Camelia galloped home furiously. The tragedy was then to be consummated.
He would not put out a finger to avert it. Mary would go down into the
pit of nothingness, and her love, her agony, her strivings after good,
would be as though they had never been.
"And _I_ live," thought Camelia, as she galloped, and her thoughts
seemed to gallop beside her; they were like phantom shapes pressing on
her from without, for she did not want to think. "_I_, thick-skinned,
dull-souled I. Yes, materialism wins the day. Morality is a lie, evolved
for the carpeting of lives like mine, for the preservation of the
fittest!--_I_ being fittest! To those that have shall be given, and from
those who have not shall be taken away--the law of evolution. Oh!
hideous, hideous! Oh, horror!--not even the ethical straw of development
to grasp at; Mary's suffering has warped her, lowered her. She has been
tortured into rebellion against her own sweet rectitude; she, who only
asked to love--hates; she, who lived in a peaceful renunciation, now
struggles, thinks only of herself."
It was this last thought that seemed to lean beside her, look into her
eyes with the most intolerable look. Mary--inevitably lowered. The
blackness shuddered through her. Camelia on that ride tasted the very
dregs of doubt and despair, and knew the helplessness of man before
them. She could have killed herself, had not a sullen spark, the last
smouldering from the fire of resolution that had burned in her as she
rode to Perior, still lit one path through the darkness. She must throw
herself at Mary's feet, seek and give comfort through her own extreme
abasement. She must cling to Mary, supplicating her to believe in her
infinite love and pity. Could not that love, when all errors were
explained, reach and hold her? Camelia felt her defiance of eternity
clasp Mary forever. But when she reached home Mary was not there.
Camelia panted as she ran from room to room; her desire, thrown back,
rose stiflingly. She was afraid of seeing her mother, for at a look, a
question, she felt that her suspense of hard self-control would break
down; she might scream and rave. She sent a few words to Lady Paton by a
servant; she was tired and was going to rest--must not be
disturbed--then she locked herself into her own room.
Some hours passed before she heard Mary's voice outside demanding
entrance, hours that Camelia was to look back on as the blackest of her
life, so black that all in them, every thought and impulse, made an
indistinguishable chaos, where only her suffering, a trembling leaf
tossing on deepest waters, knew itself. In looking back, she remembered
that she had not once moved until the knock came, and that, on going to
open the door, her hand had so shaken that it fumbled for some moments
with the key.
Mary stood on the threshold. She was splashed with mud. Beside the
whiteness of her face, Camelia's was passive in its pain. Mary closed
the door, and, as Camelia retreated a little before her, leaned back
against it. Her eyes went at once over Camelia's wet habit and
dishevelled hair; she had expected a careful effacement of all signs of
the guilty errand; Camelia could not now deny the ride. The thought of a
brazen avowal made Mary close her eyes for a moment. She had to struggle
with a sick faintness, as she leaned against the door, before she could
put that monstrous thought aside and say, returning to her first
impulse, and opening her eyes as she spoke--
"I know where you have been."
Camelia stood still. This unexpected blow confused the direct vision of
appeal and abasement that upheld her. She must face an unlooked-for
contingency, and her mind seemed to reel a little as she faced it.
"You followed me, Mary?" she asked, with a gentleness bewildered.
"Yes, I followed you."
Camelia was now becoming conscious of the definiteness of Mary's heavy
stare. It was like a stone, and under the weight of it she groped,
staggering, in a wilderness of formless conjectures. Mary could not know
why she had gone. A pang of terror shot through her. Mary's next words
riveted the terror.
"I saw you. I know why you went. I know everything," said Mary.
Camelia's horror kept silence, though the room seemed to whirl round
with her. Had Mary by some unknown means reached the Grange before she
did? Had she been hidden near the laboratory? Had she heard? Were all
merciful lies impossible? She felt her very lips freeze in a rigid
powerlessness.
"You went to tell him that I loved him?" Mary's eyes opened widely as
she spoke, and she walked up to her cousin, close to her.
"You told him that I loved him," she repeated, and Camelia in her
nightmare horror felt the hatred of the pale eyes.
"You don't dare deny that you told him." No, Camelia did not dare deny.
She looked down spellbound at Mary. She was afraid of her, horribly
afraid of her. It was like the approach of a nightmare animal, its
familiar seeming making its strangeness the more awful. She did not dare
deny. She could not move away from her; she was paralyzed in her dread.
Mary looked at her as though conscious of her own power.
"You told him, so that he might comfort you, tell you he had never loved
me, never could have loved me. You betrayed me to save yourself from
that reproach of robbing me." It was like awakening with a gasp that
Camelia now cried--
"No, no, Mary! Oh no."
She could speak. She could clasp her hands. "No, no, no," she repeated
almost with joy.
"You lie. You are lying. What is the good of lying to me now? It is easy
for you to lie. You went to ask him the truth, and he gave it to you.
For he would never have loved me, whatever I may have hoped--even
believed at moments."
"No, Mary; no, no!" Mary's dreadful supposition made Camelia feel the
reality as a peace, a refuge. That world of black cruelty where Mary
wandered, that at least was untrue, an illusion. Not hatred, not deceit
surrounded her, but love, and pity, and tenderness.
"I did not go for that, Mary," she cried. "Listen, Mary, you are wrong;
thank God, you are wrong. I did not go because I was sorry for myself; I
did not go basely. I was so sorry for you," said Camelia, sobbing and
speaking brokenly, while Mary looked at her in a stern tearless silence,
"I knew he would be sorry. I knew we both loved you, and I wanted him to
marry you, Mary."
"_What!_" Mary's voice was terrible; yet Camelia clung to the courage of
her love, confident that the truth alone could now reveal it--all the
truth.
"Yes, dearest Mary, yes. There was no hatred, only a longing to make you
happy--to help atone; only love, not hatred."
"You are telling me the truth?"
They were standing still before each other. Camelia could not interpret
the pale eyes.
"Mary, I swear it before God."
"And he will not marry me!"
"He loves you, as I do."
"He will not marry me!"
"Let me only tell you--everything; it is not you only----"
"You tossed me to him--and he refused me! How dare you! How dare you!
How dare you!" And Mary, a revelation of rage and detestation flaming up
in her eyes, distorting her face, struck her cousin violently on the
cheek.
Camelia stood dazed. The blow interpreted, too well, Mary's attitude.
She could not resent, nor even wonder, could only accept the retribution
of cruel misunderstanding and bow her head. She covered her face with
her hands and wept. Except for this sound of weeping the room was still.
In the darkness of her humiliation--shut in behind her hands--Camelia
felt, at last, the silence. She looked up. Mary was once more leaning
against the door. Her eyes were closed. Camelia went to her, took her
hand, and Mary made no motion. Raising the hand to her lips Camelia
kissed it; its coldness chilled the smarting of the blow. Mastering her
terror Camelia put her arms around her, and, Mary sinking forward into
them, she gathered up the piteously light figure and carried it to the
bed.
"Mary--Mary--Mary," she murmured, staring at the head which lay so
still, so solemnly. Was she dead? Camelia struck aside the thought of a
so cruel finality. Strengthened by her rebellion she sprang to open the
door, and the house resounded with her cries for help.