South Hill could be
carried on without her.
‘I don’t know what Miss Lawford will do when I’m gone,’ she faltered
tearfully; ‘I’m used to her ways, and she’s used to mine. A strange
maid will seem like an antelope to her.’
Sir Vernon stared, but did not deign to discuss the probabilities as
to his daughter’s feelings. He ordered Jinman—who on the strength
of knowing two or three dozen substantives in French and Italian,
considered himself an accomplished linguist—to conduct Mrs. Mowser to
Geneva, and to book her through, so far as it were possible, to her
native shores. He felt that he could breathe more freely when that evil
presence was out of the house. ‘She provoked me to torture that poor
child in her last hour upon earth,’ he thought. ‘She maddened me with
the idea that Lina’s lover had been stolen from her.’