“’TIS NOT THE SAME NOW, NEVER MORE CAN BE.”
Vansittart was the first to break that agony of silence.
“Does this mean the end of love?” he asked. “Is all over and done with
between you and me? Is love only a dream that we have dreamed?”
“Yes; it is a dream,” she answered, looking at him with tearless eyes,
which had more misery in them than all the tears he had ever seen in
the eyes of women. “It is something perhaps to have believed one’s self
happy for two blessed years. You have been so good to me--so good to
poor Peggy. She loved you almost as much as I did. You have been all
goodness,--and you did not know that he was my brother. Yet, yet, when
you killed him you must have known that some heart would be broken.
No, I can never forget how good you have been--or how dear. Don’t think
that I can change in an hour from love to hate. No, no; that cannot be.
To my dying day I must love you--but I cannot live with the man who
killed my brother. I can never be your wife again. That is all over. We
must be strangers on this side of the grave.”
“A hard sentence, Eve; it could not be harder if I were a deliberate
murderer. And yet perhaps it is no more than I deserve--perhaps even
the gallows would be no more than my desert----”
“The gallows! Oh, God, could they kill you because----?”
The words died in her throat, choked by the agony of a great fear.
“But no one knows--no one will ever know,” she cried. “She will never
tell”--pointing to the door. “She loves you too dearly.”
“No, she will not tell.”
“Is there any one else who knows?”
“Only her aunt, who may be trusted. No, I don’t think I am in any
danger from the law,” he said carelessly, as if that hardly mattered.
“But you--you are my supreme judge; and you look upon me as a murderer.
Well, perhaps you are right. Let me sophisticate with myself as I will,
in that one moment I was in mind and instinct a homicide. When I struck
that blow I did not care about consequences. All the savage impulses
within me were raging. Yes, I was a murderer. And you say that we must
part! That is your sentence?”
She nodded yes.
“Very well; then I must do all I can to make our parting easy and
reputable. The world will wonder and talk, but we must bear that. I
think I know a way of lessening the scandal. You will live at Merewood,
and I will travel. That will make things easy.”
“Live at Merewood without you! Not for all the world. I can go back to
Fernhurst to my sisters. What does it matter where I live? The worst is
that I _must_ live. You will let me give them some of my pin-money, I
know, so that I may not be a burden upon them.”
“Let you? Why, your pin-money is your own, to throw in the gutter if
you like.”
“No, no; it was meant for your wife. I shall have no claim upon it when
we are parted. But I don’t want to be a burden at the Homestead. I
should like to give them fifty pounds a year. I shall not cost them so
much as that.”
“I dare say not. Why do you torture me with this talk of money? All
the money I have is turned to withered leaves. Eve, Eve,” he cried
passionately, “you could not do this cruel thing if our child had
lived!”
“Could I not? Would that have altered the fact that you killed my
brother? No, for God’s sake don’t come near me,” as he approached her
with extended hand, trying to clasp her hand in his, passionately
longing for reunion. “There is a ghost between us. I should hate myself
if I could forget the dead.”
“Ah, that is the worst sting of death,” he cried bitterly, “the
influence of the dead which blights the living. Is there no hope,
Eve--no hope? Is your mind made up?”
“Alas! alas! I have no choice.”
“Take time to think, at least, before you act.”
“Time to think? Why, I have been thinking for an eternity. It is ages
since that woman put this picture in my hand. Oh, I have thought, Jack.
I have thought. If I could shut my eyes and say I forget--if I could
say the past is past, and the dead are no better for our tears and our
sacrifices, our crape gowns, or the roses we plant on their graves--if
I could be like the heathens who said, ‘Let us be happy to-day, for
to-morrow we die,’ how gladly would I blot thought and memory from my
brain! But you see while I live I must think and remember; and every
hour of my life with you would be darkened by one hideous memory. I
should see my brother in his blood-stained winding-sheet standing
between us. There are some things that cannot be, that heart, and
mind, and conscience cry out against, and our marriage is one of those
things. Oh, it was wicked, wicked, to marry me, knowing what you knew.”
“Was it wicked? If it was, I don’t repent of that sin. I repent my
first crime--the crime of bloodshed--not my second, the crime of making
you my wife. I have had two years of bliss. How many men can say as
much? Well, since you are resolute--have weighed what you are doing,
and still decide against me, I will leave you in peace. If the memory
of those years cannot plead for me, all words are idle.”
She heard the strangled sob in his voice as he turned from her and
went slowly to the door: but she did not call him back. She stood
like a woman of stone till the door closed on him, and the outer door
opened and shut again. Then she clasped her hands above her head with a
distracted gesture, and rushed out upon the balcony to see the last of
him. She leant over the high iron rail to watch him as he sprang into
the waiting hansom. She saw him drive away, and did not shriek to him
to come back, though her whole being, brain, heart, nerves, yearned
after him with despairing love. She watched till the cab vanished
from her sight, hidden by the foliage on the Embankment, and then she
dragged herself slowly back to the room, as a wounded animal crawls to
its lair, and flung herself upon Lisa’s sofa, a broken-hearted woman.
“Could I act otherwise,--could I, could I?” she asked herself. “My
brother, my own flesh and blood! Even if I had not loved him, could I
live with the man who killed him?”
Lisa crept into the room, while Eve sat sobbing, with her face hidden
in the sofa pillow. Lisa crept to her side, and sat on the ground by
her, pitying her, and looking up at her with mute doglike tenderness.
“What have you done?” she asked at last. “Have you sent him from
you--your husband who loves you?”
“Yes, he is gone. It is our fate.”
“Fate!” cried Lisa, contemptuously. “What is fate? It is you, not Fate,
that make the parting. If you loved him you would not let him go.”
“If I loved him? Why, my whole being is made up of love for him.”
“What then? And you send him from you for an accident--for something
which no one could help. I was there--these eyes saw it. A moment and
it was done! There was not time for thought. For that one instant of
wrong-doing are you to make his life miserable?”
“He killed my brother. Do you understand that, Lisa? The man who ought
to have been your husband was my brother. Did you care nothing for
him--you, the mother of his child?”
“Si, si, I cared for him. When first he came to Burano I worshipped him
as if he had been St. Mark. And when he said, ‘Come to Venice with me,
Lisa, and be my little wife,’ I went. It was wicked, I know. I ought
not to have left Burano till I had been to confession, and the priest
had married us; but when I said, ‘You will marry me, Signor Inglese,’
he said, ‘Yes, Lisa, by-and-by,’ and that was what he always said till
the last--‘by-and-by.’ He was not always kind to me, Si’ora, though
he was your brother. He beat me sometimes when the luck had been bad
at cards. When he had been sitting up half the night playing cards
with his friends, and I crept into the room and begged him to play no
more--he was not kind then. He would start up out of his chair, and
swear a big English oath, and strike at me with his clenched fist. But
am I sorry? Yes, of course I am sorry. It was dreadful to see him fall
dead in a moment; but is that to be remembered against your husband
years afterwards? He was brutal that night, so brutal that he deserved
his death, almost. He flew at the strange Englishman like a tiger. He
would not listen, he would not believe that I was not false to him. He
was mad with drink and foolish anger. He was like a wild beast. And for
an accident like that you would make the noblest of men unhappy. Ah,
Si’ora, that is not love. If your husband belonged to me, and he loved
me as he loves you, he might kill twenty men, and I would cling to him
and love him still. What would their life be to me, or their death, if
I had him?”
“You are a semi-civilized savage, and you can’t understand,” said Eve,
sternly. “Life and death, good name, and honour, have no meaning for
you.”
“Love means more than all,” said Lisa, doggedly.
“There is only one man you have the right to love,” said Eve; “the man
who ought to have been your husband. You must be indeed a wretch if you
can love the man who killed him.”
“Ah, madonna mia, we do not make our hearts. They are made for us,”
Lisa pleaded naively. “The Signor Inglese was very good to me at
Burano in my poverty; but afterwards, at Venice, I had a good deal to
suffer. It was a hard life sometimes. One had need be young, and able
to laugh, and forgive and forget. But he--Signor Vansittart--he was
always kind. His face haunted me after that Shrove Tuesday on the Lido,
and when we met again--when la Zia and I were strangers in London,
without a friend in the world--oh, how kind and generous he was! All
that I have of fame and fortune I owe to him, and though he does not
care for me so much as that,” with a contemptuous wave of her fingers,
“yet he is always gentle, always good. Do not tell me that I am to care
more for the dead man who deceived me and beat me than for the living
man who has been my benefactor, my guardian angel, and for whom I say
a paternoster and two aves every night of my life. It is sweet to say
these for his sake: that his sin may be forgiven.”
“Ah, you do not understand. You do not know what death is,” said Eve,
with gloomy anger, getting up from the sofa, and rearranging her
loosened hair with trembling hands.
“It must come to all of us,” answered Lisa, with a philosophical shrug.
“Better that it should come in a moment as his came, without suffering,
without fear, than that we should live to be old and fat and full of
maladies. People die of dreadful diseases that one shudders only to
hear of, and that is called a natural death. How much better to be
stabbed to the heart unawares.”
“I cannot reason with you,” said Eve, haughtily. “I loved my brother.
You, his mistress, evidently cared nothing for him.”
And with this verbal stab, she departed. Who shall say whether she was
more indignant with the Venetian for loving Harold Marchant too little
or for loving John Vansittart too much?
Her carriage was waiting for her; the servants were asleep in the
afternoon sun. She was only just able to utter the monosyllabic “Home,”
in answer to the footman’s question.
How strange the streets and all their movement of everyday life seemed
to her, as she drove along the interminable King’s Road, and by Sloane
Street and the Park--how careless the faces of the people. Was there
no other trouble in the world but her own? Was everybody else busy,
and bustling, and happy? She felt as if she had been driving home from
a funeral, wondering to find a world where there were no signs of
sorrow. Had she not verily parted from her dead? The dead brother whom
she had always pictured to herself as alive and happy in some far-off
African wilderness, leading the adventurer’s reckless life, caring for
no one he had left in the civilized world, but destined to come back
to her hereafter with that wild spirit tamed, and his home affections
reviving with mature years. He was dead, and she would see him no more
on earth--killed in a tavern brawl, for the sake of a worthless woman.
And the husband she adored, he, too, was dead--dead to her for ever.
She had renounced him, and he was free to go his own way, and lead
his own life, and find consolation and happiness where he could. Her
friends of Mayfair had told her that no man laments long for the loss
of any woman; that one beautiful face blots out another; that there is
no image, however cherished, which does not grow faint, and fade and
vanish, as a circle widens and melts away upon still water.
Even the house in Charles Street had a strange aspect when she
re-entered it. Should she find him there? Would he plead with her
again, in their own house, where she had been so happy with him, where
all mute things reminded her of the glad life he had given her? Would
he plead with her once more, and renew the struggle between love for
the living and loyalty to the dead? No; she was spared that ordeal. The
servant who opened the door told her that his master had been summoned
hurriedly to Southampton, and had left a letter for her. She caught up
the letter eagerly, hungry, in her desolation, for some sign from him,
some last link between them.
“I start by the mail for Southampton,” he wrote. “Till nine I shall be
within reach of a telegram at the Travellers, if you change your mind.
Before to-morrow night I shall be outward bound; but till to-morrow
night a wire to the Post Office at Southampton would find me. I have
made no plans as yet, but you may think of me as an exile and a
wanderer.”
He was gone! She had been obeyed. The wrench was over; and now she had
to face life calmly and deliberately without him. She had sacrificed
all that was nearest and dearest to her on this earth to the shadow
of the dead. She had made her choice between the dead and the living.
Could she have chosen otherwise?
That was the question she asked herself when she had locked the door of
her room and was alone with her misery, walking to and fro among the
familiar surroundings which had been the background of a happy union.
How could she have chosen otherwise?
“He killed him!” she repeated to herself with dogged insistency. “He
killed my brother. What should I be if I could stay with him--call him
husband, love him and obey him for the rest of my life--the man who
killed my brother? Was it murder or not murder, he killed him. It was
death. Oh, to think of my poor Harold--to think that he entered that
fatal place in all the strength of his manhood; a young man, with a
long life before him, perhaps; with all the chances of fortune and
happiness which length of years can bring; and there in a moment he was
breathing his last breath, stabbed to the heart!”
Memory recalled that fondly loved brother in the flush of his active
boyhood--a cricket field shining in the sunlight, the white tents,
the village crowd, and that tall, muscular form, the sunburnt face,
blue eyes, and auburn hair, the type of English boyhood at its best.
One scene after another of her childhood passed before her as in a
panorama, and Harold was the central figure in every picture. So
strong, so brave, so intelligent, so kind to her always, even when at
war with others; loving her to the last, even when an outcast from his
home.
How cruelly Fate had used him--an unkind father--a forced exile--an
early and a violent death!
For more than an hour--for an eternity of suffering--she paced her
room--or knelt beside the bed, not praying, nor yet crying--only
thinking, thinking of the life that had been and that was over for
ever--her childish life in Yorkshire while her brother was still the
cherished son, the honoured heir--the later season of disgrace and
parting--her life with the husband of her love.
“And Peggy,” she thought, with a new agony of unavailing love, “oh, how
good he was to my poor Peggy; but if she had known that the hand which
smoothed her pillow was the hand that killed her brother--if she had
known! Does she know now, I wonder, and know what I suffer, and pity
me, from the far distance, in the land where there are no tears?”
* * * * *
She refused admittance to her maid at the usual hour of dressing. She
told Benson that she had a headache, and would not go down to dinner.
Later in the evening she wandered about the house, looking at the rooms
in which she had been so happy--remembering the days of her courtship,
when those rooms were still new to her, and when they realized all she
had ever imagined of luxury and refinement. She went about bidding the
rooms good-bye, looking at them for the last time, as she believed, for
she meant to depart on her journey early next morning.
To depart whither?
On thinking out the question of her future she rejected the notion of
that return to the old home of which she had spoken to Vansittart.
She could not go to her sisters at Fernhurst, the refuge which she
would instinctively have chosen, content to hide herself in the
humble home of her girlhood, to live the old unluxurious life, to sit
by the cottage hearth, and read the tattered old books, and try to
think herself a girl again, a girl who had never seen the face of Jack
Vansittart.
Fernhurst would not do. It was too near Lady Hartley; it was not remote
enough from Merewood. She had to find some abiding place which should
be unknown to all the world except the servant who went with her. She
did not feel herself equal to travelling without a servant. The ways of
wealth had spoiled her for the ways of penury. She was no longer the
same young woman who used to head an early expedition from Haslemere
to Waterloo, travelling third class, among soldiers and workmen,
to be first in the scramble for bargains at a sale of drapery. She
felt herself powerless, in her bruised and broken state, to face the
confusion of a crowded railway station, the bewilderment of foreign
travel, with its stringent demands upon the traveller’s calmness and
intelligence.
She found her good Benson waiting for her in her boudoir dressing-room
with a tea-tray, and a meal of cold chicken, fruit and jelly, set out
temptingly to beguile her into eating.
“You have had nothing since lunch, ma’am.”
“I can’t eat anything--yes,” as Benson looked distressed, “some bread
and butter. You can leave that and the tea--but take away all the rest,
please. And then give me Bradshaw--and I want you to pack before you go
to bed. It is not very late, is it?”--looking hopelessly at the watch
on her chatelaine, but unable to see the quaint old figures with those
tired eyes.
“Past eleven, ma’am; but I can pack to-night, if you like. Are we to
leave early to-morrow?”
Eve turned the leaves of Bradshaw before she answered, and pored over a
page for a few minutes.
“The Continental train leaves Charing Cross at eight,” she said.
“Then I must certainly pack to-night, ma’am. Shall I take many
dresses--evening gowns--tea-gowns? Shall you be going out much in the
evenings?”
“I shan’t be going out at all. Take my plainest walking gowns, and,
yes, a tea-gown or two; one black evening gown will do. Take plenty of
things. I shall be abroad a long time.”
“It is very sudden, ma’am,” faltered Benson, who was honestly fond of
her mistress.
“Yes, it is very sudden. You must not ask me any questions. You must
take it on trust that there is nothing wrong in my life.”
“Oh, ma’am, I should never think that, whatever happened. I know you
too well. Are we going to join Mr. Vansittart on the Continent?”
“No, Benson. We are going away from him. Mr. Vansittart and I have
parted for ever. Please don’t speak of it to any one downstairs. I want
to avoid all talk and scandal. I tell you because you are going with
me. You will share in my new life--if you like to go.”
“I would go to the end of the world with you, ma’am. But, dear, dear,
dear, to think that you and Mr. Vansittart can be parted--you who
have been so happy together, like children almost! It can only be a
temporary misunderstanding. I am sure of that.”
“Benson, if you talk about my trouble I shall go alone. Can’t you
understand that there are griefs that won’t bear to be spoken of? Mine
is one of them. I am going abroad; I hardly know where as yet. To some
quiet place in Brittany or Normandy most likely, where I can just
exist.”
“Oh, my dear young lady, you will kill yourself with grief,” sobbed
Benson, as she poured out tea for her mistress.
While Benson was packing, with all the dexterity and method of an
accomplished packer, Eve was employed in writing the most difficult
letter she had ever written in her life.
She was writing to her husband’s mother, the woman who had received
her at first reluctantly, but afterwards with motherly affection; the
woman who had surrendered the son she adored to the wife he had chosen
for himself, and who looked to that wife for the happiness of her son’s
future years. Penniless, the daughter of a disreputable father, with
no social surroundings or family influence to recommend her, she had
been accepted by Jack Vansittart’s relations; petted and praised by his
sister; lovingly cherished by his mother; and for recompense of their
trust in her what was she going to give them?
She was going to spoil her husband’s life in the heyday of youth and
love; to leave him bound in wedlock and yet companionless; with a wife
and no wife. He could not divorce her; she could not divorce him. His
sin was not of the kind which breaks marriage bonds.
What could she say to her mother-in-law which could in any manner
explain or justify the parting of husband and wife who until yesterday
had been living together in seemingly happiest union? There was no
explanation, no justification possible. The mystery of those two broken
lives must remain for ever dark to their kindred and the world.
“My husband and I have agreed to part, and our parting must needs be
for a lifetime,” she wrote. “We can tell no one our reasons, not even
you, mother, who of all people have the strongest right to question us.
Unfaithfulness or lessening love has nothing to do with our separation.
I never loved my husband better than I love him now; or, at least, I
never knew the strength of my love for him so well as I know it now.
What must be must be. It is Fate, and not our own will, that divides
us. Wherever he may go my heart will go with him. Think of me with
indulgence if you can; pity me if you can, for I have direst need of
your pity.”
She said nothing about her destination. She had not made up her mind
yet where she was to go. She sat for an hour or more turning the leaves
of the Continental time-table; now thinking she would go by Ostend, and
to the Ardennes; and then again deciding upon Brittany. It mattered
nothing to her where she went; all places were alike, except for her
desire to avoid the people she knew.
Finally she decided upon crossing to St. Malo by the boat that left
Southampton at five o’clock next day; and from St. Malo to Dinan or
Avranches. She would avoid the seaside, where English visitors would
be likely to be met at this season. The Norman and Breton towns she
knew by repute as places where people lived quietly and economically,
forgotten by the world.
* * * * *
The same post which brought Mrs. Vansittart Eve’s letter from London
brought her a letter from her son, written from Southampton.
“You will be surprised at the address from which I write, and still
more surprised when I tell you that Southampton is only the first stage
on my journey to South Africa. I sail from here to the Cape, and from
thence shall make my way to whichever portion of the Dark Continent
promises best for health and enjoyment at this time of year. Do not be
uneasy about me, my dear mother. I shall take counsel with experienced
travellers before I turn my back upon the civilized world; and I shall
not go to meet fever, famine, or assassination. You shall hear from me
at each stage of my wanderings. I do not go as a scientific explorer,
or as a sportsman in quest of big game, though I hope to make good use
of my gun. I go with the desire to escape from civilization, monotony,
and my own thoughts, which just now are of the saddest.
“A cloud has spread itself between Eve and me, and we two, who were
so happy in each other’s affection a little while ago, have agreed
to part, I fear never again to live together. I cannot tell you our
reasons, for they involve a secret the revelation of which would
be disastrous to me--the only secret I ever kept from you. Eve is
blameless--chaste and faithful as in the beginning of our wedded
lives. I implore you to think of her always with affection; to
shelter and cherish her if ever she appeal to your love or claim your
protection. She is entitled to your respect and to your pity. The only
sinner--never a deliberate sinner--is your son, who in his shattered
domestic life pays the forfeit of one unhappy act.”