The time passed slowly, but in a fortnight I found myself again at
Hammerton sleeping beneath the same roof as Esther Lane. I met her
again on the terrace on Sunday morning, as I had expected. I could
quite follow the workings of her mind. Because she was possessed of
great self-respect, she had determined not to be on the terrace that
morning, but because she was very much in love she was there after
all. Before many moments had passed I saw that she was aware of my
engagement. There was a look of suffering in her eyes as she turned
them on me. She had the most wonderful way of suddenly subjecting the
person to whom she was speaking to their full glance. If she could
suffer because I was engaged to another woman, she had enough
sentimental interest in me to excuse my going far. She was the
character to appreciate the simulation of agony born of a struggle
between duty and affection, and I was ready to ring up the curtain on
the comedy. She was fully conscious that I loved her. Yes, I loved her
quite passionately, and yet it was not altogether passion. It is one
of the presumptuous platitudes of conventional moralists to describe a
man’s love when it ceases to be concentrated on one individual as lust
and base passion. Side by side with this contention they will declare
that the highest morality is to love your neighbour as yourself, so
little are they given to their own boasted virtue of consistency.
I talked to her for some time about the most ordinary matters, but I
could see that she was trembling.
“I have thought of you a good deal,” I ventured.
She ignored the question, but without a show of indifference.
“I think Walter and I ought to go in.” She moved away a little
awkwardly.
“I suppose I ought to go in too.” I went to breakfast, leaving the
impression I had intended.
In the afternoon I saw her again, and before I was quite aware of it,
I had told her I loved her beyond all women in the world, and having
done so was compelled to anticipate the scene which I had been
mentally preparing.
I assured her passionately that I was not the fickle person I might
seem to be, that directly I saw her I knew that I had made a mistake,
and that I could never be happy with anyone but her.
She was too much in love to do more than make a pretence of forbidding
me to speak on the subject.
She walked straight into the carefully-hidden trap, and found herself
being made love to without the question of my engagement being
discussed, and once she had thrown down the barriers of reserve, with
the enemy actually in her camp, it was impossible to replace them. She
accused herself vehemently, however, of being unworthy of her trust.
She would resign her position. She could never, she asserted, remain,
and be guilty of duplicity. I beat down her poor little attempts at
self-defence at once. If she threw up such a position I should never
forgive myself. I would go away and never see her again. The threat
appeared to terrify her. I persisted that the view of such affairs
taken by most people was entirely wrong. I showed that, on the
contrary, it was wrong to lie and say you do not love a person when
you do, that it was quite possible to talk of our love, to cherish it,
and to welcome its influences for good, without allowing it to get the
upper hand. All of which the poor fluttering little morsel of
sentiment drank in with greedy ears, because it was just what she
wanted to believe.
The child found us dull, and cried out that he wanted to play, so I
left her and returned to keep an appointment with Lord Gascoyne.
Esther Lane was included in the dinner-party that evening, and I again
took her in. The arrangement was not so pleasant as on the previous
occasion, for there was a distinct feeling of strain between us. I
surmounted it with ease; but she was without experience, and she
suffered. I could see that she had been crying.
“You must not let yourself be wretched,” I said, as we stood a little
apart from the others waiting for the move towards the dining-room.
“It hurts me.”
“I had intended to remain in my room,” she murmured.
“Why?”
“I feel as if everyone must see that I am an impostor.”
I was about to reply lightly, but checked myself, remembering that the
heroine of the comedy was an _ingénue_.
“If you were not so good you would not have a sense of guilt where
there is no guilt.”
We went in to dinner.
I talked to her incessantly, and inasmuch as her happiness lay in
being with me, she was prepared to be charmed out of her misery for
however brief a period.
I was myself somewhat astonished at the hold I had secured over her so
soon. I suppose in her inmost heart she was dreaming dreams in which
all would come right. But even if I were safely ensconced as Earl
Gascoyne I could not have made such a sacrifice as to marry her.
Besides, in the sense of a mate, to take my name and reign with me, I
would not have changed Edith Gascoyne for anyone in the world, not
even for Sibella.
There is among modern English ballads one which has always struck me
as having a claim to live because of its simplicity and the
heart-throb in it. It is called ‘For ever and for ever.’ It possesses
a perfect blending of music and idea, unpretentious, but full of
feeling.
As before, we spent the evening at the piano, and I sang this song to
her almost under my breath:
“I would, alas! it were not so
For ever and for ever.”
I could see that the tears were raining down her cheeks as she
listened. She held a fan so as to conceal her face from the others in
the room.
“We shall see each other again soon,” I murmured, as I said
good-night.
Lord Gascoyne and I were the last to leave the smoking-room, and he
parted from me at the foot of the stairs that led to the bachelors’
quarters. My bedroom was half-way down a long corridor, at the end of
which there was a solid door, which gave on to the battlements. It was
bolted inside, but not locked, and I had more than once used it to
take an evening stroll when the inhabitants of Hammerton Castle were
asleep. This evening I opened the door noiselessly and walked out on
to the walls. It was a clear starlight night and bitterly cold. I did
not mind this, for I had on a thick fur coat. I strolled along,
thinking deeply, when suddenly I was brought to a standstill by a ray
of light that fell right across my path.
I looked in the direction from whence it came, and was astonished to
see Esther Lane leaning out of a window a few feet from me. The
terrace at this point took an abrupt turn, and a comparatively new
part of the castle had been built out at a tangent.
She had not noticed my approach, for I wore house-shoes, which made no
noise.
She was looking at the stars as if their ceaseless splendour might be
symbolic of an inevitable dawn of happiness somewhere. They could not
have been completely reassuring, for she was weeping, and as I stood
and watched, a convulsive sob broke from her. The picture of the
forlorn little dependent, a frail white figure in the patch of light,
with the gloomy towers and battlements of Hammerton looming round her,
affected me strangely. I leant forward over the low wall and murmured
her name.
“Esther!”
She started and looked round, drawing back quickly as she saw me
clearly defined in the moonlight.
“You must not cry. It breaks my heart.”
At the moment I fully believed what I said.
Her eyes, full of tears, were turned upon me, and, with a strange look
of fear, which haunts me to this hour, she said:
“I thought I should never see you again.”
“You were going away?”
She saw that she had betrayed her intention, and tried to excuse
herself.
“It will be better.”
“Why? If you go away I shall never come here again.”
I was upon the low wall, the ground full sixty feet below me.
“Oh, go back! you will fall.”
But I had my hand on her window-sill and one foot on a ledge a short
distance below it, whilst the other remained on the wall. She was
helpless; to have attempted to stay me would have been to send me in
all probability to certain death. She clasped her hands and held her
breath. The next moment I was in the room and by her side.
“Don’t be afraid; only I must speak to you. We must understand each
other.”
“Oh, go away, please.”
She hid her face in her hands, utterly shamed by the presence of a man
in her room.
Poor Esther! I think she was happier. I verily believe that every
woman is happier for love fulfilled. I knew that once having chosen
her path she would follow it unflinchingly, and that she would be true
as steel. I had discerned from the first that she was capable of
martyrdom. From that day she never mentioned the word marriage. She
declared ever afterwards that it was her fault, that she should have
closed her window on me, that she had accepted the position of
mistress, and that she could not complain.
At the same time, however, it was no easy task to persuade her to
remain at Hammerton. She implored me to let her come away to London.
She vowed that she would not be an encumbrance, not even an expense.
She was sure that she could get work to do, sufficient to keep
herself; but I was firm. I had at one time some idea of letting her
live at Clapham in my deserted house, but I had always had a
superstition about allowing anyone else to live in it, otherwise I
should have sold it long before. Besides, I did not see what excuse
she was to give Lady Gascoyne for wishing to leave her, and the latter
had grown so fond of her that it was not likely she would accept her
resignation without a great deal of inquiry. Esther declared that
living a lie made her feel miserable, that she was unworthy of her
charge, and ought to resign it.