An imperious knocking on her thin outer door roused her. She went to

open it and saw Anthony Craven,--the perspiration standing on his brow,

his delicate cripple's face white and fierce.

"I want to talk to you," he said without preface. "Have you seen the

afternoon papers?"

"No," she said in astonishment, "I was just going to send for them. What

is wrong?"

He followed her into the sitting-room without speaking; and then he

unfolded the _Pall Mall_ he had in his hand and pointed to a large-print

paragraph on the central page with a shaking hand.

Marcella read:

"EXCITING SCENES IN THE HOUSE.--MEETING OF THE LABOUR MEMBERS.--A

committee of the Labour representatives in Parliament met this afternoon

at 2 o'clock for the purpose of electing a chairman, and appointing

whips to the party, thus constituting a separate parliamentary group.

Much interest was felt in the proceedings, which it was universally

supposed would lead to the appointment of Mr. H. S. Wharton, the member

for West Brookshire, as chairman and leader of the Labour party. The

excitement of the meeting and in the House may be imagined when--after a

short but very cordial and effective speech from Mr. Bennett, the member

for North Whinwick, in support of Mr. Wharton's candidature--Mr.

Wilkins, the miner's member for Derlingham, rose and made a series of

astounding charges against the personal honour of the member for West

Brookshire. Put briefly, they amount to this: that during the recent

strike at Damesley the support of the _Clarion_ newspaper, of which Mr.

Wharton is owner and practically editor, was _bought_ by the employers

in return for certain shares in the new Syndicate; that the money for

these shares--which is put as high as 20,000 _l._--had already gone into

Mr. Wharton's private pocket; and that the change of policy on the part

of the _Clarion_, which led to the collapse of the strike, was thus

entirely due to what the Labour members can only regard under the

circumstances as a bribe of a most disgraceful kind. The effect produced

has been enormous. The debate is still proceeding, and reporters have

been excluded. But I hope to send a fuller account later."

Marcella dropped the paper from her hand.

"What does it mean?" she said to her companion.

"Precisely what it says," replied Anthony, with a nervous impatience he

could not repress. "Now," he added, as his lameness forced him to sit

down, "will you kindly allow me some conversation with you? It was

you--practically--who introduced Louis to that man. You meant well to

Louis, and Mr. Wharton has been your friend. We therefore feel that we

owe you some explanation. For that paragraph"--he pointed to the

paper--"is, substantially--Louis's doing, and mine."

"_Yours?_" she said mechanically. "But Louis has been going on working

for the paper--I persuaded him."

"I know. It was not we who actually discovered the thing. But we set a

friend to work. Louis has had his suspicions all along. And at last--by

the merest chance--we got the facts."

Then he told the story, staring at her the while with his sparkling

eyes, his thin invalid's fingers fidgeting with his hat. If there was in

truth any idea in his mind that the relations between his companion and

Harry Wharton were more than those of friendship, it did not avail to

make him spare her in the least. He was absorbed in vindictive feeling,

which applied to her also. He might _say_ for form's sake that she had

meant well; but in fact he regarded her at this moment as a sort of

odious Canidia whose one function had been to lure Louis to misfortune.

Cut off himself, by half a score of peculiarities, physical and other,

from love, pleasure, and power, Anthony Craven's whole affections and

ambitions had for years centred in his brother. And now Louis was not

only violently thrown out of employment, but compromised by the

connection with the _Clarion_; was, moreover, saddled with a wife--and

in debt.

So that his explanation was given with all the edge he could put upon

it. Let her stop him, if she pleased!--but she did not stop him.

The facts were these:

Louis had, indeed, been persuaded by Marcella, for the sake of his wife

and bread and butter, to go on working for the _Clarion_, as a reviewer.

But his mind was all the time feverishly occupied with the apostasy of

the paper and its causes. Remembering Wharton's sayings and letters

throughout the struggle, he grew less and less able to explain the

incident by the reasons Wharton had himself supplied, and more and more

convinced that there was some mystery behind.

He and Anthony talked the matter over perpetually. One evening Anthony

brought home from a meeting of the Venturists that George Denny, the son

of one of the principal employers in the Damesley trade, whose name he

had mentioned once before in Marcella's ears. Denny was by this time the

candidate for a Labour constituency, an ardent Venturist, and the

laughing-stock of his capitalist family, with whom, however, he was

still on more or less affectionate terms. His father thought him an

incorrigible fool, and his mother wailed over him to her friends. But

they were still glad to see him whenever he would condescend to visit

them; and all friction on money matters was avoided by the fact that

Denny had for long refused to take any pecuniary help from his father,

and was nevertheless supporting himself tolerably by lecturing and

literature.

Denny was admitted into the brothers' debate, and had indeed puzzled

himself a good deal over the matter already. He had taken a lively

interest in the strike, and the articles in the _Clarion_ which led to

its collapse had seemed to him both inexplicable and enraging.

After his talk with the Cravens, he went away, determined to dine at

home on the earliest possible opportunity. He announced himself

accordingly in Hertford Street, was received with open arms, and then

deliberately set himself, at dinner and afterwards, to bait his father

on social and political questions, which, as a rule, were avoided

between them.

Old Denny fell into the trap, lost his temper and self-control

completely, and at a mention of Harry Wharton--skilfully introduced at

the precisely right moment--as an authority on some matter connected

with the current Labour programme, he threw himself back in his chair

with an angry laugh.

"Wharton? _Wharton_? You quote that fellow to _me?_"

"Why shouldn't I?" said the son, quietly.

"Because, my good sir,--he's a _rogue_,--that's all!--a common rogue,

from my point of view even--still more from yours."

"I know that any vile tale you can believe about a Labour leader you do,

father," said George Denny, with dignity.

Whereupon the older man thrust his hand into his coat-pocket, and

drawing out a small leather case, in which he was apt to carry important

papers about with him, extracted from it a list containing names and

figures, and held it with a somewhat tremulous hand under his son's

eyes.

"Read it, sir! and hold your tongue! Last week my friends and I _bought_

that man--and his precious paper--for a trifle of 20,000 _l._ or

thereabouts. It paid us to do it, and we did it. I dare say _you_ will

think the preceding questionable. In my eyes it was perfectly

legitimate, a piece of _bonne guerre_. The man was ruining a whole

industry. Some of us had taken his measure, had found out too--by good

luck!--that he was in sore straits for money--mortgages on the paper,

gambling debts, and a host of other things--discovered a shrewd man to

play him, and made our bid! He rose to it like a gudgeon--gave us no

trouble whatever. I need not say, of course"--he added, looking up at

his son--"that I have shown you that paper in the _very strictest

confidence_. But it seemed to me it was my duty as a father to warn you

of the nature of some of your associates!"

"I understand," said George Denny, as, after a careful study of the

paper--which contained, for the help of the writer's memory, a list of

the sums paid and founders' shares allotted to the various "promoters"

of the new Syndicate--he restored it to its owner. "Well, I, father,

have _this_ to say in return. I came here to-night in the hope of

getting from you this very information, and in the public interest I

hold myself not only free but _bound_ to make public use of it, at the

earliest possible opportunity!"

The family scene may be imagined. But both threats and blandishments

were entirely lost upon the son. There was in him an idealist obstinacy

which listened to nothing but the cry of a _cause_, and he declared that

nothing would or should prevent him from carrying the story of the bribe

direct to Nehemiah Wilkins, Wharton's chief rival in the House, and so

saving the country and the Labour party from the disaster and disgrace

of Wharton's leadership. There was no time to lose, the party meeting in

the House was only two days off.

At the end of a long struggle, which exhausted everybody concerned, and

was carried on to a late hour of the night, Denny _père_, influenced by

a desire to avoid worse things--conscious, too, of the abundant evidence

he possessed of Wharton's acceptance and private use of the money--and,

probably, when it came to the point, not unwilling,--under

compulsion!--to tumble such a hero from his pedestal, actually wrote,

under his son's advice, a letter to Wilkins. It was couched in the most

cautious language, and professed to be written in the interests of

Wharton himself, to put an end "to certain ugly and unfounded rumours

that have been brought to my knowledge." The negotiation itself was

described in the driest business terms. "Mr. Wharton, upon cause shown,

consented to take part in the founding of the Syndicate, and in return

for his assistance, was allotted ten founders' shares in the new

company. The transaction differed in nothing from those of ordinary

business"--a last sentence slily added by the Socialist son, and

innocently accepted by one of the shrewdest of men.

After which Master George Denny scarcely slept, and by nine o'clock next

morning was in a hansom on his way to Wilkins's lodgings in Westminster.

The glee of that black-bearded patriot hardly needs description. He

flung himself on the letter with a delight and relief so exuberant that

George Denny went off to another more phlegmatic member of the

anti-Wharton "cave," with entreaties that an eye should be kept on the

member for Derlingham, lest he should do or disclose anything before the

dramatic moment.

Then he himself spent the next forty-eight hours in ingenious efforts to

put together certain additional information as to the current value of

founders' shares in the new company, the nature and amount of Wharton's

debts, and so on. Thanks to his father's hints he was able in the end

to discover quite enough to furnish forth a supplementary statement. So

that, when the 10th arrived, the day rose upon a group of men

breathlessly awaiting a play within a play--with all their parts

rehearsed, and the prompter ready.

* * * * *

Such in substance, was Anthony's story. So carried away was he by the

excitement and triumph of it, that he soon ceased to notice what its

effect might be upon his pale and quick-breathing companion.

"And now what has happened?" she asked him abruptly, when at last he

paused.

"Why, you saw!" he said in astonishment, pointing to the evening

paper--"at least the beginning of it. Louis is at the House now. I

expect him every moment. He said he would follow me here."

Marcella pressed her hands upon her eyes a moment as though in pain.

Anthony looked at her with a tardy prick of remorse.

"I hear Louis's knock!" he said, springing up. "May I let him in?" And,

without waiting for reply, he hobbled as fast as his crutch would carry

him to the outer door. Louis came in. Marcella rose mechanically. He

paused on the threshold, his short sight trying to make her out in the

dusk. Then his face softened and quivered. He walked forward quickly.

"I know you have something to forgive us," he said, "and that this will

distress you. But we could not give you warning. Everything was so

rapid, and the public interests involved so crushing."

He was flushed with vengeance and victory, but as he approached her his

look was deprecating--almost timid. Only the night before, Anthony for

the first time had suggested to him an idea about her. He did not

believe it--had had no time in truth to think of it in the rush of

events. But now he saw her, the doubt pulled at his heart. Had he indeed

stabbed the hand that had tried to help him?

Anthony touched him impatiently on the arm. "What has happened, Louis? I

have shown Miss Boyce the first news."

"It is all over," said Louis, briefly. "The meeting was breaking up as I

came away. It had lasted nearly five hours. There was a fierce fight, of

course, between Wharton and Wilkins. Then Bennett withdrew his

resolution, refused to be nominated himself--nearly broke down, in fact,

they say; he had always been attached to Wharton, and had set his heart

upon making him leader--and finally, after a long wrangle, Molloy was

appointed chairman of the party."

"Good!" cried Anthony, not able to suppress the note of exultation.

Louis did not speak. He looked at Marcella.

"Did he defend himself?" she asked in a low, sharp voice.

Louis shrugged his shoulders.

"Oh, yes. He spoke--but it did him no good. Everybody agreed that the

speech was curiously ineffective. One would have expected him to do it

better. But he seemed to be knocked over. He said, of course, that he

had satisfied himself, and given proof in the paper, that the strike

could not be maintained, and that being so he was free to join any

syndicate he pleased. But he spoke amid dead silence, and there was a

general groan when he sat down. Oh, it was not this business only!

Wilkins made great play in part of his speech with the Company scandal

too. It is a complete smash all round."

"Which he will never get over?" said Marcella, quickly.

"Not with our men. What he may do elsewhere is another matter. Anthony

has told you how it came out?"

She made a sign of assent. She was sitting erect and cold, her hands

round her knees.

"I did not mean to keep anything from you," he said in a low voice,

bending to her. "I know--you admired him--that he had given you cause.

But--my mind has been on _fire_--ever since I came back from those

Damesley scenes!"

She offered no reply. Silence fell upon all three for a minute or two;

and in the twilight each could hardly distinguish the others. Every now

and then the passionate tears rose in Marcella's eyes; her heart

contracted. That very night when he spoke to her, when he used all those

big words to her about his future, those great ends for which he had

claimed her woman's help--he had these things in his mind.

"I think," said Louis Craven presently, touching her gently on the

arm--he had tried once in vain to attract her attention--"I think I hear

some one asking for you outside on the landing--Mrs. Hurd seems to be

bringing them in."

As he spoke, Anthony suddenly sprang to his feet, and the outer door

opened.

"Louis!" cried Anthony, "it is _he_!"

"Are yer at home, miss?" said Minta Hurd, putting in her head; "I can

hardly see, it's so dark. Here's a gentleman wants to see you."

As she spoke, Wharton passed her, and stood--arrested--by the sight of

the three figures. At the same moment Mrs. Hurd lit the gas in the

little passage. The light streamed upon his face, and showed him the

identity of the two men standing beside Marcella.

Never did Marcella forget that apparition--the young grace and power of

the figure--the indefinable note of wreck, of catastrophe--the Lucifer

brightness of the eyes in the set face. She moved forward. Anthony

stopped her.

"Good-night, Miss Boyce!"

She shook hands unconsciously with him and with Louis. The two Cravens

turned to the door. Wharton advanced into the room, and let them pass.

"You have been in a hurry to tell your story!" he said, as Louis walked

by him.

Contemptuous hate breathed from every feature, but he was perfectly

self-controlled.

"Yes--" said Craven, calmly--"Now it is your turn."

The door was no sooner shut than Wharton strode forward and caught her

hand.

"They have told you everything? Ah!--"

His eye fell upon the evening paper. Letting her go, he felt for a chair

and dropped into it. Throwing himself back, his hands behind his head,

he drew a long breath and his eyes closed. For the first time in his

life or hers she saw him weak and spent like other men. Even his nerve

had been worn down by the excitement of these five fighting hours. The

eyes were lined and hollow--the brow contracted; the young roundness of

the cheek was lost in the general pallor and patchiness of the skin; the

lower part of the face seemed to have sharpened and lengthened,--and

over the whole had passed a breath of something aging and withering the

traces of which sent a shiver through Marcella. She sat down near him,

still in her nurse's cloak, one trembling hand upon her lap.

"Will you tell me what made you do this?" she asked, not being able to

think of anything else to say.

He opened his eyes with a start.

In that instant's quiet the scene he had just lived through had been

rushing before him again--the long table in the panelled committee-room,

the keen angry faces gathered about it. Bennett, in his blue tie and

shabby black coat, the clear moist eyes vexed and miserable--Molloy,

small and wiry, business-like in the midst of confusion, cool in the

midst of tumult--and Wilkins, a black, hectoring leviathan, thundering

on the table as he flung his broad Yorkshire across it, or mouthing out

Denny's letter in the midst of the sudden electrical silence of some

thirty amazed and incredulous hearers.

"_Spies,_ yo call us?" with a finger like a dart, threatening the

enemy--"Aye; an' yo're aboot reet! I and my friends--we _have_ been

trackin' and spyin' for weeks past. We _knew_ those men, those starvin'

women and bairns, were bein' _sold_, but we couldn't prove it. Now

we've come at the how and the why of it! And we'll make it harder for

men like you to _sell 'em again_! Yo call it infamy?--well, _we_ call it

detection."

Then rattling on the inner ear came the phrases of the attack which

followed on the director of "The People's Banking Association," the

injured innocent of as mean a job, as unsavoury a bit of vulturous

finance, as had cropped into publicity for many a year--and finally the

last dramatic cry:

"But it's noa matter, yo say! Mester Wharton has nobbut played his party

and the workin' man a dirty trick or two--_an' yo mun have a gentleman!_

Noa--the workin' man isn't fit _himself_ to speak wi' his own enemies i'

th' gate--_yo mun have a gentleman_!--an' Mester Wharton, he says he'll

tak' the post, an' dea his best for yo--an', remember, _yo mun have a

gentleman_! Soa now--Yes! or No!--wull yo?--or _woan't yo_?"

And at that, the precipitation of the great unwieldy form half across

the table towards Wharton's seat--the roar of the speaker's immediate

supporters thrown up against the dead silence of the rest!

As to his own speech--he thought of it with a soreness, a disgust which

penetrated to bones and marrow. He had been too desperately taken by

surprise--had lost his nerve--missed the right tone throughout. Cool

defiance, free self-justification, might have carried him through.

Instead of which--faugh!

All this was the phantom-show of a few seconds' thought. He roused

himself from a miserable reaction of mind and body to attend to

Marcella's question.

"Why did I do it?" he repeated; "why--"

He broke off, pressing both his hands upon his brow. Then he suddenly

sat up and pulled himself together.

"Is that tea?" he said, touching the tray. "Will you give me some?"

Marcella went into the back kitchen and called Minta. While the boiling

water was brought and the tea was made, Wharton sat forward with his

face on his hands and saw nothing. Marcella whispered a word in Minta's

ear as she came in. The woman paused, looked at Wharton, whom she had

not recognised before in the dark--grew pale--and Marcella saw her hands

shaking as she set the tray in order. Wharton knew nothing and thought

nothing of Kurd's widow, but to Marcella the juxtaposition of the two

figures brought a wave of complex emotion.

Wharton forced himself to eat and drink, hardly speaking the while.

Then, when the tremor of sheer exhaustion had to some extent abated, he

suddenly realised who this was that was sitting opposite to him

ministering to him.

She felt his hand--his quick powerful hand--on hers.

"To _you_ I owe the whole truth--let me tell it!"

She drew herself away instinctively--but so softly that he did not

realise it. He threw himself back once more in the chair beside her--one

knee over the other, the curly head so much younger to-night than the

face beneath it supported on his arms, his eyes closed again for

rest--and plunged into the story of the _Clarion_.

It was admirably told. He had probably so rehearsed it to himself

several times already. He described his action as the result of a double

influence working upon him--the influence of his own debts and

necessities, and the influence of his growing conviction that the

maintenance of the strike had become a blunder, even a misfortune for

the people themselves.

"Then--just as I was at my wit's end, conscious besides that the paper

was on a wrong line, and must somehow be got out of it--came the

overtures from the Syndicate. I knew perfectly well I ought to have

refused them--of _course_ my whole career was risked by listening to

them. But at the same time they gave me assurances that the workpeople

would ultimately gain--they proved to me that I was helping to

extinguish the trade. As to the _money_--when a great company has to be

launched, the people who help it into being get _paid_ for it--it is

invariable--it happens every day. I like the system no more than you may

do--or Wilkins. But consider. I was in such straits that _bankruptcy_

lay between me and my political future. Moreover--I had lost nerve,

sleep, balance. I was scarcely master of myself when Pearson first

broached the matter to me--"

"Pearson!" cried Marcella, involuntarily. She recalled the figure of the

solicitor; had heard his name from Frank Leven. She remembered Wharton's

impatient words--"There is a tiresome man wants to speak to me on

business--"

It was _then I_--that evening! Something sickened her.

Wharton raised himself in his chair and looked at her attentively with

his young haggard eyes. In the faint lamplight she was a pale vision of

the purest and noblest beauty. But the lofty sadness of her face filled

him with a kind of terror. Desire--impotent pain--violent resolve, swept

across him. He had come to her, straight from the scene of his ruin, as

to the last bulwark left him against a world bent on his destruction,

and bare henceforward of all delights.

"Well, what have you to say to me?" he said, suddenly, in a low changed

voice--"as I speak--as I look at you--I see in your face that you

distrust--that you have judged me; those two men, I suppose, have done

their work! Yet from you--_you_ of all people--I might look not only for

justice--but--I will dare say it--for kindness!"

She trembled. She understood that he appealed to the days at Mellor, and

her lips quivered.

"No," she exclaimed, almost timidly--"I try to think the best. I see the

pressure was great."

"And consider, please," he said proudly, "what the reasons were for that

pressure."

She looked at him interrogatively--a sudden softness in her eyes. If at

that moment he had confessed himself fully, if he had thrown himself

upon her in the frank truth of his mixed character--and he could have

done it, with a Rousseau-like completeness--it is difficult to say what

the result of this scene might have been. In the midst of shock and

repulsion, she was filled with pity; and there were moments when she was

more drawn to his defeat and undoing, than she had ever been to his

success.

Yet how question him? To do so, would be to assume a right, which in

turn would imply _his_ rights. She thought of that mention of "gambling

debts," then of his luxurious habits, and extravagant friends. But she

was silent. Only, as she sat there opposite to him, one slim hand

propping the brow, her look invited him.

He thought he saw his advantage.

"You must remember," he said, with the same self-assertive bearing,

"that I have never been a rich man, that my mother spent my father's

savings on a score of public objects, that she and I started a number of

experiments on the estate, that my expenses as a member of Parliament

are very large, and that I spent thousands on building up the _Clarion_.

I have been ruined by the _Clarion_, by the cause the _Clarion_

supported. I got no help from my party--where was it to come from? They

are all poor men. I had to do everything myself, and the struggle has

been more than flesh and blood could bear! This year, often, I have not

known how to move, to breathe, for anxieties of every sort. Then came

the crisis--my work, my usefulness, my career, all threatened. The men

who hated me saw their opportunity. I was a fool and gave it them. And

my enemies have used it--to the bitter end!"

Tone and gesture were equally insistent and strong. What he was saying

to himself was that, with a woman of Marcella's type, one must "bear it

out." This moment of wreck was also with him the first moment of

all-absorbing and desperate desire. To win her--to wrest her from the

Cravens' influence--that had been the cry in his mind throughout his

dazed drive from the House of Commons. Her hand in his--her strength,

her beauty, the romantic reputation that had begun to attach to her, at

his command--and he would have taken the first step to recovery, he

would see his way to right himself.

Ah! but he had missed his chance! Somehow, every word he had been saying

rang false to her. She could have thrown herself as a saving angel on

the side of weakness and disaster which had spoken its proper language,

and with a reckless and confiding truth had appealed to the largeness of

a woman's heart. But this patriot--ruined so nobly--for such

disinterested purposes--left her cold! She began to think even--hating

herself--of the thousands he was supposed to have made in the gambling

over that wretched company--no doubt for the "cause" too!

But before she could say a word he was kneeling beside her.

"_Marcella_ I give me my answer!--I am in trouble and defeat--be a

woman, and come to me!"

He had her hands. She tried to recover them.

"No!" she said, with passionate energy, "_that_ is impossible. I had

written to you before you came, before I had heard a word of this.

Please, _please_ let me go!"

"Not till you explain!"--he said, still holding her, and roused to a

white heat of emotion--"_why_ is it impossible? You said to me once,

with all your heart, that you thanked me, that I had taught you, helped

you. You cannot ignore the bond between us! And you are free. I have a

right to say to you--you thirst to save, to do good--come and save a

man that cries to you!--he confesses to _you_, freely enough, that he

has made a hideous mistake--help him to redeem it!"

She rose suddenly with all her strength, freeing herself from him, so

that he rose too, and stood glowering and pale.

"When I said that to you," she cried, "I was betraying "--her voice

failed her an instant--"we were both false--to the obligation that

should have held us--restrained us. No! _no!_ I will never be your wife!

We should hurt each other--poison each other!"

Her eyes shone with wild tears. As he stood there before her she was

seized with a piteous sense of contrast--of the irreparable--of what

might have been.

"What do you mean?" he asked her, roughly.

She was silent.

His passion rose.

"Do you remember," he said, approaching her again, "that you have given

me cause to hope? It is those two fanatics that have changed

you--possessed your mind."

She looked at him with a pale dignity.

"My letters must have warned you," she said simply. "If you had come

to-morrow--in prosperity--you would have got the same answer, at once.

To-day--now--I have had weak moments, because--because I did not know

how to add pain to pain. But they are gone--I see my way! _I do not love

you_--that is the simple, the whole truth--I could not follow you!"

He stared at her an instant in a bitter silence.

"I have been warned,"--he said slowly, but in truth losing control of

himself, "not only by you--and I suppose I understand! You repent last

year. Your own letter said as much. You mean to recover, the ground--the

place you lost. Ah, well!--most natural!--most fitting! When the time

comes--and my bones are less sore--I suppose I shall have my second

congratulations ready! Meanwhile--"

She gave a low cry and burst suddenly into a passion of weeping, turning

her face from him. But when in pale sudden shame he tried to excuse

himself--to appease her--she moved away, with a gesture that overawed

him.

"_You_ have not confessed yourself"--she said, and his look wavered

under the significance of hers--"but you drive me to it. Yes, _I

repent!_"--her breast heaved, she caught her breath. "I have been trying

to cheat myself these last few weeks--to run away from grief--and the

other night when you asked me--I would have given all I have and am to

feel like any happy girl, who says 'Yes' to her lover. I tried to feel

so. But even then, though I was miserable and reckless, I knew in my

heart--it was impossible! If you suppose--if you like to suppose--that

I--I have hopes or plans--as mean as they would be silly--you must--of

course. But I have given no one any _right_ to think so or say so. Mr.

Wharton--"

Gathering all her self-control, she put out her white hand to him.

"Please--please say good-bye to me. It has been hideous vanity--and

mistake--and wretchedness--our knowing each other--from the beginning.

I _am_ grateful for all you did, I shall always be grateful. I hope--oh!

I hope--that--that you will find a way through this trouble. I don't

want to make it worse by a word. If I could do anything! But I can't.

You must please go. It is late. I wish to call my friend, Mrs. Hurd."

Their eyes met--hers full of a certain stern yet quivering power, his

strained and bloodshot, in his lined young face.

Then, with a violent gesture--as though he swept her out of his path--he

caught up his hat, went to the door, and was gone.

She fell on her chair almost fainting, and sat there for long in the

summer dark, covering her face. But it was not his voice that haunted

her ears.

"_You have done me wrong--I pray God you may not do yourself a greater

wrong in the future!_"

Again and again, amid the whirl of memory, she pressed the sad

remembered words upon the inward wound and fever--tasting, cherishing

the smart of them. And as her trance of exhaustion and despair gradually

left her, it was as though she crept close to some dim beloved form in

whom her heart knew henceforward the secret and sole companion of its

inmost life.

BOOK IV.

"You and I--

Why care by what meanders we are here

I' the centre of the labyrinth? Men have died

Trying to find this place which we have found."

CHAPTER I.

Ah! how purely, cleanly beautiful was the autumn sunrise! After her long

hardening to the stale noisomeness of London streets, the taint of

London air, Marcella hung out of her window at Mellor in a thirsty

delight, drinking in the scent of dew and earth and trees, watching the

ways of the birds, pouring forth a soul of yearning and of memory into

the pearly silence of the morning.

High up on the distant hill to the left, beyond the avenue, the pale

apricots and golds of the newly-shorn stubbles caught the mounting

light. The beeches of the avenue were turning fast, and the chestnuts

girdling the church on her right hand were already thin enough to let

the tower show through. That was the bell--the old bell given to the

church by Hampden's friend, John Boyce--striking half-past five; and

close upon it came the call of a pheasant in the avenue. There he was,

fine fellow, with his silly, mincing run, redeemed all at once by the

sudden whirr of towering flight.

To-day Mary Harden and the Rector would be at work in the church, and

to-morrow was to be the Harvest Festival. Was it two years?--or in an

hour or two would she be going with her basket from the Cedar Garden, to

find that figure in the brown shooting-coat standing with the Hardens on

the altar steps?

Alas!--alas!--her head dropped on her hands as she knelt by the open

window. How changed were all the aspects of the world! Three weeks

before, the bell in that little church had tolled for one who, in the

best way and temper of his own generation, had been God's servant and

man's friend--who had been Marcella's friend--and had even, in his last

days, on a word from Edward Hallin, sent her an old man's kindly

farewell.

"Tell her," Lord Maxwell had written with his own hand to Hallin, "she

has taken up a noble work, and will make, I pray God, a noble woman. She

had, I think, a kindly liking for an old man, and she will not disdain

his blessing."

He had died at Geneva, Aldous and Miss Raeburn with him. For instead of

coming home in August, he had grown suddenly worse, and Aldous had gone

out to him. They had brought him to the Court for burial, and the new

Lord Maxwell, leaving his aunt at the Court, had almost immediately

returned to town,--because of Edward Hallin's state of health.

Marcella had seen much of Hallin since he and his sister had come back

to London in the middle of August. Hallin's apparent improvement had

faded within a week or two of his return to his rooms; Aldous was at

Geneva; Miss Hallin was in a panic of alarm; and Marcella found herself

both nurse and friend. Day after day she would go in after her nursing

rounds, share their evening meal, and either write for Hallin, or help

the sister--by the slight extra weight of her professional voice--to

keep him from writing and thinking.

He would not himself admit that he was ill at all, and his whole

energies at the time were devoted to the preparation of a series of

three addresses on the subject of Land Reform, which were to be

delivered in October to the delegates of a large number of working-men's

clubs from all parts of London. So strong was Hallin's position among

working-men reformers, and so beloved had been his personality, that as

soon as his position towards the new land nationalising movement, now

gathering formidable strength among the London working men, had come to

be widely understood, a combined challenge had been sent him by some

half-dozen of the leading Socialist and Radical clubs, asking him to

give three weekly addresses in October to a congress of London

delegates, time to be allowed after the lecture for questions and

debate.

Hallin had accepted the invitation with eagerness, and was throwing an

intensity of labour into the writing of his three lectures which often

seemed to his poor sister to be not only utterly beyond his physical

strength, but to carry with it a note as of a last effort, a farewell

message, such as her devoted affection could ill endure. For all the

time he was struggling with cardiac weakness and brain irritability

which would have overwhelmed any one less accustomed to make his account

with illness, or to balance against feebleness of body a marvellous

discipline of soul.

Lord Maxwell was still alive, and Hallin, in the midst of his work, was

looking anxiously for the daily reports from Aldous, living in his

friend's life almost as much as in his own--handing on the reports, too,

day by day to Marcella, with a manner which had somehow slipped into

expressing a new and sure confidence in her sympathy--when she one

evening found Minta Hurd watching for her at the door with a telegram

from her mother: "Your father suddenly worse. Please come at once." She

arrived at Mellor late that same night.

On the same day Lord Maxwell died. Less than a week later he was buried

in the little Gairsley church. Mr. Boyce was then alarmingly ill, and

Marcella sat in his darkened room or in her own all day, thinking from

time to time of what was passing three miles away--of the great house in

its mourning--of the figures round the grave. Hallin, of course, would

be there. It was a dripping September day, and she passed easily from

moments of passionate yearning and clairvoyance to worry herself about

the damp and the fatigue that Hallin must be facing.

Since then she had heard occasionally from Miss Hallin. Everything was

much as it had been, apparently. Edward was still hard at work, still

ill, still serene. "Aldous"--Miss Hallin could not yet reconcile herself

to the new name--was alone in the Curzon Street house, much occupied and

harassed apparently by the legal business of the succession, by the

election presently to be held in his own constituency, and by the

winding-up of his work at the Home Office. He was to resign his

under-secretaryship; but with the new session and a certain

rearrangement of offices it was probable that he would be brought back

into the Ministry. Meanwhile he was constantly with them; and she

thought that his interest in Edward's work and anxiety about his health

were perhaps both good for him as helping to throw off something of his

own grief and depression.

Whereby it will be noticed that Miss Hallin, like her brother, had by

now come to speak intimately and freely to Marcella of her old lover and

their friend.

Now for some days, however, she had received no letter from either

brother or sister, and she was particularly anxious to hear. For this

was the fourth of October, and on the second he was to have delivered

the first of his addresses. How had the frail prophet sped? She had her

fears. For her weekly "evenings" in Brown's Buildings had shown her a

good deal of the passionate strength of feeling developed during the

past year in connection with this particular propaganda. She doubted

whether the London working man at the present moment was likely to give

even Hallin a fair hearing on the point. However, Louis Craven was to be

there. And he had promised to write even if Susie Hallin could find no

time. Some report ought to reach Mellor by the evening.

Poor Cravens! The young wife, who was expecting a baby, had behaved with

great spirit through the _Clarion_ trouble; and, selling their bits of

furniture to pay their debts, they had gone to lodge near Anthony. Louis

had got some odds and ends of designing and artistic work to do through

his brother's influence; and was writing where he could, here and there.

Marcella had introduced them to the Hallins, and Susie Hallin was taking

a motherly interest in the coming child. Anthony, in his gloomy way, was

doing all he could for them. But the struggle was likely to be a hard

one, and Marcella had recognised of late that in Louis as in Anthony

there were dangerous possibilities of melancholy and eccentricity. Her

heart was often sore over their trouble and her own impotence.

Meantime for some wounds, at any rate, time had brought swift cautery!

Not three days after her final interview with Wharton, while the

catastrophe in the Labour party was still in every one's mouth, and the

air was full of bitter speeches and recriminations, Hallin one evening

laid down his newspaper with a sudden startled gesture, and then pushed

it over to Marcella. There, in the columns devoted to personal news of

various sorts, appeared the announcement:

"A marriage has been arranged between Mr. H.S. Wharfon, M.P. for West

Brookshire, and Lady Selina Farrell, only surviving daughter of Lord

Alresford. The ceremony will probably take place somewhere about Easter

next. Meanwhile Mr. Wharton, whose health has suffered of late from his

exertions in and out of the House, has been ordered to the East for rest

by his medical advisers. He and his friend Sir William Ffolliot start

for French Cochin China in a few days. Their object is to explore the

famous ruined temples of Angkor in Cambodia, and if the season is

favourable they may attempt to ascend the Mekong. Mr. Wharton is paired

for the remainder of the session."

"Did you know anything of this?" said Hallin, with that careful

carelessness in which people dress a dubious question.

"Nothing," she said quietly.

Then an impulse not to be stood against, springing from very mingled

depths of feeling, drove her on. She, too, put down the paper, and

laying her finger-tips together on her knee she said with an odd slight

laugh:

"But I was the last person to know. About a fortnight ago Mr. Wharton

proposed to me."

Hallin sprang from his chair, almost with a shout. "And you refused

him?"

She nodded, and then was angrily aware that, totally against her will or

consent, and for the most foolish and remote reasons, those two eyes of

hers had grown moist.

Hallin went straight over to her.

"Do you mind letting me shake hands with you?" he said, half ashamed of

his outburst, a dancing light of pleasure transforming the thin face.

"There--I am an idiot! We won't say a word more--except about Lady

Selina. Have you seen her?"

"Three or four times."

"What is she like?"

Marcella hesitated.

"Is she fat--and forty?" said Hallin, fervently--she beat him?"

"Not at all. She is very thin--thirty-five, elegant, terribly of her own

opinion--and makes a great parade of 'papa.'"

She looked round at him, unsteadily, but gaily.

"Oh! I see," said Hallin, with disappointment, "she will only take care

he doesn't beat her--which I gather from your manner doesn't matter. And

her politics?"

"Lord Alresford was left out of the Ministry," said Marcella slily. "He

and Lady Selina thought it a pity."

"Alresford--_Alresford_? Why, of course! He was Lord Privy Seal in their

last Cabinet--a narrow-minded old stick!--did a heap of mischief in the

Lords. _Well!_"--Hallin pondered a moment--"Wharton will go over!"

Marcella was silent. The tremor of that wrestler's hour had not yet

passed away. The girl could find no words in which to discuss Wharton

himself, this last amazing act, or its future.

As for Hallin, he sat lost in pleasant dreams of a whitewashed Wharton,

comfortably settled at last below the gangway on the Conservative side,

using all the old catch-words in slightly different connections, and

living gaily on his Lady Selina. Fragments from the talk of

Nehemiah--Nehemiah the happy and truculent, that new "scourge of God"

upon the parasites of Labour--of poor Bennett, of Molloy, and of various

others who had found time to drop in upon him since the Labour smash,

kept whirling in his mind. The same prediction he had just made to

Marcella was to be discerned in several of them. He vowed to himself

that he would write to Raeburn that night, congratulate him and the

party on the possibility of so eminent a recruit--and hint another item

of news by the way. She had trusted her confidence to him without any

pledge--an act for which he paid her well thenceforward, in the coin of

a friendship far more intimate, expansive, and delightful than anything

his sincerity had as yet allowed him to show her.

But these London incidents and memories, near as they were in time,

looked many of them strangely remote to Marcella in this morning

silence. When she drew back from the window, after darkening the now

sun-flooded room in a very thorough business-like way, in order that she

might have four or five hours' sleep, there was something symbolic in

the act. She gave back her mind, her self, to the cares, the anxieties,

the remorses of the past three weeks. During the night she had been

sitting up with her father that her mother might rest. Now, as she lay

down, she thought with the sore tension which had lately become habitual

to her, of her father's state, her mother's strange personality, her own

short-comings.

* * * * *

By the middle of the morning she was downstairs again, vigorous and

fresh as ever. Mrs. Boyce's maid was for the moment in charge of the

patient, who was doing well. Mrs. Boyce was writing some household notes

in the drawing-room. Marcella went in search of her.

The bare room, just as it ever was--with its faded antique charm--looked

bright and tempting in the sun. But the cheerfulness of it did but

sharpen the impression of that thin form writing in the window. Mrs.

Boyce looked years older. The figure had shrunk and flattened into that

of an old woman; the hair, which two years before had been still young

and abundant, was now easily concealed under the close white cap she had

adopted very soon after her daughter had left Mellor. The dress was

still exquisitely neat; but plainer and coarser. Only the beautiful

hands and the delicate stateliness of carriage remained--sole relics of

a loveliness which had cost its owner few pangs to part with.

Marcella hovered near her--a little behind her--looking at her from time

to time with a yearning compunction--which Mrs. Boyce seemed to be aware

of, and to avoid.

"Mamma, can't I do those letters for you? I am quite fresh."

"No, thank you. They are just done."

When they were all finished and stamped, Mrs. Boyce made some careful

entries in a very methodical account-book, and then got up, locking the

drawers of her little writing-table behind her.

"We can keep the London nurse another week I think," she said.

"There is no need," said Marcella, quickly. "Emma and I could divide the

nights now and spare you altogether. You see I can sleep at any time."

"Your father seems to prefer Nurse Wenlock," said Mrs. Boyce.

Marcella took the little blow in silence. No doubt it was her due.

During the past two years she had spent two separate months at Mellor;

she had gone away in opposition to her father's wish; and had found

herself on her return more of a stranger to her parents than ever. Mr.

Boyce's illness, involving a steady extension of paralytic weakness,

with occasional acute fits of pain and danger, had made steady though

very gradual progress all the time. But it was not till some days after

her return home that Marcella had realised a tenth part of what her

mother had undergone since the disastrous spring of the murder.

She passed now from the subject of the nurse with a half-timid remark

about "expense."

"Oh! the expense doesn't matter!" said Mrs. Boyce, as she stood absently

before the lately kindled fire, warming her chilled fingers at the

blaze.

"Papa is more at ease in those ways?" Marcella ventured. And kneeling

down beside her mother she gently chafed one of the cold hands.

"There seems to be enough for what is wanted," said Mrs. Boyce, bearing

the charing with patience. "Your father, I believe, has made great

progress this year in freeing the estate. Thank you, my dear. I am not

cold now."

And she gently withdrew her hand.

Marcella, indeed, had already noticed that there were now no weeds on

the garden-paths, that instead of one gardener there were three, that

the old library had been decently patched and restored, that there was

another servant, that William, grown into a very--tolerable footman,

wore a reputable coat, and that a plain but adequate carriage and horse

had met her at the station. Her pity even understood that part of her

father's bitter resentment of his ever-advancing disablement came from

his feeling that here at last--just as death was in sight--he, that

squalid failure, Dick Boyce, was making a success of something.

Presently, as she knelt before the fire, a question escaped her, which,

when it was spoken, she half regretted.

"Has papa been able to do anything for the cottages yet?"

"I don't think so," said Mrs. Boyce, calmly. After a minute's pause she

added, "That will be for your reign, my dear."

Marcella looked up with a sharp thrill of pain.

"Papa is better, mamma, and--and I don't know what you mean. I shall

never reign here without you."

Mrs. Boyce began to fidget with the rings on her thin left hand.

"When Mellor ceases to be your father's it will be yours," she said, not

without a certain sharp decision; "that was settled long ago. I must be

free--and if you are to do anything with this place, you must give your

youth and strength to it. And your father is not better--except for the

moment. Dr. Clarke exactly foretold the course of his illness to me two

years ago, on my urgent request. He may live four months--six, if we can

get him to the South. More is impossible."

There was something ghastly in her dry composure. Marcella caught her

hand again and leant her trembling young cheek against it.

"I could not live here without you, mamma!"

Mrs. Boyce could not for once repress the inner fever which in general

her will controlled so well.

"I hardly think it would matter to you so much, my dear."

Marcella shrank.

"I don't wonder you say that!" she said in a low voice. "Do you think it

was all a mistake, mamma, my going away eighteen months ago--a wrong

act?"

Mrs. Boyce grew restless.

"I judge nobody, my dear!--unless I am obliged. As you know, I am for

liberty--above all"--she spoke with emphasis--"for letting the past

alone. But I imagine you must certainly have learnt to do without us.

Now I ought to go to your father."

But Marcella held her.

"Do you remember in the _Purgatorio_, mamma, the lines about the loser

in the game: 'When the game of dice breaks up, he who lost lingers

sorrowfully behind, going over the throws, and _learning by his grief_'?

Do you remember?"

Mrs. Boyce looked down upon her, involuntarily a little curious, a

little nervous, but assenting. It was one of the inconsistencies of her

strange character that she had all her life been a persistent Dante

student. The taste for the most strenuous and passionate of poets had

developed in her happy youth; it had survived through the loneliness of

her middle life. Like everything else personal to herself she never

spoke of it; but the little worn books on her table had been familiar to

Marcella from a child.

"_E tristo impara?_" repeated Marcella, her voice wavering. "Mamma

"--she laid her face against her mother's dress again--"I have lost more

throws than you think in the last two years. Won't you believe I may

have learnt a little?"

She raised her eyes to her mother's pinched and mask-like face. Mrs.

Boyce's lips moved as though she would have asked a question. But she

did not ask it. She drew, instead, the stealthy breath Marcella knew

well--the breath of one who has measured precisely her own powers of

endurance, and will not risk them for a moment by any digression into

alien fields of emotion.

"Well, but one expects persons like you to learn," she said, with a

light, cold manner, which made the words mere convention. There was

silence an instant; then, probably to release herself, her hand just

touched her daughter's hair. "Now, will you come up in half an hour?

That was twelve striking, and Emma is never quite punctual with his

food."

* * * * *

Marcella went to her father at the hour named. She found him in his

wheeled chair, beside a window opened to the sun, and overlooking the

Cedar Garden. The room in which he sat was the state bedroom of the old

house. It had a marvellous paper of branching trees and parrots and

red-robed Chinamen, in the taste of the morning room downstairs, a

carved four-post bed, a grate adorned with purplish Dutch tiles, an

array of family miniatures over the mantelpiece, and on a neighbouring

wall a rack of old swords and rapiers. The needlework hangings of the

bed were full of holes; the seats of the Chippendale chairs were frayed

or tattered. But, none the less, the inalienable character and dignity

of his sleeping-room were a bitter satisfaction to Richard Boyce, even

in his sickness. After all said and done, he was king here in his

father's and grandfather's place; ruling where they ruled, and--whether

they would or no--dying where they died, with the same family faces to

bear him witness from the walls, and the same vault awaiting him.

When his daughter entered, he turned his head, and his eyes, deep and

black still as ever, but sunk in a yellow relic of a face, showed a

certain agitation. She was disagreeably aware that his thoughts were

much occupied with her; that he was full of grievance towards her, and

would probably before long bring the pathos of his situation as well as

the weight of his dying authority to bear upon her, for purposes she

already suspected with alarm.

"Are you a little easier, papa?" she said, as she came up to him.

"I should think as a nurse you ought to know better, my dear, than to

ask," he said testily. "When a person is in my condition, enquiries of

that sort are a mockery!"

"But one may be in less or more pain," she said gently. "I hoped Dr.

Clarke's treatment yesterday might have given you some relief."

He did not vouchsafe an answer. She took some work and sat down by him.

Mrs. Boyce, who had been tidying a table of food and medicine, came and

asked him if he would be wheeled into another room across the gallery,

which had been arranged as a sitting-room. He shook his head irritably.

"I am not fit for it. Can't you see? And I want to speak to Marcella."

Mrs. Boyce went away. Marcella waited, not without a tremor. She was

sitting in the sun, her head bent over the muslin strings she was

hemming for her nurse's bonnet. The window was wide open; outside, the

leaves under a warm breeze were gently drifting down into the Cedar

Garden, amid a tangled mass of flowers, mostly yellow or purple. To one

side rose the dark layers of the cedars; to the other, the grey front

of the library wing.

Mr. Boyce looked at her with the frown which had now become habitual to

him, moved his lips once or twice without speaking; and at last made his

effort.

"I should think, Marcella, you must often regret by now the step you

took eighteen months ago!"

She grew pale.

"How regret it, papa?" she said, without looking up.

"Why, good God!" he said angrily; "I should think the reasons for regret

are plain enough. You threw over a man who was devoted to you, and could

have given you the finest position in the county, for the most

nonsensical reasons in the world--reasons that by now, I am certain, you

are ashamed of."

He saw her wince, and enjoyed his prerogative of weakness. In his normal

health he would never have dared so to speak to her. But of late, during

long fits of feverish brooding--intensified by her return home--he had

vowed to himself to speak his mind.

"Aren't you ashamed of them?" he repeated, as she was silent.

She looked up.

"I am not ashamed of anything I did to save Hurd, if that is what you

mean, papa."

Mr. Boyce's anger grew.

"Of course you know what everybody said?"

She stooped over her work again, and did not reply.

"It's no good being sullen over it," he said in exasperation; "I'm your

father, and I'm dying. I have a right to question you. It's my duty to

see something settled, if I can, before I go. Is it _true_ that all the

time you were attacking Raeburn about politics and the reprieve, and

what not, you were really behaving as you never ought to have behaved,

with Harry Wharton?"

He gave out the words with sharp emphasis, and, bending towards her, he

laid an emaciated hand upon her arm.

"What use is there, papa, in going back to these things?" she said,

driven to bay, her colour going and coming. "I may have been wrong in a

hundred ways, but you never understood that the real reason for it all

was that--that--I never was in love with Mr. Raeburn."

"Then why did you accept him?" He fell back against his pillows with a

jerk.

"As to that, I will confess my sins readily enough," she said, while her

lip trembled, and he saw the tears spring into her eyes. "I accepted him

for what you just now called his position in the county, though not

quite in that way either."

He was silent a little, then he began again in a voice which gradually

became unsteady from self-pity.

"Well, now look here! I have been thinking about this matter a great

deal--and God knows I've time to think and cause to think, considering

the state I'm in--and I see no reason whatever why I should not

try--before I die--to put this thing _straight_. That man was head over

ears in love with you, _madly_ in love with you. I used to watch him,

and I know. Of course you offended and distressed him greatly. He could

never have expected such conduct from you or any one else. But _he's_

not the man to change round easily, or to take up with any one else.

Now, if you regret what you did or the way in which you did it, why

shouldn't I--a dying man may be allowed a little licence I should

think!--give him a hint?"

"_Papa!_" cried Marcella, dropping her work, and looking at him with a

pale, indignant passion, which a year ago would have quelled him

utterly. But he held up his hand.

"Now just let me finish. It would be no good my doing a thing of this

kind without saying something to you first, because you'd find it out,

and your pride would be the ruin of it. You always had a demoniacal

pride, Marcella, even when you were a tiny child; but if you make up

your mind now to let me tell him you regret what you did--just

that--you'll make him happy, and yourself, for you know very well he's a

man of the highest character--and your poor father, who never did _you_

much harm anyway!" His voice faltered. "I'd manage it so that there

should be nothing humiliating to you in it whatever. As if there could

be anything humiliating in confessing such a mistake as that; besides,

what is there to be ashamed of? You're no pauper. I've pulled Mellor out

of the mud for you, though you and your mother do give me credit for so

precious little!"

He lay back, trembling with fatigue, yet still staring at her with

glittering eyes, while his hand on the invalid table fixed to the side

of his chair shook piteously. Marcella dreaded the effect the whole

scene might have upon him; but, now they were in the midst of it, both

feeling for herself and prudence for him drove her into the strongest

speech she could devise.

"Papa, if _anything_ of that sort were done, I should take care Mr.

Raeburn knew I had had nothing to do with it--in such a way that it

would be _impossible_ for him to carry it further. Dear papa, don't

think of such a thing any more. Because I treated Mr. Raeburn unjustly

last year, are we now to harass and persecute him? I would sooner

disappear from everybody I know--from you and mamma, from England--and

never be heard of again."

She stopped a moment--struggling for composure--that she might not

excite him too much.

"Besides, it would be absurd! You forget I have seen a good deal of Mr.

Raeburn lately--while I have been with the Winterbournes. He has

entirely given up all thought of me. Even my vanity could see that

plainly enough. His best friends expect him to marry a bright,

fascinating little creature of whom I saw a good deal in James Street--a

Miss Macdonald."

"Miss how--much?" he asked roughly.

She repeated the name, and then dwelt, with a certain amount of

confusion and repetition, upon the probabilities of the matter--half

conscious all the time that she was playing a part, persuading herself

and him of something she was not at all clear about in her own inner

mind--but miserably, passionately determined to go through with it all

the same.

He bore with what she said to him, half disappointed and depressed, yet

also half incredulous. He had always been obstinate, and the approach of

death had emphasised his few salient qualities, as decay had emphasised

the bodily frame. He said to himself stubbornly that he would find some

way yet of testing the matter in spite of her. He would think it out.

Meanwhile, step by step, she brought the conversation to less dangerous

things, and she was finally gliding into some chat about the

Winterbournes when he interrupted her abruptly--

"And that other fellow--Wharton. Your mother tells me you have seen him

in London. Has he been making love to you?"

"Suppose I won't be catechised!" she said gaily, determined to allow no

more tragedy of any kind. "Besides, papa, you can't read your gossip as

good people should. Mr. Wharton's engagement to a certain Lady Selina

Farrell--a distant cousin of the Winterbournes--was announced, in

several papers with great plainness three weeks ago."

At that moment her mother came in, looking anxiously at them both, and

half resentfully at Marcella. Marcella, sore and bruised in every moral

fibre, got up to go.

Something in the involuntary droop of her beautiful head as she left the

room drew her father's eyes after her, and for the time his feeling

towards her softened curiously. Well, _she_ had not made very much of

her life so far! That old strange jealousy of her ability, her beauty,

and her social place, he had once felt so hotly, died away. He wished

her, indeed, to be Lady Maxwell. Yet for the moment there was a certain

balm in the idea that she too--her mother's daughter--with her Merritt

blood--could be unlucky.

Marcella went about all day under a vague sense of impending

trouble--the result, no doubt, of that intolerable threat of her

father's, against which she was, after all, so defenceless.

But whatever it was, it made her all the more nervous and sensitive

about the Hallins; about her one true friend, to whom she was slowly

revealing herself, even without speech; whose spiritual strength had

been guiding and training her; whose physical weakness had drawn to him

the maternal, the _spending_ instincts which her nursing life had so

richly developed.

She strolled down the drive to meet the post. But there were no letters

from London, and she came in, inclined to be angry indeed with Louis

Craven for deserting her, but saying to herself at the same time that

she must have heard if anything had gone wrong.

An hour or so later, just as the October evening was closing in, she was

sitting dreaming over a dim wood-fire in the drawing-room. Her father,

as might have been expected, had been very tired and comatose all day.

Her mother was with him; the London nurse was to sit up, and Marcella

felt herself forlorn and superfluous.

Suddenly, in the silence of the house, she heard the front-door bell

ring. There was a step in the hall--she sprang up--the door opened, and

William, with fluttered emphasis, announced--

"Lord Maxwell!"

In the dusk she could just see his tall form--the short pause as he

perceived her--then her hand was in his, and the paralysing astonishment

of that first instant had disappeared under the grave emotion of his

look.

"Will you excuse me," he said, "for coming at this hour? But I am

afraid you have heard nothing yet of our bad news--and Hallin himself

was anxious I should come and tell you. Miss Hallin could not write, and

Mr. Craven, I was to tell you, had been ill for a week with a chill. You

haven't then seen any account of the lecture in the papers?"

"No; I have looked yesterday and to-day in our paper, but there was

nothing--"

"Some of the Radical papers reported it. I hoped you might have seen it.

But when we got down here this afternoon, and there was nothing from

you, both Miss Hallin and Edward felt sure you had not heard--and I

walked over. It was a most painful, distressing scene, and he--is very

ill."

"But you have brought him to the Court?" she said trembling, lost in the

thought of Hallin, her quick breath coming and going. "He was able to

bear the journey? Will you tell me?--will you sit down?"

He thanked her hurriedly, and took a seat opposite to her, within the

circle of the firelight, so that she saw his deep mourning and the look

of repressed suffering.

"The whole thing was extraordinary--I can hardly now describe it," he

said, holding his hat in his hands and staring into the fire. "It began

excellently. There was a very full room. Bennett was in the chair--and

Edward seemed much as usual. He had been looking desperately ill, but he

declared that he was sleeping better, and that his sister and I coddled

him. Then,--directly he was well started!--I felt somehow that the

audience was very hostile. And _he_ evidently felt it more and more.

There was a good deal of interruption and hardly any cheers--and I saw

after a little--I was sitting not far behind him--that he was

discouraged--that he had lost touch. It was presently clear, indeed,

that the real interest of the meeting lay not in the least in what he

had to say, but in the debate that was to follow. They meant to let him

have his hour--but not a minute more. I watched the men about me, and I

could see them following the clock--thirsting for their turn. Nothing

that he said seemed to penetrate them in the smallest degree. He was

there merely as a ninepin to be knocked over. I never saw a meeting so

_possessed_ with a madness of fanatical conviction--it was amazing!"

He paused, looking sadly before him. She made a little movement, and he

roused himself instantly.

"It was just a few minutes before he was to sit down--I was

thankful!--when suddenly--I heard his voice change. I do not know now

what happened--but I believe he completely lost consciousness of the

scene before him--the sense of strain, of exhaustion, of making no way,

must have snapped something. He began a sort of confession--a reverie in

public--about himself, his life, his thoughts, his prayers, his

hopes--mostly his religious hopes--for the working man, for England--I

_never_ heard anything of the kind from him before--you know his

reserve. It was so intimate--so painful--oh! so painful!"--he drew

himself together with an involuntary shudder--"before this crowd, this

eager hostile crowd which was only pining for him to sit down--to get

out of their way. The men near me began to look at each other and

titter. They wondered what he meant by maundering on like that--'damned

canting stuff'--I heard one man near me call it. I tore off a bit of

paper, and passed a line to Bennett asking him to get hold of Edward, to

stop it. But I think Bennett had rather lost his presence of mind, and I

saw him look back at me and shake his head. Then time was up, and they

began to shout him down."

Marcella made an exclamation of horror. He turned to her.

"I think it was the most tragic scene I ever saw," he said with a

feeling as simple as it was intense. "This crowd so angry and

excited--without a particle of understanding or sympathy--laughing, and

shouting at him--and he in the midst--white as death--talking this

strange nonsense--his voice floating in a high key, quite unlike itself.

At last just as I was getting up to go to him, I saw Bennett rise. But

we were both too late. He fell at our feet!"

Marcella gave an involuntary sob! "What a horror!" she said, "what a

martyrdom!"

"It was just that," he answered in a low voice--"It was a martyrdom. And

when one thinks of the way in which for years past he has held these big

meetings in the hollow of his hand, and now, because he crosses their

passion, their whim,--no kindness!--no patience--nothing but a blind

hostile fury! Yet _they_ thought him a traitor, no doubt. Oh! it was all

a tragedy!"

There was silence an instant. Then he resumed:

"We got him into the back room. Luckily there was a doctor on the

platform. It was heart failure, of course, with brain prostration. We

managed to get him home, and Susie Hallin and I sat up. He was delirious

all night; but yesterday he rallied, and last night he begged us to move

him out of London if we could. So we got two doctors and an invalid

carriage, and by three this afternoon we were all at the Court. My aunt

was ready for him--his sister is there--and a nurse. Clarke was there to

meet him. He thinks he cannot possibly live more than a few

weeks--possibly even a few days. The shock and strain have been

irreparable."

Marcella lay back in her chair, struggling with her grief, her head and

face turned away from him, her eyes hidden by her handkerchief. Then in

some mysterious way she was suddenly conscious that Aldous was no longer

thinking of Hallin, but of her.

"He wants very much to see you," he said, bending towards her; "but I

know that you have yourself serious illness to nurse. Forgive me for not

having enquired after Mr. Boyce. I trust he is better?"

She sat up, red-eyed, but mistress of herself. The tone had been all

gentleness, but to her quivering sense some slight indefinable

change--coldness--had passed into it.

"He _is_ better, thank you--for the present. And my mother does not let

me do very much. We have a nurse too. When shall I come?"

He rose.

"Could you--come to-morrow afternoon? There is to be a consultation of

doctors in the morning, which will tire him. About six?--that was what

he said. He is very weak, but in the day quite conscious and rational.

My aunt begged me to say how glad she would be--"

He paused. An invincible awkwardness took possession of both of them.

She longed to speak to him of his grandfather but could not find the

courage.

When he was gone, she, standing alone in the firelight, gave one

passionate thought to the fact that so--in this tragic way--they had met

again in this room where he had spoken to her his last words as a lover;

and then, steadily, she put everything out of her mind but her

friend--and death.

CHAPTER II.

Mrs. Boyce received Marcella's news with more sympathy than her daughter

had dared to hope for, and she made no remark upon Aldous himself and

his visit, for which Marcella was grateful to her.

As they left the dining-room, after their short evening meal, to go up

to Mr. Boyce, Marcella detained her mother an instant.

"Mamma, will you please not tell papa that--that Lord Maxwell came here

this afternoon? And will you explain to him why I am going there

to-morrow?"

Mrs. Boyce's fair cheek flushed. Marcella saw that she understood.

"If I were you, I should not let your father talk to you any more about

those things," she said with a certain proud impatience.

"If I can help it!" exclaimed Marcella. "Will you tell him,

mamma,--about Mr. Hallin?--and how good he has been to me?"

Then her voice failed her, and, hurriedly leaving her mother at the top

of the stairs, she went away by herself to struggle with a grief and

smart almost unbearable.

That night passed quietly at the Court. Hallin was at intervals slightly

delirious, but less so than the night before; and in the early morning

the young doctor, who had sat up with him, reported him to Aldous as

calmer and a little stronger. But the heart mischief was hopeless, and

might bring the bruised life to an end at any moment.

He could not, however, be kept in bed, owing to restlessness and

difficulty of breathing, and by midday he was in Aldous's sitting-room,

drawn close to the window, that he might delight his eyes with the wide

range of wood and plain that it commanded. After a very wet September,

the October days were now following each other in a settled and sunny

peace. The great woods of the Chilterns, just yellowing towards that

full golden moment--short, like all perfection,--which only beeches

know, rolled down the hill-slopes to the plain, their curving lines cut

here and there by straight fir stems, drawn clear and dark on the pale

background of sky and lowland. In the park, immediately below the

window, groups of wild cherry and of a slender-leaved maple made spots

of "flame and amethyst" on the smooth falling lawns; the deer wandered

and fed, and the squirrels were playing and feasting among the beech

nuts.

Since Aldous and his poor sister had brought him home from the Bethnal

Green hall in which the Land Reform Conference had been held, Hallin had

spoken little, except in delirium, and that little had been marked by

deep and painful depression. But this morning, when Aldous was summoned

by the nurse, and found him propped up by the window, in front of the

great view, he saw gracious signs of change. Death, indeed, already in

possession, looked from the blue eyes so plainly that Aldous, on his

first entrance, had need of all his own strength of will to keep his

composure. But with the certainty of that great release, and with the

abandonment of all physical and mental struggle--the struggle of a

lifetime--Hallin seemed to-day to have recovered something of his

characteristic serenity and blitheness--the temper which had made him

the leader of his Oxford contemporaries, and the dear comrade of his

friend's life.

When Aldous came in, Hallin smiled and lifted a feeble hand towards the

park and the woods.

"Could it have greeted me more kindly," he said, in his whispering

voice, "for the end?"

Aldous sat down beside him, pressing his hand, and there was silence

till Hallin spoke again.

"You will keep this sitting-room, Aldous?"

"Always."

"I am glad. I have known you in it so long. What good talks we have had

here in the old hot days! I was hot, at least, and you bore with me.

Land Reform--Church Reform--Wages Reform--we have threshed them all out

in this room. Do you remember that night I kept you up till it was too

late to go to bed, talking over my Church plans? How full I was of

it!--the Church that was to be the people--reflecting their life, their

differences--governed by them--growing with them. You wouldn't join it,

Aldous--our poor little Association!"

Aldous's strong lip quivered.

"Let me think of something I _did_ join in," he said.

Hallin's look shone on him with a wonderful affection.

"Was there anything else you didn't help in? I don't remember it. I've

dragged you into most things. You never minded failure. And I have not

had so much of it--not till this last. This has been failure--absolute

and complete."

But there was no darkening of expression. He sat quietly smiling.

"Do you suppose anybody who could look beyond the moment would dream of

calling it failure?" said Aldous, with difficulty.

Hallin shook his head gently, and was silent for a little time,

gathering strength and breath again.

"I ought to suffer"--he said, presently. "Last week I dreaded my own

feeling if I should fail or break down--more than the failure itself.

But since yesterday--last night--I have no more regrets. I see that my

power is gone--that if I were to live I could no longer carry on the

battle--or my old life. I am out of touch. Those whom I love and would

serve, put me aside. Those who invite me, I do not care to join. So I

drop--into the gulf--and the pageant rushes on. But the curious thing is

now--I have no suffering. And as to the future--do you remember Jowett

in the Introduction to the Phaedo--"

He feebly pointed to a book beside him, which Aldous took up. Hallin

guided him and he read--

"_Most persons when the last hour comes are resigned to the order of

nature and the will of God. They are not thinking of Dante's 'Inferno'

or 'Paradiso,' or of the 'Pilgrim's Progress.' Heaven and Hell are not

realities to them, but words or ideas_--_the outward symbols of some

great mystery, they hardly know what_."

"It is so with me," said Hallin, smiling, as, at his gesture, Aldous

laid the book aside; "yet not quite. To my _mind_, that mystery indeed

is all unknown and dark--but to the heart it seems unveiled--with the

heart, I see."

A little later Aldous was startled to hear him say, very clearly and

quickly:

"Do you remember that this is the fifth of October?"

Aldous drew his chair closer, that he might not raise his voice.

"Yes, Ned."

"Two years, wasn't it, to-day? Will you forgive me if I speak of her?"

"You shall say anything you will."

"Did you notice that piece of news I sent you, in my last letter to

Geneva? But of course you did. Did it please you?"

"Yes, I was glad of it," said Aldous, after a pause, "extremely glad. I

thought she had escaped a great danger."

Hallin studied his face closely.

"She is free, Aldous--and she is a noble creature--she has learnt from

life--and from death--this last two years. And--you still love her. Is

it right to make no more effort?"

Aldous saw the perspiration standing on the wasted brow--would have

given the world to be able to content or cheer him--yet would not, for

the world, at such a moment be false to his own feeling or deceive his

questioner.

"I think it is right," he said deliberately, "--for a good many reasons,

Edward. In the first place I have not the smallest cause--not the

fraction of a cause--to suppose that I could occupy with her now any

other ground than that I occupied two years ago. She has been kind and

friendly to me--on the whole--since we met in London. She has even

expressed regret for last year--meaning, of course, as I understood, for

the pain and trouble that may be said to have come from her not knowing

her own mind. She wished that we should be friends. And"--he turned his

head away--"no doubt I could be, in time.... But, you see--in all that,

there is nothing whatever to bring me forward again. My fatal mistake

last year, I think now, lay in my accepting what she gave me--accepting

it so readily, so graspingly even. That was my fault, my blindness,

and--it was as unjust to her--as it was hopeless for myself. For hers is

a nature"--his eyes came back to his friend; his voice took a new force

and energy--"which, in love at any rate, will give all or nothing--and

will never be happy itself, or bring happiness, till it gives all. That

is what last year taught me. So that even if she--out of kindness or

remorse for giving pain--were willing to renew the old tie--I should be

her worst enemy and my own if I took a single step towards it. Marriage

on such terms as I was thankful for last year, would be humiliation to

me, and bring no gain to her. It will never serve a man with her"--his

voice broke into emotion--"that he should make no claims! Let him claim

the uttermost far-thing--her whole self. If she gives it, _then_ he may

know what love means!"

Hallin had listened intently. At Aldous's last words his expression

showed pain and perplexity. His mind was full of vague impressions,

memories, which seemed to argue with and dispute one of the chief things

Aldous had been saying. But they were not definite enough to be put

forward. His sensitive chivalrous sense, even in this extreme weakness,

remembered the tragic weight that attaches inevitably to dying words.

Let him not do more harm than good.

He rested a little. They brought him food; and Aldous sat beside him

making pretence to read, so that he might be encouraged to rest. His

sister came and went; so did the doctor. But when they were once more

alone, Hallin put out his hand and touched his companion.

"What is it, dear Ned?"

"Only one thing more, before we leave it. Is that _all_ that stands

between you now--the whole? You spoke to me once in the summer of

feeling _angry_, more angry than you could have believed. Of course, I

felt the same. But just now you spoke of its all being your fault. Is

there anything changed in your mind?"

Aldous hesitated. It was extraordinarily painful to him to speak of the

past, and it troubled him that at such a moment it should trouble

Hallin.

"There is nothing changed, Ned, except that perhaps time makes _some_

difference always. I don't want now"--he tried to smile--"as I did then,

to make anybody else suffer for my suffering. But perhaps I marvel even

more than I did at first, that--that--she could have allowed some things

to happen as she did!"

The tone was firm and vibrating; and, in speaking, the whole face had

developed a strong animation most passionate and human.

Hallin sighed.

"I often think," he said, "that she was extraordinarily immature--much

more immature than most girls of that age--as to feeling. It was really

the brain that was alive."

Aldous silently assented; so much so that Hallin repented himself.

"But not now," he said, in his eager dying whisper; "not now. The plant

is growing full and tall, into the richest life."

Aldous took the wasted hand tenderly in his own. There was something

inexpressibly touching in this last wrestle of Hallin's affection with

another's grief. But it filled Aldous with a kind of remorse, and with

the longing to free him from that, as from every other burden, in these

last precious hours of life. And at last he succeeded, as he thought, in

drawing his mind away from it. They passed to other things. Hallin,

indeed, talked very little more during the day. He was very restless and

weak, but not in much positive suffering. Aldous read to him at

intervals, from Isaiah or Plato, the bright sleepless eyes following

every word.

At last the light began to sink. The sunset flooded in from the

Berkshire uplands and the far Oxford plain, and lay in gold and purple

on the falling woods and the green stretches of the park. The distant

edges of hill were extraordinarily luminous and clear, and Aldous,

looking into the west with the eye of one to whom every spot and line

were familiar landmarks, could almost fancy he saw beyond the invisible

river, the hill, the "lovely tree against the western sky," which keep

for ever the memory of one with whose destiny it had often seemed to him

that Hallin's had something in common. To him, as to Thyrsis, the same

early joy, the same "happy quest," the same "fugitive and gracious

light" for guide and beacon, that--

does not come with houses or with gold,

With place, with honour and a flattering crew;

and to him, too, the same tasked pipe and tired throat, the same

struggle with the "life of men unblest," the same impatient tryst with

death.

The lovely lines ran dirge-like in his head, as he sat, sunk in grief,

beside his friend. Hallin did not speak; but his eye took note of every

change of light, of every darkening tone, as the quiet English scene

with its villages, churches, and woods, withdrew itself plane by plane

into the evening haze. His soul followed the quiet deer, the homing

birds, loosening itself gently the while from pain and from desire,

saying farewell to country, to the poor, to the work left undone, and

the hopes unrealised--to everything except to love.

It had just struck six when he bent forward to the window beneath which

ran the wide front terrace.

"That was her step!" he said, while his face lit up, "will you bring her

here?"

* * * * *

Marcella rang the bell at the Court with a fast beating heart. The old

butler who came gave what her shrinking sense thought a forbidding

answer to her shy greeting of him, and led her first into the

drawing-room. A small figure in deep black rose from a distant chair and

came forward stiffly. Marcella found herself shaking hands with Miss

Raeburn.

"Will you sit and rest a little before you go upstairs?" said that lady

with careful politeness, "or shall I send word at once? He is hardly

worse--but as ill as he can be."

"I am not the least tired," said Marcella, and Miss Raeburn rang.

"Tell his lordship, please, that Miss Boyce is here."

The title jarred and hurt Marcella's ear. But she had scarcely time to

catch it before Aldous entered, a little bent, as it seemed to her, from

his tall erectness, and speaking with an extreme quietness, even

monotony of manner.

"He is waiting for you--will you come at once?"

He led her up the central staircase and along the familiar passages,

walking silently a little in front of her. They passed the long line of

Caroline and Jacobean portraits in the upper gallery, till just outside

his own door Aldous paused.

"He ought not to talk long," he said, hesitating, "but you will know--of

course--better than any of us."

"I will watch him," she said, almost inaudibly, and he gently opened the

door and let her pass, shutting it behind her.

The nurse, who was sitting beside her patient, got up as Marcella

entered, and pointed her to a low chair on his further side. Susie

Hallin rose too, and kissed the new-comer hurriedly, absently, without

a word, lest she should sob. Then she and the nurse disappeared through

an inner door. The evening light was still freely admitted; and there

were some candles. By the help of both she could only see him

indistinctly. But in her own mind, as she sat down, she determined that

he had not even days to live.

Yet as she bent over him she saw a playful gleam on the cavernous face.

"You won't scold me?" said the changed voice--"you did warn me--you and

Susie--but--I was obstinate. It was best so!"

She pressed her lips to his hand and was answered by a faint pressure

from the cold fingers.

"If I could have been there!" she murmured.

"No--I am thankful you were not. And I must not think of it--or of any

trouble. Aldous is very bitter--but he will take comfort by and by--he

will see it--and them--more justly. They meant me no unkindness. They

were full of an idea, as I was. When I came back to myself--first--all

was despair. I was in a blank horror of myself and life. Now it has

gone--I don't know how. It is not of my own will--some hand has lifted a

weight. I seem to float--without pain."

He closed his eyes, gathering strength again in the interval, by a

strong effort of will--calling up in the dimming brain what he had to

say. She meanwhile, spoke to him in a low voice, mainly to prevent his

talking, telling him of her father, of her mother's strain of

nursing--of herself--she hardly knew what. Hew grotesque to be giving

him these little bits of news about strangers--to him, this hovering,

consecrated soul, on the brink of the great secret!

In the intervals, while he was still silent, she could not sometimes

prevent the pulse of her own life from stirring. Her eye wandered round

the room--Aldous's familiar room. There, on the writing-table with its

load of letters and books, stood the photograph of Hallin; another, her

own, used to stand beside it; it was solitary now.

Otherwise, all was just as it had been--flowers, books, newspapers--the

signs of familiar occupation, the hundred small details of character and

personality which in estrangement take to themselves such a smarting

significance for the sad and craving heart. The date--the

anniversary--echoed in her mind.

Then, with a rush of remorseful pain, her thoughts came back to the

present and to Hallin. At the same moment she saw that his eyes were

open, and fixed upon her with a certain anxiety and expectancy. He made

a movement as though to draw her towards him; and she stooped to him.

"I feel," he said, "as though my strength were leaving me fast. Let me

ask you one question--because of my love for you--and _him_. I have

fancied--of late--things were changed. Can you tell me--will you?--or is

it unfair?"--the words had all their bright, natural intonation--"Is

your heart--still where it was?--or, could you ever--undo the past--"

He held her fast, grasping the hand she had given him with unconscious

force. She had looked up startled, her lip trembling like a child's.

Then she dropped her head against the arm of her chair, as though she

could not speak.

He moved restlessly, and sighed.

"I should not," he said to himself; "I should not--it was wrong. The

dying are tyrannous."

He even began a word of sweet apology. But she shook her head.

"Don't!" she said, struggling with herself; "don't say that! It would do

me good to speak--to you--"

An exquisite smile dawned on Hallin's face.

"Then!"--he said--"confess!"

* * * * *

A few minutes later they were still sitting together. She strongly

wished to go; but he would not yet allow it. His face was full of a

mystical joy--a living faith, which must somehow communicate itself in

one last sacramental effort.

"How strange that you--and I--and he--should have been so mixed together

in this queer life. Now I seem to regret nothing--I _hope_ everything.

One more little testimony let me bear!--the last. We disappear one by

one--into the dark--but each may throw his comrades--a token--before he

goes. You have been in much trouble of mind and spirit--I have seen it.

Take my poor witness. There is one clue, one only--_goodness_--_the

surrendered will_. Everything is there--all faith--all religion--all

hope for rich or poor.--Whether we feel our way through consciously to

the Will--that asks our will--matters little. Aldous and I have differed

much on this--in words--never at heart! I could use words, symbols he

cannot--and they have given me peace. But half my best life I owe to

him."

At this he made a long pause--but, still, through that weak grasp,

refusing to let her go--till all was said. Day was almost gone; the

stars had come out over the purple dusk of the park.

"That Will--we reach--through duty and pain," he whispered at last, so

faintly she could hardly hear him, "is the root, the source. It leads us

in living--it--carries us in death. But our weakness and vagueness--want

help--want the human life and voice--to lean on--to drink from. We

Christians--are orphans--without Christ! There again--what does it

matter what we think--_about_ him--if only we think--_of_ him. In _one_

such life are all mysteries, and all knowledge--and our fathers have

chosen for us--"

The insistent voice sank lower and lower into final silence--though the

lips still moved. The eyelids too fell. Miss Hallin and the nurse came

in. Marcella rose and stood for one passionate instant looking down upon

him. Then, with a pressure of the hand to the sister beside her, she

stole out. Her one prayer was that she might see and meet no one. So

soft was her step that even the watching Aldous did not hear her. She

lifted the heavy latch of the outer door without the smallest noise, and

found herself alone in the starlight.

* * * * *

After Marcella left him, Hallin remained for some hours in what seemed

to those about him a feverish trance. He did not sleep, but he showed no

sign of responsive consciousness. In reality his mind all through was

full of the most vivid though incoherent images and sensations. But he

could no longer distinguish between them and the figures and movements

of the real people in his room. Each passed into and intermingled with

the other. In some vague, eager way he seemed all the time to be waiting

or seeking for Aldous. There was the haunting impression of some word to

say--some final thing to do--which would not let him rest. But something

seemed always to imprison him, to hold him back, and the veil between

him and the real Aldous watching beside him grew ever denser.

At night they made no effort to move him from the couch and the

half-sitting posture in which he had passed the day. Death had come too

near. His sister and Aldous and the young doctor who had brought him

from London watched with him. The curtains were drawn back from both the

windows, and in the clearness of the first autumnal frost a crescent

moon hung above the woods, the silvery lawns, the plain.

Not long after midnight Hallin seemed to himself to wake, full of

purpose and of strength. He spoke, as he thought, to Aldous, asking to

be alone with him. But Aldous did not move; that sad watching gaze of

his showed no change. Then Hallin suffered a sudden sharp spasm of

anguish and of struggle. Three words to say--only three words; but those

he _must_ say! He tried again, but Aldous's dumb grief still sat

motionless. Then the thought leapt in the ebbing sense, "Speech is gone;

I shall speak no more!"

It brought with it a stab, a quick revolt. But something checked both,

and in a final offering of the soul, Hallin gave up his last desire.

What Aldous saw was only that the dying man opened his hand as though it

asked for that of his friend. He placed his own within those seeking

fingers, and Hallin's latest movement--which death stopped half-way--was

to raise it to his lips.

* * * * *

So Marcella's confession--made in the abandonment, the blind passionate

trust, of a supreme moment--bore no fruit. It went with Hallin to the

grave.

CHAPTER III.

"I think I saw the letters arrive," said Mrs. Boyce to her daughter.

"And Donna Margherita seems to be signalling to us."

"Let me go for them, mamma."

"No, thank you, I must go in."

And Mrs. Boyce rose from her seat, and went slowly towards the hotel.

Marcella watched her widow's cap and black dress as they passed along

the _pergola_ of the hotel garden, between bright masses of geraniums

and roses on either side.

They had been sitting in the famous garden of the Cappucini Hotel at

Amalfi. To Marcella's left, far below the high terrace of the hotel, the

green and azure of the Salernian gulf shone and danced in the sun, to

her right a wood of oak and arbutus stretched up into a purple cliff--a

wood starred above with gold and scarlet berries, and below with

cyclamen and narcissus. From the earth under the leafy oaks--for the

oaks at Amalfi lose and regain their foliage in winter and spring by

imperceptible gradations--came a moist English smell. The air was damp

and warm. A convent bell tolled from invisible heights above the garden;

while the olives and vines close at hand were full of the chattering

voices of gardeners and children, and broken here and there by clouds of

pink almond-blossom. March had just begun, and the afternoons were fast

lengthening. It was little more than a fortnight since Mr. Boyce's

death. In the November of the preceding year Mrs. Boyce and Marcella had

brought him to Naples by sea, and there, at a little villa on Posilippo,

he had drawn sadly to his end. It had been a dreary time, from which

Marcella could hardly hope that her mother would ever fully recover. She

herself had found in the long months of nursing--nursing of which, with

quiet tenacity, she had gradually claimed and obtained her full share--a

deep moral consolation. They had paid certain debts to conscience, and

they had for ever enshrined her father's memory in the silence of an

unmeasured and loving pity.

But the wife? Marcella sorely recognised that to her mother these last

days had brought none of the soothing, reconciling influences they had

involved for herself. Between the husband and wife there had been dumb

friction and misery--surely also a passionate affection!--to the end.

The invalid's dependence on her had been abject, her devotion wonderful.

Yet, in her close contact with them, the daughter had never been able to

ignore the existence between them of a wretched though tacit

debate--reproach on his side, self-defence or spasmodic effort on

hers--which seemed to have its origin deep in the past, yet to be

stimulated afresh by a hundred passing incidents of the present. Under

the blight of it, as under the physical strain of nursing, Mrs. Boyce

had worn and dwindled to a white-haired shadow; while he had both clung

to life and feared death more than would normally have been the case.

At the end he had died in her arms, his head on her breast; she had

closed his eyes and performed every last office without a tear; nor had

Marcella ever seen her weep from then till now. The letters she had

received, mostly, Marcella believed, from her own family, remained

unopened in her travelling-bag. She spoke very little, and was

constantly restless, nor could Marcella as yet form any idea of the

future.

After the funeral at Naples Mrs. Boyce had written immediately to her

husband's solicitor for a copy of his will and a statement of affairs.

She had then allowed herself to be carried off to Amalfi, and had there,

while entirely declining to admit that she was ill, been clearly doing

her best to recover health and nerve sufficient to come to some

decision, to grapple with some crisis which Marcella also felt to be

impending--though as to why it should be impending, or what the nature

of it might be, she could only dread and guess.

There was much bitter yearning in the girl's heart as she sat, breathed

on by the soft Italian wind blowing from this enchanted sea. The inner

cry was that her mother did not love her, had never loved her, and might

even now--weird, incredible thought!--be planning to desert her. Hallin

was dead--who else was there that cared for her or thought of her? Betty

Macdonald wrote often, wild, "_schwärmerisch_" letters. Marcella looked

for them with eagerness, and answered them affectionately. But Betty

must soon marry, and then all that would be at an end. Meanwhile

Marcella knew well it was Betty's news that made Betty's adoration

doubly welcome. Aldous Raeburn--she never did or could think of him

under his new name--was apparently in London, much occupied in politics,

and constantly, as it seemed, in Betty's society. What likelihood was

there that her life and his would ever touch again? She thought often of

her confession to Hallin, but in great perplexity of feeling. She had,

of course, said no word of secrecy to him at the time. Such a demand in

a man's last hour would have been impossible. She had simply followed a

certain mystical love and obedience in telling him what he asked to

know, and in the strong spontaneous impulse had thought of nothing

beyond. Afterwards her pride had suffered fresh martyrdom. Could he,

with his loving instinct, have failed to give his friend some sign? If

so, it had been unwelcome, for since the day of Hallin's funeral she and

Aldous had been more complete strangers than before. Lady Winterbourne,

Betty, Frank Leven, had written since her father's death; but from him,

nothing.

By the way, Frank Leven had succeeded at Christmas, by old Sir Charles

Leven's unexpected death, to the baronetcy and estates. How would that

affect his chances with Betty?--if indeed there were any such chances

left.

As to her own immediate future, Marcella knew from many indications that

Mellor would be hers at once. But in her general tiredness of mind and

body she was far more conscious of the burden of her inheritance than of

its opportunities. All that vivid castle-building gift which was

specially hers, and would revive, was at present in abeyance. She had

pined once for power and freedom, that she might make a Kingdom of

Heaven of her own, quickly. Now power and freedom, up to a certain

point, were about to be put into her hands; and instead of plans for

acting largely and bountifully on a plastic outer world, she was saying

to herself, hungrily, that unless she had something close to her to love

and live for, she could do nothing. If her mother would end these

unnatural doubts, if she would begin to make friends with her own

daughter, and only yield herself to be loved and comforted, why _then_

it might be possible to think of the village and the straw-plaiting!

Otherwise--the girl's attitude as she sat dreaming in the sun showed her

despondency.

She was roused by her mother's voice calling her from the other end of

the _pergola_.

"Yes, mamma."

"Will you come in? There are some letters."

"It is the will," thought Marcella, as Mrs. Boyce turned back to the

hotel, and she followed.

Mrs. Boyce shut the door of their sitting-room, and then went up to her

daughter with a manner which suddenly struck and startled Marcella.

There was natural agitation and trouble in it.

"There is something in the will, Marcella, which will, I fear, annoy and

distress you. Your father inserted it without consulting me. I want to

know what you think ought to be done. You will find that Lord Maxwell

and I have been appointed joint executors."

Marcella turned pale.

"Lord Maxwell!" she said, bewildered. "_Lord Maxwell--Aldous_! What do

you mean, mamma?"

Mrs. Boyce put the will into her hands, and, pointing the way among the

technicalities she had been perusing while Marcella was still lingering

in the garden, showed her the paragraph in question. The words of the

will were merely formal: "I hereby appoint," &c., and no more; but in a

communication from the family solicitor, Mr. French, which Mrs. Boyce

silently handed to her daughter after she had read the legal

disposition, the ladies were informed that Mr. Boyce had, before

quitting England, written a letter to Lord Maxwell, duly sealed and

addressed, with instructions that it should be forwarded to its

destination immediately after the writer's burial. "Those instructions,"

said Mr. French, "I have carried out. I understand that Lord Maxwell was

not consulted as to his appointment as executor prior to the drawing up

of the will. But you will no doubt hear from him at once, and as soon as

we know that he consents to act, we can proceed immediately to probate."

"Mamma, how _could_ he?" said Marcella, in a low, suffocated voice,

letting will and letter fall upon her knee.

"Did he give you no warning in that talk you had with him at Mellor?"

said Mrs. Boyce, after a minute's silence.

"Not the least," said Marcella, rising restlessly and beginning to walk

up and down. "He spoke to me about wishing to bring it on again--asked

me to let him write. I told him it was all done with--for ever! As to my

own feelings, I felt it was no use to speak of them; but I thought--I

_believed_, I had proved to him that Lord Maxwell had absolutely given

up all idea of such a thing; and that it was already probable he would

marry some one else. I told him I would rather disappear from every one

I knew than consent to it--he could only humiliate us all by saying a

word. And _now_, after that!--"

She stopped in her restless walk, pressing her hands miserably together.

"What _does_ he want with us and our affairs?" she broke out. "He

wishes, of course, to have no more to do with me. And now we force

him--_force_ him into these intimate relations. What can papa have said

in that letter to him? What _can_ he have said? Oh! it is unbearable!

Can't we write at once?"

She pressed her hands over her eyes in a passion of humiliation and

disgust. Mrs. Boyce watched her closely.

"We must wait, anyway, for his letter," she said. "It ought to be here

by to-morrow morning."

Marcella sank on a chair by an open glass door, her eyes wandering,

through the straggling roses growing against the wall of the stone

balcony outside, to the laughing purples and greens of the sea.

"Of course," she said unhappily, "it is most probable he will consent.

It would not be like him to refuse. But, mamma, you must write. _I_ must

write and beg him not to do it. It is quite simple. We can manage

everything for ourselves. Oh! how _could_ papa?" she broke out again in

a low wail, "how could he?"