|The blow had fallen. His punishment had come, and Agnes, lying on
her bed that night, felt that she would have given everything that she
possessed to avert it. If there had been any thought of revenge in her
heart originally--and she felt that perhaps there had been some such
thought the moment that Sir Percival Hope had told her what she should
have seen for herself long before, namely, that Claude Westwood was in
love with Clare--there was now nothing in her heart but pity for the
girl whom she had left sleeping in the next room.
She felt that she had been amply revenged upon the man who had treated
her so cruelly. She had crushed him with a completeness that would have
satisfied even the most revengeful of women. She had seen him flying
from the house without waiting for the girl to recover consciousness.
What finer scheme of vengeance could any woman hope for--and she had
always heard that women were revengeful--than that which had been placed
within her reach?
And yet she lay awake in her tears, feeling that she would give up all
she had in the world if by so doing, she could compass the happiness
of the man who had treated her so basely, and of the girl who had
supplanted her in his love. She felt that revenge was not sweet but
bitter.
When she had been standing before him in the room downstairs and had
felt stung to the soul by that horrible question of his, “Will you make
me wish that I had never seen you?” she had had a moment of womanly
pleasure, thinking of the power she had to crush him utterly; but
all her passion had amounted to no more than was susceptible of being
exhausted in half-a-dozen phrases. Her passion of reproach, which found
expression in those words that had been forced from her, had not lasted
beyond the speaking of those words. So soon as they were spoken she
found herself face to face not with the delight of revenge, but with the
grief of self-reproach.
She was actually ready to heap reproaches upon herself for having failed
to see within the first hour of the arrival of Clare that the man loved
her. How was it that she had failed to see that their meeting aboard the
steamer had resulted in love? She felt that she must have been blinder
than all manner of women to fail to perceive that this was so. Was she
not to blame for having allowed them to be together day after day, while
she had in her desk that letter which told her that no two people in
the world should be kept wider apart than Claude Westwood and Clare
Tristram?
She recollected that at first her impulse had been to send the girl
away; but when she found that she and Claude were already acquainted,
and that the terrible secret was known to neither of them, the panic
which had seized her subsided.
That was, she felt, where she had been to blame. She should not have
wilfully closed her eyes to the possibility of their falling in love.
Even though the advice which Sir Percival had given to her--the advice
to wait patiently until Claude's old love for her returned--was still in
her mind, she now felt that if she had been like other women she would
have foreseen the possibility, nay, the likelihood, that Claude would
come to love the girl by whom he had clearly been impressed.
She even went the length of blaming herself for feeling, as she had felt
on Sir Percival's suggesting to her that Claude had come to love Clare,
that it was the decree of Heaven that she should punish the man for his
cruelty to her. She knew that it had been a grim satisfaction for her
to reflect that his punishment was coming. She had, in her blindness,
fancied that it was to assume the form of his rejection by Clare, and
she had hoped to see him crushed as he had crushed her.
“Ah, if I had not been so willing to see him humiliated I might still
have had a chance of averting the blow which has fallen on both of
them--that is the worst of it, on both of them!”
This was actually the direction which was taken by her self-reproaches
as she lay in her tears with no hope of sleep for her that night.
She felt, however, that though she had been to blame in some measure
for the catastrophe which had come about, she could not in the supreme
moment have acted otherwise than she had done.
Claude had said truly that the girl at least was innocent. He who a few
weeks before had attempted to justify his thirst for revenge by quoting
the awful curse “unto the third and fourth generation” had, when it
suited him, talked about the innocence of the girl--about the injustice
of visiting upon her head the sins of her father. But Agnes knew that
she had done what was right in refusing to allow him to see Clare again
unless to tell her the truth about her father.
The way he had shrunk from her at the moment of her entering the room,
not daring even to glance at her--the way he had cried those words,
“Take her away, take her away,” convinced Agnes that she had acted
rightly and that she had saved Clare from a lifetime of sorrow. Before
the end of a month he would have come to look at her with horror. He
would seem to see in her features those of her father--the man who had
crept behind Dick Westwood in the dark and shot him dead.
But then she began to ask herself if she had been equally right in
telling Claude Westwood what was the true name of Clare. She reflected
upon the fact that only she knew that Clare was the daughter of the man
Standish, who was undergoing his life-sentence of penal servitude for
the murder of Dick Westwood. If she had kept that dreadful secret to
herself, Claude would have married the girl, and they might have lived
happily in ignorance of all that she, Agnes, knew.
Yes, but how was she to be certain that no one else in the world shared
her secret? How was she to know that the unhappy woman who had been
married to Carton Standish, and had in consequence become estranged from
all her friends in England--for the man, though of a good family, had
been from the first an unscrupulous scamp--was right when she had told
her in the letter, which Clare had delivered with her own hand, that no
one knew the secret?
Perhaps a dozen people had recognised in Carton Standish the man
with whom the Clare Tristram of twenty-two years before had run away,
although no one had come forward to state that the man who had been
found guilty of the murder of Mr. Westwood was the same person. Agnes
knew enough of the world to be well aware of the fact that not only in
Brackenshire but in every county in England the question “Who is she?”
would be asked, so soon as it became known that Claude Westwood had got
married.
Claude Westwood, the African explorer, was the man on whom all eyes had
been turned for some months, and he could not hope to keep his marriage
a secret even if he desired to do so. It would be outside the bounds of
possibility that no one should recognise in the name Clare Tristram the
name of the girl who, twenty-two years before, had married a man named
Carton Standish; so that even if Agnes had kept her secret it would
eventually have been revealed to Claude, when it would be too late to
prevent a catastrophe.
“If I had wished to be revenged I would have let him marry and find out
afterwards that she was the daughter of Carton Standish,” cried Agnes,
as she lay awake through the hours of that long night. She felt that she
had some reason for self-reproach, but not because she had sought to be
revenged upon the man who had so cruelly treated her. Only for an hour
had the thought of revenge been in her heart, and it had not been sweet
to her, but bitter.
Once she rose from her bed and stole softly into Clare's room. The girl
was lying asleep; and the light in the room was not too dim to allow of
Agnes's seeing that her pillow was wet with tears. Still, she was now
asleep and unconscious of any trouble. It was Agnes who had been unable
to find comfort in the oblivion of sleep, and she returned to her bed to
lie waiting for the dawn.
It stole between the spaces of the blinds, the grey dawn of the winter's
day---the cheerless dawn that drew nigh without the herald of a bird's
song--a dawn that was more cheerless than night.
She rose and went to the window, looking out over the valley that
she knew so well. She saw in the far distance the splendid woods
of Branksome Abbey, Sir Percival Hope's home, and somehow she felt
comforted by letting her eyes rest upon the grey side of the Abbey wall
which was visible above the trees. She had a feeling that Sir Percival
might be trusted to bring happiness into her life. From the first day on
which he had come to Brackenshire she had trusted him. She had gone to
him in her emergencies--first when she had wished to have Lizzie Dangan
taken care of, and afterwards when she had wanted that large sum of
money which had saved the Westwoods' bank. He had shown himself upon
both those occasions to be worthy of her trust, and then--then--
She wondered if he had known how great was her temptation to throw
herself into his arms upon that morning when he had stood before her
to tell her in his own fashion that he loved her. Such a temptation had
indeed been hers, and though during the weeks that passed between the
arrival of the telegram that told her of Claude's safety and his return,
she had often reproached herself for having had that temptation even for
a moment, yet now the thought that she had had it brought her comfort.
She thought of Claude Westwood by the side of Sir Percival, and she knew
which of them was the true man.
Noble, honourable, self-sacrificing, Sir Percival had never once spoken
to her of his love since that morning, though he had seen how she had
been treated by the man to whom she had been faithful with a constancy
passing all the constancy of women. So far from speaking to her of his
love for her, he had done his best to comfort her when he had seen that
Claude on his return treated her with indifference, giving himself up to
the savage thoughts that possessed him--the savage thirst for blood that
he had acquired among the savages.
She remembered how Sir Percival had told her that Claude was not
himself--that he had not recovered from the shock which he had received
on learning of the death of the brother whom he loved so well, and that
so soon as he recovered she would find that he had been as constant to
her as she had been to him.
It was to this effect Sir Percival had spoken, and she, alas! had felt
comforted in the hope that she would be able to win him back to her.
That had been her thought for weeks; but now.... Well, now her thought
was:
“Why did I not yield to that temptation to throw myself into his arms
and trust my future with him on that day when he confessed his love to
me?”
It was a passionate regret that took possession of her for a moment as
she let fall the curtain through which she had been looking over the
still grey landscape, with a touch of mist clinging here and there to
the sides of the valley, and giving a semblance of foliage to the low
alders that bordered the meadows.
“Why--why--why?” was the question that was ringing round her while her
maid was brushing her hair. She had ceased to think of her constancy as
a virtue. She was beginning to yield to the impression that only grief
could follow those who elected to be constant, when every impulse of
Nature was in the direction of inconstancy. One does not mourn for ever
over the dead; when a woman has been inconstant in her love for a man,
the man is chagrined for a while, but he soon consoles himself by loving
another woman.
Yes, she felt that Claude Westwood had spoken quite truthfully and
reasonably when he said that in affairs of the heart Nature had decreed
that there shall be an automatic Statute of Limitations. He had spoken
from experience, and to that theory--it sounded cynical to her at first,
but now her experience had found that it was true--she was ready to
give her cordial assent. To such a point had she been brought by
the bitterness of her experience of the previous month, she actually
believed that she wished she had failed in her constancy to the man whom
she had promised to love.
She was surprised to find Clare awaiting her in the breakfast-room. The
girl was pale and nervous, for Agnes noticed how she gave a start when
she entered. In the room there was a servant, who had brought in a
breakfast-dish, but the moment she disappeared, Clare almost rushed
across the room to Agnes.
“Tell me what has happened,” she said imploringly. “Something has
happened--something terrible; but somehow I cannot recollect what it
was. I have the sensation of awaking from a horrible dream. Can it be
that I fainted? Can it be that I entered the drawing-room, and that he
told you to take me away? Oh, my God! If it is not a dream I shall die.
'Take her away--take her away'--those were the words which I recollect,
but my recollection is like that of a dream. Why don't you speak. Agnes?
Why do you stand there looking at me with such painful sadness? Why
don't you speak? Say something--something--anything. A word from you
will save me from death, and you will not speak it!”
She flung away Agnes's hand which she had been holding, and threw
herself on a chair that was at the table, burying her face in her hands.
Agnes came behind her and laid her hand gently on her head. She drew her
head away with a motion of impatience.
“I don't want you to touch me!” she cried, almost pettishly. “I want you
to tell me what has happened. Oh, Agnes, he did not cry out for you to
take me away--that Would be impossible--he could never say those words!”
She had sprung up from the table once more and had gone to the
fireplace, against which she leant.
“My poor child! My poor child!” said Agnes.
“Do not say that,” cried Clare impatiently. “Your calling me that seems
to me part of my dream. Good heavens! are we living in a dream?”
“You have been living in one, Clare; but the awaking has come,” said
Agnes.
Clare looked at her with wide eyes for more than a whole minute. Her
look was so vacant that Agnes shuddered. The girl gave a laugh that made
Agnes shudder again, before she moved away from the mantelpiece, saying:
“How is it that we haven't sat down to breakfast? I'm quite hungry.”