He read mechanically:

"Take back your vows. Elsewhere you trimmed and taught these lamps to burn; You bring them stale and dim to serve my turn. You lit those candles in another shrine, Guttered and cold you offer them on mine. Take back your vows."

A shadow fell across Hugh's mind. Rachel saw it fall.

"You do not think that of me, Rachel," he said, pointing to the verse. It was the first time he had alluded to that halting confession which had remained branded on the minds of both.

He glanced up at her, and she suffered him for a moment to look through her clear eyes into her soul.

"I never thought that of you," she said, with difficulty. "I am so foolish that I believe the candles are lit now for the first time. I am so foolish that I believe you love me nearly as much as I love you."

"It is a dream," said Hugh, passionately, and he fell on his knees, and hid his white face against her knee. "It is a dream. I shall wake, and find you never cared for me."

She sat for a moment stunned by the violence of his emotion, which was shaking him from head to foot. Then she drew him into her trembling arms, and held his head against her breast.

She felt his tears through her gown.

"What is past will never come between us," she said, brokenly, at last. "I have cried over it too, Hugh; but I have put it from my mind. When you told me about it, knowing you risked losing me by telling me, I suddenly trusted you entirely. I had not quite up till then. I can't say why, except that perhaps I had grown suspicious because I was once deceived. But I do now, because you were open with me. I think, Hugh, you and I can dare to be truthful to each other. You have been so to me, and I will be so to you. I knew about that long before you told me. Lady Newhaven—poor thing!—confided in me last summer. She had to tell some one. I think you ought to know that I know. And oh, Hugh, I knew about the drawing of lots, too."

Hugh started violently, but he did not move.

Would she have recognized that ashen, convulsed face if he had raised it?

"Lady Newhaven listened at the door when you were drawing lots, and she told me. But we never knew which had drawn the short lighter till Lord Newhaven was killed on the line. Only she and I and you know that that was not an accident. I know what you must have gone through all the summer, feeling you had taken his life as well. But you must remember it was his own doing, and a perfectly even chance. You ran the same risk. His blood is on his own head. But oh, my darling, when I think it might have been you!"

Hugh thought afterwards that if her arms had not been round him, if he had been a little distance from her, he might have told her the truth. He owed it to her, this woman who was the very soul of truth. But if she had withdrawn from him, however gently, in the moment when her tenderness had, for the first time, vanquished her natural reserve, if she had taken herself away then, he could not have borne it. In deep repentance after Lord Newhaven's death, he had vowed that from that day forward he would never deviate again from the path of truth and honor, however difficult it might prove. But this frightful moment had come upon him unawares. He drew back instinctively, giddy and unnerved, as from a chasm yawning suddenly among the flowers, one step in front of him. He was too stunned to think. When he rallied they were standing together on the hearth-rug, and she was saying—he did not know what she was saying, for he was repeating over and over again to himself, "The moment is past. The moment is past."

At last her words conveyed some meaning to him.

"We will never speak of this again, my friend," she said; "but now that no harm can be done by it, it seemed right to tell you I knew."

"I ought never to have drawn," said Hugh, hoarsely.

"No," said Rachel. "He was in fault to demand such a thing. It was inhuman. But having once drawn he had to abide by it, as you would have done if you had drawn the short lighter."

She was looking earnestly at him, as at one given back from the grave.

"Yes," said Hugh, feeling she expected him to speak. "If I had drawn it I should have had to abide by it."

"I thank God continually that you did not draw it. You made him the dreadful reparation he asked. If it recoiled upon himself you were not to blame. You have done wrong, and you have repented. You have suffered, Hugh. I know it by your face. And perhaps I have suffered too, but that is past. We will shut up the past, and think of the future. Promise me that you will never speak of this again."

"I promise," said Hugh, mechanically.

"The moment to speak is past," he said to himself.

Had it ever been present?



CHAPTER XLV

Dieu n'oublie personne. Il visite tout le monde.—VINET.

Hugh did not sleep that night.

His escape had been too narrow. He shivered at the mere thought of it. It had never struck him as possible that Rachel and Lady Newhaven had known of the drawing of lots. Now that he found they knew, sundry small incidents, unnoticed at the time, came crowding back to his memory. That was why Lady Newhaven had written so continually those letters which he had burned unread. That was why she had made that desperate attempt to see him in the smoking-room at Wilderleigh after the boating accident. She wanted to know which had drawn the short lighter. That explained the mysterious tension which Hugh had noticed in Rachel during the last days in London before—before the time was up. He saw it all now. And, of course, they naturally supposed that Lord Newhaven had committed suicide. They could not think otherwise. They were waiting for one of the two men to do it.

"If Lord Newhaven had not turned giddy and stumbled on to the line, if he had not died by accident when he did," said Hugh to himself, "where should I be now?"

There was no answer to that question.

What was the use of asking it? He was dead. And, fortunately, the two women firmly believed he had died by his own hand. Hugh as firmly believed that the death was accidental.

But it could not be his duty to set them right, to rake up the whole hideous story again.

By an extraordinary, by a miraculous chance, he was saved, as it were, a second time. It could do no good to allude to the dreadful subject again. Besides, he had promised Rachel never to speak of it again.

He groaned, and hid his face in his hands.

"Oh, coward and wretch that I am," he said. "Cannot I even be honest with myself? I lied to her to-day. I never thought I could have told Rachel a lie, but I did. I can't live without her. I must have her. I would rather die than lose her now. And I should have lost her if I'd told her the truth. I felt that. I am not worthy. It was an ill day for her when she took my tarnished life into her white hands. She ought to have trodden me under foot. But she does love me, and I will never deceive her again. She does love me, and, God helping me, I will make her happy."

The strain of conflict was upon Hugh—the old, old conflict of the seed with the earth, of the soul with love. How many little fibres and roots the seed puts out, pushed by an unrecognized need within itself, not without pain, not without a gradual rending of its being, not without a death unto self into a higher life. Love was dealing with Hugh's soul as the earth deals with the seed, and—he suffered.

It was a man who did not look like an accepted lover who presented himself at Rachel's door the following afternoon.

But Rachel was not there. Her secretary handed Hugh a little note which she had left for him, telling him that Hester had suddenly fallen ill, and that she had been sent for to Southminster. The note ended: "These first quiet days are past. So now you may tell your mother, and put our engagement in the Morning Post."

Hugh was astonished at the despair which overwhelmed him at the bare thought that he should not see Rachel that day and not the next either. It was not to be borne. She had no right to make him suffer like this. Day by day, when a certain restless fever returned upon him, he had known, as an opium-eater knows, that at a certain hour he should become rested and calm and sane once more. To be in the same room with Rachel, to hear her voice, to let his eyes dwell upon her, to lean his forehead for a moment against her hand, was to enter, as we enter in dreams, a world of joy and comfort, and boundless, endless, all-pervading peace.

And now he was suddenly left shivering in a bleak world without her. With her he was himself, a released, freed self, growing daily further and further away from all he had once been. Without her he felt he was nothing but a fierce, wounded animal.

He tried to laugh at himself as he walked slowly away from Rachel's house. He told himself that he was absurd, that an absence of a few days was nothing. He turned his steps mechanically in the direction of his mother's lodgings. At any rate, he could tell her. He could talk about this cruel woman to her. The smart was momentarily soothed by his mother's painful joy. He wrenched himself somewhat out of himself as she wept the tears of jealous love, which all mothers must weep when the woman comes who takes their son away. "I am so glad," she kept repeating. "These are tears of joy, Hughie. I can forgive her for accepting you, but I should never have forgiven her if she had refused you—if she had made my boy miserable. And you have been miserable lately. I have seen it for a long time. I suppose it was all this coming on."

He said it was. The remembrance of other causes of irritation and moodiness had slipped entirely off his mind.

He stayed a long time with his mother, who pressed him to wait till his sister, who was shopping, returned. But his sister tarried long out-of-doors, and at last the pain of Rachel's absence returning on him, he left suddenly, promising to return in the evening.

He did not go back to his rooms. He wandered aimlessly through the darkening streets, impatient of the slow hours. At last he came out on the Embankment. The sun was setting redly, frostily, in a gray world of sky-mist and river-mist and spectral bridge and spire. A shaking path-way of pale flame came across the gray of the hidden river to meet him.

He stood a long time looking at it. The low sun touched and forsook, touched and forsook point by point the little crowded world which it was leaving.

"My poor mother," said Hugh to himself. "Poor, gentle, loving soul whom I so nearly brought down with sorrow to the grave. She will never know what an escape she has had. I might have been more to her. I might have made her happier, seeing her happiness is wrapped up in me. I will make up to her for it. I will be a better son to her in future. Rachel and I together will make her last years happy. Rachel and I together," said Hugh, over and over again.

And then he suddenly remembered that though Rachel had taken herself away he could write to her, and—he might look out the trains to Southminster. He leaped into a hansom and hurried back to his rooms.

The porter met him in a mysterious manner in the entrance. Lady waiting to see him. Lady said she was his sister. Had been waiting two hours. In his rooms now.

Hugh laughed, and ran up the wide, common staircase. His sister had heard the news from his mother and had rushed over at once.

As he stooped a little to fit the latch-key on his chain into the lock a man, who was coming down the stairs feeling in his pockets, stopped with a sudden exclamation. It was Captain Pratt, pallid, smiling, hair newly varnished, resplendent in a magnificent fur overcoat.

"What luck," he said. "Scarlett, I think. We met at Wilderleigh. Have you such a thing as a match about you?"

Hugh felt in his pockets. He had not one.

"Never mind," he said, opening the door. "I've plenty inside. Come in."

Hugh went in first, extricating his key. Captain Pratt followed, murmuring, "Nice little dens, these. A pal of mine lives just above—Streatham. You know Streatham, son of Lord—"

The remainder of the sentence was lost.

The door opened straight into the little sitting-room.

A woman in deep mourning rose suddenly out of a chair by the fire and came towards them.

"Hughie!" she said.

It was Lady Newhaven.

It is probable that none of the tableaux she had arranged were quite so dramatic as this one, in which she had not reckoned on that elaborate figure in the door-way.

Captain Pratt's opinion of Hugh, whom he had hitherto regarded as a pauper with an involved estate, leaped from temperate to summer heat—blood-heat. After the first instant he kept his eyes steadily fixed on Hugh.

"I—er—thank you, Scarlett. I have found my matches. A thousand thanks. Good-night."

He was disappearing, but Hugh, his eyes flashing in his gray face, held him forcibly by the arm.

"Lady Newhaven," he said, "the porter is inexcusable. These are my rooms which he has shown you into by mistake, not Mr. Streatham's, your nephew. He is just above. I think," turning to Captain Pratt, "Streatham is out of town."

"He is out of town," said Captain Pratt, looking with cold admiration at Hugh. "Admirable," he said to himself; "a born gentleman."

"This is not the first time Streatham's visitors have been shown in here," continued Hugh. "The porter shall be dismissed. I trust you will forgive me my share in the annoyance he has caused you. Is your carriage waiting?"

"No," said Lady Newhaven, faintly, quite thrown off the lines of her prepared scene by the sudden intrusion into it of a foreign body.

"My hansom is below," said Captain Pratt, deferentially, venturing, now that the situation was, so to speak, draped, to turn his discreet agate eyes towards Lady Newhaven. "If it could be of the least use, I myself should prefer to walk."

Now that he looked at her, he looked very hard at her. She was a beautiful woman.

Lady Newhaven's self-possession had returned sufficiently for her to take up her fur cloak.

"Thank you," she said, letting Captain Pratt help her on with it. "I shall be glad to make use of your hansom, if you are sure you can spare it. I am shocked at having taken possession of your rooms," turning to Hugh; "I will write to Georgie Streatham to-night. I am staying with my mother, and I came across to ask him to take my boys to the pantomime, as I cannot take them myself—so soon," with a glance at her crape. "Don't come down, Mr. Scarlett. I have given you enough trouble already."

Captain Pratt's arm was crooked. He conducted her in his best manner to the foot of the staircase and helped her into his hansom. His manner was not so unctuous as his father's, but it was slightly adhesive. Lady Newhaven shuddered involuntarily as she took his arm.

Hugh followed.

"I hope you will both come and see my mother," she said, with an attempt at graciousness. "You know Lady Trentham, I think?"—to Captain Pratt.

"Very slightly. No. Delighted!" murmured Captain Pratt, closing the hansom doors in an intimate manner. "And if I could be of the least use at any time in taking your boys to the pantomime—er—only too glad. The glass down, Richards!"

The hansom with its splendid bay horse rattled off.

Captain Pratt nodded to Hugh, who was still standing on the steps, and turned away to buy a box of matches from a passing urchin. Then he turned up his fur collar, and proceeded leisurely on his way.

"Very stand-off both of them in the past," he said to himself, "but they will have to be civil in future. I wonder if he will make her keep her title. Deuced awkward for them both though, only a month after Newhaven's death. I wish that sort of contre-temps would happen to me when I'm bringing in a lot of fellows suddenly. An opening like that is all I want to give me a start, and I should get on as well as anybody. The aristocracy all hang together, whatever Selina and Ada may say. Money don't buy everything, as the governor thinks. But if you're once in with 'em you're in."

* * * * *

Hugh went back to his room and locked himself in. He was a delicate man, highly strung, and he had not slept the night before. He collapsed into a chair and remained a long time, his head in his hands.

It was too horrible, this woman coming back upon him suddenly, like the ghost of some one whom he had murdered. His momentary infatuation had been clean forgotten in his overwhelming love for Rachel. His intrigue with Lady Newhaven seemed so long ago that it had been relegated to the same mental shelf in his mind as the nibbling of a certain forbidden ginger-bread when he was home for his first holidays. He could not be held responsible for either offence after this immense interval of time. It was not he who had committed them, but that other embryo self, that envelope of flesh and sense which he was beginning to abhor, through which he had passed before he reached himself, Hugh, the real man—the man who loved Rachel, and whom Rachel loved.

He had not flinched when he came unexpectedly on Lady Newhaven. At the sight of her a sudden passion of anger shot up and enveloped him as in one flame from head to foot. His love for Rachel was a weapon, and he used it. He did not greatly care about his own good name, but the good name of the man whom Rachel loved was a thing to fight for. It was for her sake, not Lady Newhaven's, that he had concocted the story of the mistaken rooms. He should not have had the presence of mind if Rachel had not been concerned.

He had not finished with Lady Newhaven. He should have trouble yet with her, hideous scenes, in which the corpse of his dead lust would be dragged up, a thing to shudder at, out of its nettly grave.

He could bear it. He must bear it. Nothing would induce him to marry Lady Newhaven, as she evidently expected. He set his teeth. "She will know the day after to-morrow," he said to himself, "when she sees my engagement to Rachel in the papers. Then she will get at me somehow, and make my life a hell to me, while she can. And she will try and come between me and Rachel. I deserve it. I deserve anything I get. But Rachel knows, and will stick to me. I will go down to her to-morrow. I can't go on without seeing her. And she won't mind, as the engagement will be given out next day."

He became more composed at the thought of Rachel. But presently his lip quivered. It would be all right in the end. But, oh! not to have done it! Not to have done it! To have come to his marriage with a whiter past, not to need her forgiveness on the very threshold of their life together, not to have been unfaithful to her before he knew her.

What man who has disbelieved in his youth in the sanctity of Love, and then later has knelt in its Holy of Holies, has escaped that pang?



CHAPTER XLVI

There's neither honesty, manhood, nor good-fellowship in thee.—SHAKESPEARE

"My mind misgives me, Dick!" said the Bishop, a day or two later, as Dick joined him and his sister and Rachel at luncheon at the Palace. "I am convinced that you have been up to some mischief."

"I have just returned from Warpington, my lord. I understood it was your wish I should ride over and tell them Hester was better."

"It certainly was my wish. I'm very much obliged to you. But I remembered after you had gone that you had refused to speak to Gresley when he was over here, and I was sorry I sent you."

"I spoke to him all right," said Dick, grimly. "That was why I was so alacritous to go."

The Bishop looked steadily at him.

"Until you are my suffragan I should prefer to manage my own business with my clergy."

"Just so," said Dick, helping himself to mustard. "But, you see, I'm his cousin, and I thought it just as well to let him know quietly and dispassionately what I thought of him. So I told him I was not particular about my acquaintances. I knew lots of bad eggs out in Australia, half of them hatched in England, chaps who'd been shaved and tubbed gratis by Government—in fact, I'd a large visiting list, but that I drew the line at such a cad as him, and that he might remember I wasn't going to preach for him at any more of his little cold-water cures"—a smile hovered on Dick's crooked mouth—"or ever take any notice of him in future. That was what he wanted, my lord. You were too soft with him, if you'll excuse my saying so. But that sort of chap wants it giving him hot and strong. He doesn't understand anything else. He gets quite beyond himself, fizzing about on his little pocket-handkerchief of a parish, thinking he is a sort of god, because no one makes it their business to keep him in his place, and rub it into him that he is an infernal fool. That is why some clergymen jaw so, because they never have it brought home to them what rot they talk. They'd be no sillier than other men if they were only treated properly. I was very calm, but I let him have it. I told him he was a mean sneak, and that either he was the biggest fool or the biggest rogue going, and that the mere fact of his cloth did not give him the right to do dishonest things with other people's property, though it did save him from the pounding he richly deserved. He tried to interrupt; indeed, he was tooting all the time like a fog-horn, but I did not take any notice, and I wound up by saying it was men like him who brought discredit on the Church and on the clergy, and who made the gorge rise of decent chaps like me. Yes," said Dick, after a pause, "when I left him he understood, I don't say entirely, but he had a distant glimmering. It isn't often I go on these errands of mercy, but I felt that the least I could do was to back you up, my lord. Of course, it is in little matters like this that lay helpers come in, who are not so hampered about their language as I suppose the clergy are."

The Bishop tried, he tried hard, to look severe, but his mouth twitched.

"Don't thank me," said Dick. "Nothing is a trouble where you are concerned. It was—ahem—a pleasure."

"That I can believe," said the Bishop. "Well, Dick, Providence makes use of strange instruments—the jawbone of an ass has a certain Scriptural prestige. I dare say you reached poor Gresley where I failed. I certainly failed. But, if it is not too much to ask, I should regard it as a favor another time if I might be informed beforehand what direction your diocesan aid was about to take."

Dr. Brown, who often came to luncheon at the Palace, came in now. He took off his leathern driving-gloves and held his hands to the fire.

"Cold," he said. "They're skating everywhere. How is Miss Gresley?"

"She knows us to-day," said Rachel, "and she is quite cheerful."

"Does the poor thing know her book is burned?"

"No. She was speaking this morning of its coming out in the spring."

The little doctor thrust out his underlip and changed the subject.

"I travelled from Pontesbury this morning," he said, "with that man who was nearly drowned at Beaumere in the summer. I doctored him at Wilderleigh. Tall, thin, rather a fine gentleman. I forget his name."

Dr. Brown aways spoke of men above himself in the social scale as "fine gentlemen."

"Mr. Redman," said Miss Keane, the Bishop's sister, a dignified person, who had been hampered throughout life by a predilection for the wrong name, and by making engagements in illegible handwriting by last year's almanacs.

"Was it Mr. Scarlett?" said Rachel, feeling Dick's lynx eye upon her. "I was at Wilderleigh when the accident happened."

"That's the man. He got out at Southminster, and asked me which was the best hotel. No, I won't have any more, thanks. I'll go up and see Miss Gresley at once."

Rachel followed the Bishop into the library. They generally waited there together till the doctor came down.

"I don't know many young men I like better than Dick," said the Bishop. "I should marry him if I were a young woman. I admire the way he acts up to his principles. Very few of us do. Until he has a further light on the subject, he is right to, knock a man down who insults him. And from his point of view he was justified in speaking to Mr. Gresley as he did. I was sorely tempted to say something of that kind to him myself, but as one grows gray one realizes that one can only speak in a spirit of love. A man of Dick's stamp will always be respected, because he does not assume virtues which belong to a higher grade than he is on at present. But when he reaches that higher grade he will act as thoroughly upon the convictions that accompany it as he does now on his present convictions."

"He certainly would not turn the other cheek to the smiter."

"I should not advise the smiter to reckon on it. And unless it is turned from that rare sense of spiritual brotherhood it would be unmanly to turn it. To imitate the outward appearance of certain virtues is like imitating the clothes of a certain class. It does not make us belong to the class to dress like it. The true foundation for the spiritual life, as far as I can see it, is in the full development of our human nature with all its simple trusts and aspirations. I admire Dick's solid foundation. It will carry a building worthy of him some day. But my words of wisdom appear to be thrown away upon you. You are thinking of something else."

"I was thinking that I ought to tell you that I am engaged to be married."

The Bishop's face lit up.

"I am engaged to Mr. Scarlett. That is why he has come down here."

The Bishop's face fell. Rachel had been three days at the Palace. Dick had not allowed the grass to grow under his feet. "That admirable promptitude," the Bishop had remarked to himself, "deserves success."

"Poor, dear Dick," he said, softly.

"That is what Hester says. I told her yesterday."

"I really have a very high opinion of Dick," said the Bishop.

"So have I. If I might have two I would certainly choose him second."

"But this superfluous Mr. Scarlett comes first, eh?"

"I am afraid he does."

"Well," said the Bishop, with a sigh, "if you are so ungrateful as to marry to please yourself, instead of to please me, there is nothing more to be said. I will have a look at your Mr. Scarlett when he comes to tea. I suppose he will come to tea. I notice the most farouche men do when they are engaged. It is the first step in the turning process. I shall, of course, bring an entirely unprejudiced mind to bear upon him, as I always make a point of doing, but I warn you beforehand I shan't like him."

"Because he is not Mr. Dick."

"Well, yes; because he is not Dick. I suppose his name is Bertie."

"Not Bertie," said Rachel, indignantly, "Hugh."

"It's a poor, inefficient kind of name, only four letters, and a duplicate at each end. I don't think, my dear, he is worthy of you."

"Dick has only four letters."

"I make it a rule never to argue with women. Well, Rachel, I'm glad you have decided to marry. Heaven bless you, and may you be happy with this man. Ah! here comes Dr. Brown."

"Well!" said the Bishop and Rachel, simultaneously.

"She's better," said the little doctor, angrily; he was always angry when he was anxious. "She's round the first corner. But how to pull her round the next corner, that is what I'm thinking."

"Defer the next corner."

"We can't now her mind is clear. She's as sane as you or I are, and a good deal sharper. When she asks about her book she'll have to be told."

"A lie would be quite justifiable under the circumstances."

"Of course, of course, but it would be useless. You might hoodwink her for a day or two, and then she would find out, first, that the magnum opus is gone, and secondly, that you and Miss West, whom she does trust entirely at present, have deceived her. You know what she is when she thinks she is being deceived. She abused you well, my lord, until you reinstated yourself by producing Regie Gresley. But you can't reinstate yourself a second time. You can't produce the book."

"No," said the Bishop. "That is gone forever."

Rachel could not trust herself to speak. Perhaps she had realized more fully than even the Bishop had done what the loss of the book was to Hester, at least, what it would be when she knew it was gone.

"Tell her, and give her that if she becomes excitable," said Dr. Brown, producing a minute bottle out of a voluminous pocket. "And if you want me I shall be at Canon Wylde's at five o'clock. I'll look in anyhow before I go home."

Rachel and the Bishop stood a moment in silence after he was gone, and then Rachel took up the little bottle, read the directions carefully, and turned to go up-stairs.

The Bishop looked after her, but did not speak. He was sorry for her.

"You can go out till tea-time," said Rachel, to the nurse. "I will stay with Miss Gresley till then."

Hester was lying on a couch by the fire in a rose-colored wrapper. Her small face, set in its ruffle of soft lace, looked bright and eager. Her hair had been cut short, and she looked younger and more like Regie than ever.

Her thin hands lay contentedly in her lap. The principal bandages were gone. Only three fingers of the right hand were in a chrysalis state.

"I shall not be in too great a hurry to get well," she said to Rachel. "If I do you will rush away to London and get married.

"Shall I?" Rachel set down the little bottle on the mantel-piece.

"When is Mr. Scarlett coming down?"

"He came down to-day."

"Then possibly he may call."

"Such things do happen."

"I should like to see him."

"In a day or two, perhaps."

"And I want to see dear Dick, too."

"He sent you his love. Mr. Pratt was here at luncheon yesterday, and he asked me who the old chap was who put on his clothes with a shoe-horn."

"How like him! Has he said anything more to the Bishop on the uses of swearing?"

"No. But the Bishop draws him on. He delights in him."

"Rachel, are you sure you have chosen the best man?"

"Quite sure—I mean I never had any choice in the matter. You see I love Hugh, and I'm only fond of Mr. Dick."

"I always liked Mr. Scarlett," said Hester. "I've known him ever since I came out, and that wasn't yesterday. He is so gentle and refined, and one need not be on one's guard in talking to him. He understands what one says, and he is charming looking."

"Of course, I think so."

"And this is the genuine thing, Rachel? Do you remember our talk last summer?"

Rachel was silent a moment.

"All I can say is," she said, brokenly, "that I thank God, day and night, that Mr. Tristram did not marry me—that I'm free to marry Hugh."

Hester's uncrippled hand stole into Rachel's.

"Everybody will think," said Rachel, "when they see the engagement in to-morrow's papers that I give him everything because he is poor and his place involved, and of course I am horribly wealthy. But in reality it is I who am poor and he who is rich. He has given me a thousand times more than I could ever give him, because he has given me back the power of loving. It almost frightens me that I can care so much a second time. I should not have thought it possible. But I seem to have got the hang of it now, as Mr. Dick would say. I wish you were down-stairs, Hester, as you will be in a day or two. You would be amused by the way he shocks Miss Keane. She asked if he had written anything on his travels, and he said he was on the point of bringing out a little book on 'Cannibal Cookery,' for the use of Colonials. He said some of the recipes were very simple. He began: 'You take a hand and close it round a yam.' But the Bishop stopped him."

The moment Rachel had said, "He is on the point of bringing out a book," her heart stood still. How could she have said such a thing? But apparently Hester took no notice.

"He must have been experimenting on my poor hand," she said. "I'm sure I never burned it like this myself."

"It will soon be better now."

"Oh! I don't mind about it now that it doesn't hurt all the time."

"And your head does not ache to-day, does it?"

"Nothing to matter. But I feel as if I had fallen on it from the top of the cathedral. Dr. Brown says that is nonsense, but I think so all the same. When you believe a thing, and you're told it's nonsense, and you still believe it, that is an hallucination, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"I have had a great many," said Hester, slowly. "I suppose I have been more ill than I knew. I thought I saw, I really did see, the spirits of the frost and the snow looking in at the window. And I talked to them a long time, and asked them what quarrel they had with me, their sister, that since I was a child they had always been going about to kill me. Aunt Susan always seemed to think they were enemies who gave me bronchitis. And I told them how I loved them and all their works. And they breathed on the pane and wrote beautiful things in frost-work, and I read them all. Now, Rachel, is that an hallucination about the frost-work, because it seems to me still, now that I am better, though I can't explain it, that I do see the meaning of it at last, and that I shall never be afraid of them again."

Rachel did not answer.

She had long since realized that Hester, when in her normal condition, saw things which she herself did not see. She had long since realized that Hester always accepted as final the limit of vision of the person she was with, but that that limit changed with every person she met. Rachel had seen her adjust it to persons more short-sighted than herself, with secret self-satisfaction, and then with sudden bewilderment had heard Hester accept as a commonplace from some one else what appeared to Rachel fantastic in the extreme. If Rachel had considered her own mind as the measure of the normal of all other minds, she could not have escaped the conclusion that Hester was a victim of manifold delusions. But, fortunately for herself, she saw that most ladders possessed more than the one rung on which she was standing.

"That is quite different, isn't it," said Hester, "from thinking Dr. Brown is a gray wolf?"

"Quite different. That was an hallucination of fever. You see that for yourself now that you have no fever."

"I see that, of course, now that I have no fever," repeated Hester, her eyes widening. "But one hallucination quite as foolish as that is always coming back, and I can't shake it off. The wolf was gone directly, but this is just the same now I am better, only it gets worse and worse. I have never spoken of it to any one, because I know it is so silly. But Rachel—I have no fever now—and yet—I know you'll laugh at me—I laugh at my own foolish self—and yet all the time I have a horrible feeling that"—Hester's eyes had in them a terror that was hardly human—"that my book is burned."



CHAPTER XLVII

The soul of thy brother is a dark forest. —Russian Proverb.

"A marriage has been arranged, and will shortly take place, between Hugh St. John Scarlett, of Kenstone Manor, Shropshire, only son of the late Lord Henry Scarlett, and Rachel, only child of the late Joshua Hopkins West, of Birmingham."

* * * * *

This announcement appeared in the Morning Post a few days after Christmas, and aroused many different emotions in the breasts of those who read it.

"She has done it to spite me," said Mr. Tristram to himself over his morning rasher, in the little eating-house near his studio. "I knew there was some one else in her mind when she refused me. I rather thought it was that weedy fellow with the high nose. Will he make her happy because he is a lord's son? That is what I should like to ask her. Poor Rachel, if we had been able to marry five years ago we should never have heard of this society craze. Well, it's all over now." And Mr. Tristram henceforward took the position of a man suffering from an indelible attachment to a woman who had thrown him over for a title.

* * * * *

The Gresleys were astonished at the engagement. It was so extraordinary that they should know both persons. Now that they came to think of it, both of them had been to tea at the Vicarage only last summer.

"A good many people pop in and out of this house," they agreed.

"I am as certain as that I stand here," said Mr. Gresley, who was sitting down, "that that noisy boor, that underbred, foul-mouthed Dick Vernon wanted to marry her."

"Don't mention him," said Mrs. Gresley. "When I think of what he dared to say—"

"My love," said Mr. Gresley, "I have forgiven him. I have put from my mind all he said, for I am convinced he was under the influence of drink at the time. We must make allowance for those who live in hot climates. I bear him no grudge. But I am glad that a man of that stamp should not marry Miss West. Drunkenness makes a hell of married life. Mr. Scarlett, though he looked delicate, had at least the appearance of being abstemious."

* * * * *

Fraeulein heard the news as she was packing her boxes to leave Warpington Vicarage. She was greatly depressed. She could not be with her dear Miss Gresley in this mysterious illness which some secret sorrow had brought upon her; but at least Miss West could minister to her. And now it seemed Miss West was thinking of "Brauetigams" more than of Hester.

Fraeulein had been very uncomfortable at the Vicarage, but she wept at leaving. Mrs. Gresley had never attained to treating her with the consideration which she would have accorded to one whom she considered her equal. The servants were allowed to disregard with impunity her small polite requests. The nurse was consistently, ferociously jealous of her. But the children had made up for all, and now she was leaving them; and she did not own it to herself, for she was but five-and-thirty and the shyest of the shy; but she should see no more that noble-hearted, that musical Herr B-r-r-rown.

* * * * *

"Doll," said Sybell Loftus to her husband at breakfast, "I've made another match. I thought at the time he liked her. You remember Rachel West, not pretty, but with a nice expression—and what does beauty matter? She is engaged to Mr. Scarlett."

"Quiet, decent chap," said Doll; "and I like her. No nonsense about her. Good thing he wasn't drowned."

"Mr. Harvey will feel it. He confided to me that she was his ideal. Now Rachel is everything that is sweet and good and dear, and she will make a most excellent wife, but I should never have thought, would you, that she could be anybody's ideal?"

Doll opened his mouth to say, "That depends," but remembered that his wife had taken an unaccountable dislike to that simple phrase, and remained silent.

* * * * *

Captain Pratt, who was spending Christmas with his family, was the only person at Warpington Towers who read the papers. On this particular morning he came down to a late breakfast after the others had finished. His father, who was always down at eight, secretly admired his son's aristocratic habits, while he affected to laugh at them. "Shameful luxurious ways, these young men in the Guards. Fashionable society is rotten, sir; rotten to the core. Never get up till noon. My boy is as bad as any of them."

Captain Pratt propped up the paper open before him while he sipped his coffee and glanced down the columns. His travelling eye reached Hugh's engagement.

Captain Pratt rarely betrayed any feeling except ennui, but as he read, astonishment got the better of him.

"By George!" he said, below his breath.

The bit of omelette on its way to his mouth was slowly lowered again, and remained sticking on the end of his fork.

What did it mean? He recalled that scene in Hugh's rooms only last week. He had spoken of it to no one, for he intended to earn gratitude by his discretion. Of course, Scarlett was going to marry Lady Newhaven after a decent interval. She was a very beautiful woman, with a large jointure, and she was obviously in love with him. The question of her conduct was not considered. It never entered Captain Pratt's head, any more than that of a ten-year-old child. He was aware that all the women of the upper classes were immoral, except newly come-out girls. That was an established fact. The only difference between the individuals, which caused a separation as of the sheep from the goats, was whether they were compromised or not. Lady Newhaven was not, unless he chose to compromise her. No breath of scandal had ever touched her.

But what was Scarlett about? Could they have quarrelled? What did it mean? And what would she do now?

"By George!" said Captain Pratt, again, and the agate eyes narrowed down to two slits.

He sat a long time motionless, his untasted breakfast before him. His mind was working, weighing, applying now its scales, now its thermometer.

* * * * *

Rachel and Hugh were sitting together looking at a paragraph in the Morning Post.

"Does Miss Gresley take any interest?" said Hugh.

He was a little jealous of Hester. This illness, the cause of which had sincerely grieved him, had come at an inopportune moment. Hester was always taking Rachel from him.

"Yes," said Rachel, "a little when she remembers. But she can only think of one thing."

"That unhappy book."

"Yes. I think the book was to Hester something of what you are to me. Her whole heart was wrapped up in it—and she has lost it. Hugh, whatever happens, you must not be lost now. It is too late. I could not bear it."

"I can only be lost if you throw me away," said Hugh.

There was a long silence.

"Lady Newhaven will know to-day," said Rachel at last. "I tried to break it to her, but she did not believe me."

"Rachel," said Hugh, stammering, "I meant to tell you the other day, only we were interrupted, that she came to my rooms the evening before I came down here. I should not have minded quite so much, but Captain Pratt came in with me and—found her there."

"Oh Hugh, that dreadful man! Poor woman!"

"Poor woman!" said Hugh, his eyes flashing. "It was poor you I thought of. Poor Rachel! to be marrying a man who—"

There was another silence.

"I have one great compensation," said Rachel, laying her cool, strong hand on his. "You are open with me. You keep nothing back. You need not have mentioned this unlucky meeting, but you did. It was like you. I trust you entirely, Hugh. I bless and thank you for loving me. If my love can make you happy, oh Hughie, you will be happy."

Hugh shrank from her. The faltered words were as a two-edged sword.

She looked at the sensitive, paling face with tender comprehension. The mother-look crept into her eyes.

"If there is anything else that you wish to tell me, tell me now."

A wild, overwhelming impulse to fling himself over the precipice out of the reach of those stabbing words! A horrible nauseating recoil that seemed to rend his whole being.

Somebody said hoarsely:

"There is nothing else."

It was his own voice, but not his will, that spoke. Had any one ever made him suffer like this woman who loved him?

* * * * *

Lady Newhaven had returned to Westhope ill with suspense and anxiety. She had felt sure she should successfully waylay Hugh in his rooms, convinced that if they could but meet the clouds between them (to borrow from her vocabulary) would instantly roll away. They had met, and the clouds had not rolled away. She vainly endeavored to attribute Hugh's evident anger at the sight of her to her want of prudence, to the accident of Captain Pratt's presence. She would not admit the thought that Hugh had ceased to care for her, but it needed a good deal of forcible thrusting away. She could hear the knock of the unwelcome guest upon her door, and though always refused admittance he withdrew only to return. She had been grievously frightened, too, at having been seen in equivocal circumstances by such a man as Captain Pratt. The very remembrance made her shiver.

"How angry Edward would have been," she said to herself. "I wonder whether he would have advised me to write a little note to Captain Pratt, explaining how I came there, and asking him not to mention it. But, of course, he won't repeat it. He won't want to make an enemy of me and Hugh. The Pratts think so much of me. And when I marry Hugh"—(knock at the mental door)—"if ever I marry Hugh, we will be civil to him and have him to stay. Edward never would, but I don't think so much of good family, and all that, as Edward did. We will certainly ask him."

It was not till after luncheon that Lady Newhaven, after scanning the Ladies' Pictorial, languidly opened the Morning Post.

Suddenly the paper fell from her hands on to the floor. She seized it up and read again the paragraph which had caught her eye.

"No! No!" she gasped. "It is not true. It is not possible." And she read it a third time.

The paper fell from her nerveless hands again, and this time it remained on the floor.

It is doubtful whether until this moment Lady Newhaven had known what suffering was. She had talked freely of it to others. She had sung, as if it were her own composition, "Cleansing Fires." She often said it might have been written for her.

In the cruel fire of sorrow, [slow, soft pedal. Cast thy heart, do not faint or wail, [both pedals down, quicker. Let thy hand be firm and steady, [loud, and hold on to last syllable. Do not let thy spi-rit quail, [bang! B natural. With resolution. Bu-ut. . . . [hurricane of false notes, etc., etc.

But now, poor thing, the fire had reached her, and her spirit quailed immediately. Perhaps it was only natural that as her courage failed something else should take its place; an implacable burning resentment against her two betrayers, her lover and her friend. She rocked herself to and fro. Lover and friend. "Oh, never, never trust in man's love or woman's friendship henceforth forever!" So learned Lady Newhaven the lesson of suffering.

"Lover and friend hast Thou put far from me," she sobbed, "and mine acquaintance out of my sight."

A ring at the door-bell proved that the latter part of the text, at any rate, was not true in her case.

A footman entered.

"Not at home. Not at home," she said, impatiently.

"I said not at home, but the gentleman said I was to take up his card," said the man, presenting a card.

When Captain Pratt tipped, he tipped heavily.

Lady Newhaven read it.

"No. Yes. I will see him," she said. It flashed across her mind that she must be civil to him, and that her eyes were not red. She had not shed tears.

The man picked the newspaper from the floor, put it on a side table, and withdrew.

Captain Pratt came in, bland, deferential, orchid in button-hole.

It was not until he was actually in the room, his cold appraising eyes upon her, that the poor woman realized that her position towards him had changed. She could not summon up the nonchalant distant civility which, according to her ideas, was sufficient for her country neighbors in general, and the Pratts in particular.

Captain Pratt opined that the weather, though cold, was seasonable.

Lady Newhaven agreed.

Captain Pratt regretted the hard frost on account of the hunting. Four hunters eating their heads off, etc.

Lady Newhaven thought the thaw might come any day.

Captain Pratt had been skating yesterday on the parental flooded meadow. Flooded with fire-engine. Men out of work. Glad of employment, etc.

How kind of Captain Pratt to employ them.

Not at all. It was his father. Duties of the landed gentry, etc. He believed if the frost continued they would skate on Beaumere.

No; no one was allowed to skate on Beaumere. The springs rendered the ice treacherous.

Silence.

Captain Pratt turned the gold knob of his stick slowly in his thick, white fingers. He looked carefully at Lady Newhaven, as a connoisseur with intent to buy looks at a piece of valuable china. She was accustomed to being looked at, but there was something in Captain Pratt's prolonged scrutiny which filled her with vague alarm. She writhed under it. He observed her uneasiness, but he did not remove his eyes.

Were the boys well?

They were quite well, thanks. She was cowed.

Were they fond of skating?

Very fond.

Might he suggest that they should come over and skate at Warpington Towers to-morrow. He himself would be there, and would take charge of them.

He rose slowly, as one who has made up his mind. Lady Newhaven feared it would be troubling Captain Pratt too much.

It would be no trouble to Captain Pratt; on the contrary, a pleasure.

His hand was now extended. Lady Newhaven had to put hers into it.

Perhaps next week if the frost held. She tried to withdraw her hand. Oh, well, then, to-morrow; certainly, to-morrow.

"You may rely on me to take care of them," said Captain Pratt, still holding her hand. He obliged her to look at him. His hard eyes met her frightened blue ones. "You may rely on my discretion entirely—in all matters," he said, meaningly.

Lady Newhaven winced, and her hand trembled violently in his.

He pressed the shrinking little hand, let it go, and went away.



CHAPTER XLVIII

"Le temps apporte, emporte, mais ne rapporte pas."

"May I come in?" said the Bishop, tapping at Hester's door.

"Do come in."

Hester was lying propped up by many cushions on a sofa in the little sitting-room leading out of her bedroom. She looked a mere shadow in the fire-light.

She smiled at him mechanically, but her face relapsed at once into the apathetic expression which sat so ill upon it. Her lustreless eyes fixed themselves again on the fire.

"And what are you going to do this afternoon?" she said, politely. It was obvious she did not care what he did.

"I am going to Westhope on business," he said, looking narrowly at her. It was all very well for Dr. Brown to say she must be roused; but how were his instructions to be carried out?

"I am a great deal of trouble to you," said Hester. "Could not I be sent to a home, or a place where you go through a cure, where I should be out of the way till I'm well?"

"Have I deserved that, Hester?"

"No; but you know I always try to wound my best friends."

"You don't succeed, my child, because they know you are in heavy trouble."

"We will not speak of that," said Hester, quickly.

"Yes, the time has come to speak of it. Why do you shut us out of this sorrow? Don't you see that you make our burdens heavier by refusing to let us share yours?"

"You can't share it," said Hester; "no one can."

"Do you think I have not grieved over it?"

"I know you have, but it was waste of time. It's no good—no good. Please don't cheer me, and tell me I shall write better books yet, and that this trial is for my good. Dear Bishop, don't try and comfort me. I can't bear it."

"My poor child, I firmly believe you will write better books than the one which is lost, and I firmly believe that you will one day look back upon this time as a stop in your spiritual life, but I had not intended to say so. The thought was in my mind, but it was you who put the words into my mouth."

"I was so afraid that—"

"That I was going to improve the occasion?"

"Yes. Dr. Brown and the nurse are so dreadfully cheerful now, and always talking about the future, and how celebrated I shall be some day. If you and Rachel follow suit I shall—I think I shall—go out of my mind."

The Bishop did not answer.

"Dr. Brown may be right," Hester went on. "I may live to seventy, and I may become—what does he call it?—a distinguished author. I don't know and I don't care. But whatever happens in the future, nothing will bring back the book which was burned."

The Bishop did not speak. He dared not.

"If I had a child," Hester continued, in the exhausted voice with which he was becoming familiar, "and it died, I might have ten more, beautiful and clever and affectionate, but they would not replace the one I had lost. Only if it were a child," a little tremor broke the dead level of the passionless voice, "I should meet it again in heaven. There is the resurrection of the body for the children of the body, but there is no resurrection that I ever heard of for the children of the brain."

Hester held her thin right hand with its disfigured first finger to the fire.

"A great writer who had married and had children, whom she worshipped, once told me that the pang of motherhood is that even your children don't seem your very own. They are often more like some one else than their parents, perhaps the spinster sister-in-law, whom every one dislikes, or some entire alien. Look at Regie. He is just like me, which must be a great trial to Minna. And they grow up bewildering their parents at every turn by characteristics they don't understand. But she said the spiritual children, the books, are really ours.

"If you were other than you are," said Hester, after a long pause, "you would reprove me for worshipping my own work. I suppose love is worship. I loved it for itself, not for anything it was to bring me. That is what people like Dr. Brown don't understand. It was part of myself. But it was the better part. The side of me which loves success, and which he is always appealing to, had no hand in it. My one prayer was that I might be worthy to write it, that it might not suffer by contact with me. I spent myself upon it." Hester's voice sank. "I knew what I was doing. I joyfully spent my health, my eyesight, my very life upon it. I was impelled to do it by what you perhaps will call a blind instinct, what I, poor simpleton and dupe, believed at the time to be nothing less than the will of God."

"You will think so again," said the Bishop, "when you realize that the book has left its mark and influence upon your character. It has taught you a great deal. The mere fact of writing it has strengthened you. The outward and visible form is dead, but its spirit lives on in you. You will realize this presently."

"Shall I? On the contrary, the only thing I realize is that it is not God who is mocked, but His foolish children who try to do His bidding. It seems He is not above putting a lying spirit in the mouth of his prophets. Do you think I still blame poor James for his bonfire, or his jealous little wife who wanted to get rid of me? Why should I? They acted up to their lights as your beloved Jock did when he squeezed the life out of that rabbit in Westhope Park. In all those days when I did not say anything, it was because I felt I had been deceived. I had done my part. God had not done His. He should have seen to it that the book was not destroyed. You prayed by me once when you thought I was unconscious. I heard all right. I should have laughed if I could, but it was too much trouble."

"These thoughts will pass away with your illness," said the Bishop. "You are like a man who has had a blow, who staggers about giddy and dazed, and sees the pavement rising up to strike him. The pavement is firm under his feet all the time."

"Half of me knows in a dim blind way that God is the same always," said Hester, "while the other half says, 'Curse God and die.'"

"That is the giddiness, the vertigo after the shock."

"Is it? I dare say you are right. But I don't care either way."

"Why trouble your mind about it, or about anything?"

"Because I have a feeling, indeed, it would be extraordinary if I had not, for Dr. Brown is always rubbing it in, that I ought to meet my trouble bravely, and not sink down under it, as he thinks I am doing now. He says others have suffered more than I have. I know that, for I have been with them. It seems," said Hester, with the ghost of a smile, "that there is an etiquette about these things, just as the blinds are drawn up after a funeral. The moment has come for me, but I have not drawn up my blinds."

"You will draw them up presently."

"I would draw them up now," said Hester, looking at him steadily, "if I could. I owe it to you and Rachel to try, and I have tried, but I can't."

The Bishop's cheek paled a little.

"Take your own time," he said, but his heart sank.

He saw a little boat with torn sail and broken rudder, drifting on to a lee shore.

"I seem to have been living at a great strain for the last year," said Hester. "I don't know one word from another now, but I think I mean concentration. That means holding your mind to one place, doesn't it? Well, now, something seems to have broken, and I can't fix it to anything any more. I can talk to you and Rachel for a few minutes if I hold my mind tight, but I can't really attend, and directly I am alone, or you leave off speaking, my mind gets loose from my body and wanders away to an immense distance, to long, dreary, desert places. And then if you come in I make a great effort to bring it back, and to open my eyes, because if I don't you think I'm ill. You don't mind if I shut them now, do you?—because I've explained about them, and holding them open does tire me so. I wish they could be propped open. And—my mind gets farther and further away every day. I hope you and Rachel won't think I am giving way if—sometime—I really can't bring it back any longer."

"Dear Hester, no."

"I will not talk any more then. If you and Rachel understand, that is all that matters. I used to think so many things mattered, but I don't now. And don't think I'm grieving about the book while I'm lying still. I have grieved, but it is over. I'm too tired to be glad or sorry about anything any more."

Hester lay back spent and gray among her pillows.

The Bishop roused her to take the stimulant put ready near at hand, and then sat a long time watching her. She seemed unconscious of his presence. At last the nurse came in, and he went out silently, and returned to his study. Rachel was waiting there to hear the result of the interview.

"I can do nothing," he said. "I have no power to help her. After forty years ministry I have not a word to say to her. She is beyond human aid—at least, she is beyond mine."

"You think she will die?"

"I do not see what is going to happen to prevent it, but I am certain it might be prevented."

"You could not rouse her?"

"No, she discounted anything I could have said, by asking me not to say it. That is the worst of Hester. The partition between her mind and that of other people is so thin that she sees what they are thinking about. Thank God, Rachel, that you are not cursed with the artistic temperament! That is why she has never married. She sees too much. I am not a match-maker, but if I had had to take the responsibility, I should have married her at seventeen to Lord Newhaven."

"You know he asked her?"

"No, I did not know it."

"It was a long time ago, when first she came out. Lady Susan was anxious for it, and pressed her. I sometimes think if she had been given time, and if her aunt had let her alone—but he married within the year. But what are we to do about Hester? Dr. Brown says something must be done, or she will sink in a decline. I would give my life for her, but I can do nothing. I have tried."

"So have I," said the Bishop. "But it has come to this. We have got to trust the one person whom we always show we tacitly distrust by trying to take matters out of His hands. We must trust God. So far we have strained ourselves to keep Hester alive, but she is past our help now. She is in none the worse case for that. We are her two best friends save one. We must leave her to the best Friend of all. God has her in His hand. For the moment the greater love holds her away from the less, like the mother who takes her sick child into her arms, apart from the other children who are playing round her. Hester is in God's keeping, and that is enough for us. And now take a turn in the garden, Rachel. You are too much in-doors. I am going out on business."

When Rachel had left him the Bishop opened his despatch-box and took out a letter.

It was directed to Lady Newhaven.

"I promised to give it into her own hand a month after his death, whenever that might happen to be," he said to himself. "There was some trouble between them. I hope she won't confide it to me. Anyhow, I must go and get it over. I wish I did not dislike her so much. I shall advise her not to read it till I am gone."



CHAPTER XLIX

The mouse fell from the ceiling, and the cat cried, "Allah!" —Syrian Proverb.

That help should come through such a recognized channel as a Bishop could surprise no one, least of all Lady Newhaven, who had had the greatest faith in the clergy all her life, but, nevertheless, so overwhelmed was she by despair and its physical sensations, that she very nearly refused to see the Bishop when he called. Her faith even in lawn sleeves momentarily tottered. Who would show her any good? Poor Lady Newhaven was crushed into a state of prostration so frightful that we must not blame her if she felt that even an Archbishop would have been powerless to help her.

She had thought, after the engagement was announced, of rushing up to London and insisting on seeing Hugh; but always, after she had looked out the trains, her courage had shrunk back at the last moment. There had been a look on Hugh's face during that last momentary meeting which she could not nerve herself to see again. She had been to London already once to see him, without success.

She knew Rachel was at the Palace at Southminster nursing Hester, and twice she had ordered the carriage to drive over to see her, and make a desperate appeal to her to give up Hugh. But she knew that she should fail. And Rachel would triumph over her. Women always did over a defeated rival. Lady Newhaven had not gone. The frightful injustice of it all wrung Lady Newhaven's heart to the point of agony. To see her own property deliberately stolen from her in the light of day, as it were, in the very market-place, before everybody, without being able to raise a finger to regain him! It was intolerable. For she loved Hugh as far as she was capable of loving anything. And her mind had grown round the idea that he was hers as entirely as a tree will grow round a nail fastened into it.

And now he was to marry Rachel, and soon. Let no one think they know pain until they know jealousy.

But when the Bishop sent up a second time, asking to see her on business, she consented.

It was too soon to see callers, of course. But a Bishop was different. And how could she refuse to admit him when she had admitted that odious Captain Pratt only four days before. She hoped no one would become aware of that fact. It was as well for her that she could not hear the remarks of Selina and Ada Pratt, as they skated on the frozen meadows with half, not the better-half, of Middleshire.

"Poor Vi Newhaven. Yes, she won't see a creature. She saw Algy for a few minutes last week, but then he is an old friend, and does not count. He said she was quite heart-broken. He was quite upset himself. He was so fond of Ted Newhaven."

The Bishop would not even sit down. He said he was on the way to a confirmation, and added that he had been entrusted with a letter for her, and held it towards her.

"It is my husband's handwriting," she said, drawing back, with instinctive fear.

"It is from your husband," said the Bishop, gently, softening somewhat at the sight of the ravages which despair had made in the lovely face since he had last seen it. "He asked me to give it into your own hand a month after his death."

"Then he told you that—"

"He told me nothing, and I wish to hear nothing."

"I should like to confess all to you, to feel myself absolved," said Lady Newhaven in a low voice, the letter in her trembling hand.

He looked at her, and he saw that she would not say all. She would arrange details to suit herself, and would omit the main point altogether, whatever it might be, if, as it was more than probable, it told against herself. He would at least save her from the hypocrisy of a half-confession.

"If in a month's time you wish to make a full confession to me," he said, "I will hear it. But I solemnly charge you in the meanwhile to speak to no one of this difficulty between you and your husband. Whatever it may have been, it is past. If he sinned against you, he is dead, and the least you can do is to keep silence. If you wronged him"—Lady Newhaven shook her head vehemently—"if you wronged him," repeated the Bishop, his face hardening, "be silent for the sake of the children. It is the only miserable reparation you can make him."

"You don't understand," she said, feebly.

"I know that he was a kindly, gentle-natured man, and that he died a hard and bitter one," said the Bishop. "God knows what is in that letter, but your husband said it would be of the greatest comfort and assistance to you in a difficulty which he foresaw for you. I will leave you to read it."

And he left the room.

The early December twilight was creeping over everything. Lady Newhaven took the letter to the window, and after several futile attempts succeeded in opening it.

It ran as follows:

"It is irreligious to mourn too long for the dead. 'I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me'—II. Sam. xii. 23. In the meanwhile, until you rejoin me, I trust you will remember that it is my especial wish that you should allow one who is in every way worthy of you to console you for my loss, who will make you as happy as you both deserve to be. That I died by my own hand you and your so-called friend Miss West are of course aware. That 'the one love of your life' drew the short lighter you are perhaps not aware. I waited two days to see if he would fulfil the compact, and as he did not—I never thought he would—I retired in his place. I present to you this small piece of information as a wedding-present, which, if adroitly handled, may add to the harmony of domestic life. And if by any chance he should have conceived the dastardly, the immoral idea of deserting you in favor of some mercenary marriage—of which I rather suspect him—you will find this piece of information invaluable in restoring his allegiance at once. He is yours by every sacred tie, and no treacherous female friend must wrest him from you.

"NEWHAVEN."

Lady Newhaven put the letter in her pocket, and then fainted away, with her fair head on the window-ledge.



CHAPTER L

"There cannot be a pinch in death more sharp than this is."

The Bishop's sister, Miss Keane, whose life was a perpetual orgy of mothers' meetings and G.F.S. gatherings, was holding a district visitors' working party in the drawing-room at the Palace. The ladies knitted and stitched, while one of their number heaped fuel on the flame of their enthusiasm by reading aloud the "History of the Diocese of Southminster."

Miss Keane took but little heed of the presence of Rachel and Hester in her brother's house. Those who work mechanically on fixed lines seem, as a rule, to miss the pith of life. She was kind when she remembered them, but her heart was where her treasure was—namely, in her escritoire, with her list of Bible-classes, and servants' choral unions, and the long roll of contributors to the guild of work which she herself had started.

When she had been up to Hester's room, invariably at hours when Hester could not see her, and when she had entered Rachel's sledge-hammer subscriptions in her various account-books, her attention left her visitors. She considered them superficial, and wondered how it was that her brother could find time to spend hours talking to both of them, while he had rarely a moment in which to address her chosen band in the drawing-room. She was one of those persons who find life a very prosaic affair, quite unlike the fiction she occasionally read.

She often remarked that nothing except the commonplace happened. Certainly she never observed anything else.

So Hester lay in the room above, halting feebly between two opinions, whether to live or to die, and Rachel sat in the Bishop's study beneath, waiting to make tea for him on his return from the confirmation.

If she did not make it, no one else did. Instead of ringing for it he went without it.

Rachel watched the sun set—a red ball dropping down a frosty sky. It was the last day of the year. The new year was bringing her everything.

"Good-bye, good-bye," she said, looking at the last rim of the sun as he sank. And she remembered other years when she had watched the sun set on the last day of December, when life had been difficult—how difficult!

"If Hester could only get better I should have nothing left to wish for," she said, and she prayed the more fervently for her friend, because she knew that even if Hester died, life would still remain beautiful; the future without her would still be flooded with happiness.

"A year ago if Hester had died I should have had nothing left to live for," she said to herself. "Now this newcomer, this man whom I have known barely six months, fills my whole life. Are other women as narrow as I am? Can they care only for one person at a time like me? Ah, Hester! forgive me, I can't help it."

Hugh was coming in presently. He had been in that morning, and the Bishop had met him, and had asked him to come in again to tea. Rachel did not know what the Bishop thought of him, but he had managed to see a good deal of Hugh.

Rachel waited as impatiently as most of us, when our happiness lingers by us, loth to depart.

At last she heard the footman bringing some one across the hall.

Would Hugh's coming ever become a common thing? Would she ever be able to greet him without this tumult of emotion, ever be able to take his hand without turning giddy on the sheer verge of bliss?

The servant announced, "Lady Newhaven."

The two women stood looking at each other. Rachel saw the marks of suffering on the white face, and her own became as white. Her eyes fell guiltily before Lady Newhaven's.

"Forgive me," she said.

"Forgive you?" said Lady Newhaven, in a hoarse voice. "It is no use asking me for forgiveness."

"You are right," said Rachel, recovering herself, and meeting Lady Newhaven's eyes fully. "But what is the use of coming here to abuse me? You might have spared yourself and me this at least. It will only exhaust you and—wound me."

"You must give him up," said Lady Newhaven, her hands fumbling under her crape cloak. "I've come to tell you that you must let him go."

The fact that Hugh had drawn the short lighter, and had not taken the consequences, did not affect Lady Newhaven's feelings towards him in the least, but she was vaguely aware that somehow it would affect Rachel's, and now it would be Rachel's turn to suffer.

Rachel paused a moment, and then said, slowly:

"He does not wish to be let go."

"He is mine."

"He was yours once," said Rachel, her face turning from white to gray. That wound was long in healing. "But he is mine now."

"Rachel, you cannot be bad all through." Lady Newhaven was putting the constraint upon herself which that tightly clutched paper, that poisoned weapon in reserve, enabled her to assume. For Hugh's sake she would only use it if other means failed. "You must know that you ought to look upon him as a married man. Don't you see"—wildly—"that we must marry, to put right what was wrong? He owes it to me. People always do."

"Yes, they generally do," said Rachel; "but I don't see how it makes the wrong right."

"I look upon Hugh as my husband," said Lady Newhaven.

"So do I."

"Rachel, he loves me. He is only marrying you for your money."

"I will risk that."

"I implore you on my knees to give him back to me."

And Lady Newhaven knelt down with bare, white outstretched hands. (Tableau number one. New Series.)

Rachel shrank back involuntarily.

"Listen, Violet," she said, "and get up. I will not speak until you get up." Lady Newhaven obeyed. "If I gave back Hugh to you a hundred times it would not make him love you any more, or make him marry you. I am not keeping him from you. This marriage is his own doing. Oh! Violet, I'm not young and pretty. I've no illusions about myself; but I believe he really does love me, in spite of that, and I know I love him."

"I don't believe it," said Lady Newhaven. "I mean about him. Not about you, of course."

"Here he is. Let him decide," said Rachel.

Hugh came in unannounced. Upon his grave face there was that concentrated look of happiness which has settled in the very deep of the heart and gleams up into the eyes.

His face changed painfully. He glanced from one woman to the other. Rachel was sorry for him. She would fain have spared him, but she could not.

"Hugh," she said, gently, her steadfast eyes resting on him, "Lady Newhaven and I were talking of you. I think it would be best if she heard from your own lips what she, naturally, will not believe from mine."

"I will never believe," said Lady Newhaven, "that you will desert me now, that all the past is nothing to you, and that you will cast me aside for another woman."

Hugh looked at her steadily. Then he went up to Rachel, and taking her hand, raised it to his lips. There was in his manner a boundless reverent adoration that was to Lady Newhaven's jealousy as a match to gunpowder.

Rachel kept his hand.

"Are you sure you want him, Rachel?" gasped Lady Newhaven, holding convulsively to a chair for support. "He has cast me aside. He will cast you aside next, for he is a coward and a traitor. Are you sure you want to marry him? His hands are red with blood. He murdered my husband."

Rachel's hand tightened on Hugh's.

"It was an even chance," she said. "Those who draw lots must abide by the drawing."

"It was an even chance," shrieked Lady Newhaven. "But who drew the short lighter, tell me that? Who refused to fulfil his part when the time was up? Tell me that."

"You are mad," said Rachel.

"I can prove it," said Lady Newhaven, holding out the letter in her shaking hands. "You may read it, Rachel. I can trust you. Not him, he would burn it. It is from Edward; look, you know his writing, written to tell me that he," pointing at Hugh, "had drawn the short lighter, but that, as he had not killed himself when the time came, he, Edward, did so instead. That was why he was late. We always wondered, Rachel, why he was two days late. Read it! Read it!"

"I will not read it," said Rachel, pushing away the paper. "I do not believe a word of it."

"You shall believe it. Ask him to deny it, if he can."

"You need not trouble to deny it," said Rachel, looking full at Hugh.

The world held only her and him. And as Hugh looked into her eyes his soul rose up and scaled the heights above it till it stood beside hers.

There is a sacred place where, if we follow close in Love's footsteps, we see him lay aside his earthly quiver and his bitter arrows, and turn to us as he is, with the light of God upon him, one with us as one with God. In that pure light lies cease to be. We know them no more, neither remember them, for love and truth are one.

Hugh strode across to Lady Newhaven, took the letter from her, and threw it into the heart of the fire. Then he turned to Rachel.

"I drew the short lighter," he said. "I meant to take the consequences at first, but when the time came—I did not. Partly I was afraid, and partly I could not leave you."

If Lady Newhaven yearned for revenge she had it then. They had both forgotten her. But she saw Rachel's eyes change as the eyes of a man at the stake might change when the fire reached him. She shrank back from the agony in them. Hugh's face became pinched and thin as a dead man's. A moment ago he saw no consequences. He saw only that he could not lie to her. His mind fell headlong from its momentary foothold. What mad impulse had betrayed him to his ruin?

"You drew the short lighter, and you let me think all the time he had," said Rachel, her voice almost inaudible in its fierce passion. "You drew it, and you let him die instead of you, as any one who knew him would know he would. And when he was dead you came to me, and kept me in ignorance even—that time—when I said I trusted you."

The remembrance of that meeting was too much.

Rachel turned her eyes on Lady Newhaven, who was watching her terror-stricken.

"I said I would not give him up, but I will," she said, violently. "You can take him if you want him. What was it you said to me, Hugh? That if you had drawn the short lighter you would have had to abide by it. Yes, that was it. Your whole intercourse with me has been one lie from first to last. You were right, Violet, when you said he ought to marry you. It will be another lie on the top of all the others."

"It was what Edward wished," faltered his widow. "He says so in the letter that has just been burned."

"Lord Newhaven wished it," said Rachel, looking at the miserable man between them. "Poor Lord Newhaven! First his honor. Then his life. You have taken everything he had. But there are still his shoes."

"Rachel!" said Hugh, suddenly, and he fell on his knees before her, clasping the hem of her gown.

She pushed him violently from her, tearing her gown in releasing it from his frenzied grasp.

"Leave me," she whispered. Her voice was almost gone. "Coward and liar, I will have nothing more to do with you."

He got upon his feet somehow. The two gray desperate faces spent with passion faced each other. They were past speech.

He read his death-warrant in her merciless eyes. She looked at the despair in his without flinching.

He stood a moment, and then feeling his way, like one half blind, left the room, unconsciously pushing aside Lady Newhaven, whom both had forgotten.

She gave one terrified glance at Rachel, and slipped out after him.



CHAPTER LI

I thought, "Now, if I had been a woman, such As God made women, to save men by love— By just my love I might have saved this man." —ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.

"Has Lady Newhaven been here?" said the Bishop, coming into the study, his hands full of papers. "I thought I saw her carriage driving away as I came up."

"She has been here."

The Bishop looked up suddenly, his attention arrested by Rachel's voice. There is a white heat of anger that mimics the pallor of a fainting fit. The Bishop thought she was about to swoon, until he saw her eyes. Those gentle faithful eyes were burning. He shrank as one who sees the glare of fire raging inside familiar windows.

"My poor child," he said, and he sat down heavily in his leather arm-chair.

Rachel still stood. She looked at him, and her lips moved, but no sound came forth.

The Bishop looked intently at her.

"Where is Scarlett?" he said.

"Hugh is gone," she said, stammering. "I have broken off my engagement with him. He will never come back."

And she fell suddenly on her knees, and hid her convulsed face against the arm of a chair.

The Bishop did not move. He waited for this paroxysm of anger to subside. He had never seen Rachel angry before in all the years he had known her, but he watched her without surprise. Only stupid people think that coal cannot burn as fiercely as tow.

She remained a long time on her knees, her face hidden. The Bishop did not hurry her. At last she began to sob silently, shuddering from head to foot.

Then he came and sat down near her, and took the cold clinched hands in his.

"Rachel, tell me," he said, gently.

She tried to pull her hands away, but he held them firmly. He obliged her to look up at him. She raised her fierce, disfigured face for a moment, and then let it fall on his hands and hers.

"I am a wicked woman," she said. "Don't trouble about me. I'm not worth it. I thought I would have kept all suffering from him, but now—if I could make him suffer—I would."

"I have no doubt he is suffering."

"Not enough. Not like me. And I loved him and trusted him. And he is false, too, like that other man I loved; like you, only I have not found you out yet; like Hester; like all the rest. I will never trust any one again. I will never be deceived again. This is—the—second time."

And Rachel broke into a passion of tears.

The Bishop released her hands and felt for his own handkerchief.

Then he waited, praying silently. The clock had made a long circuit before she raised herself.

"I am very selfish," she said, looking with compunction at the kind, tired face. "I ought to have gone to my room instead of breaking down here. Dear Bishop, forgive me. It is past now. I shall not give way again."

"Will you make me some tea?" he said.

She made the tea with shaking hands and awkward, half-blind movements. It was close on dinner-time, but she did not notice it. He obliged her to drink some, and then he settled himself in his leather arm-chair. He went over his engagements for the evening. In half an hour he ought to be dining with Canon Glynn to meet an old college friend. At eleven he had arranged to see a young clergyman whose conscience was harrying him. He wrote a note on his knee without moving, saying he could not come, and touched the bell at his elbow. When the servant had taken the note he relapsed into the depths of his arm-chair and sipped his tea.

"I think, Rachel," he said at last, "that I ought to tell you that I partly guess at your reason for breaking off your engagement. I have known for some time that there was trouble between the Newhavens. From what Lady Newhaven said to me to-day, and from the fact that she has been here, and that immediately after seeing her you broke your engagement with Scarlett, I must come to the conclusion that Scarlett had been the cause of this trouble."

Rachel had regained her composure. Her face was white and hard.

"You are right," she said. "He was at one time—her lover."

"And you consider, in consequence, that he is unfit to become your husband?"

"No. He told me about it before he asked me to marry him. I accepted him, knowing it."

"Then he was trying to retrieve himself. He acted towards you, at any rate, like an honorable man."

Rachel laughed. "So I thought at the time."

"If you accepted him, knowing about his past, I don't see why you should have thrown him over. One dishonorable action sincerely repented does not make a dishonorable man."

"I did not know all," said Rachel. "I do now."

The Bishop looked into the fire.

Her next words surprised him.

"You really cared for Lord Newhaven, did you not?"

"I did."

"Then as you know the one thing he risked his life to conceal for the sake of his children—namely, his wife's misconduct—I think I had better tell you the rest."

So Rachel told him in harsh, bald language the story of the drawing of lots, and how she and Lady Newhaven had remained ignorant as to which had drawn the short lighter. How Hugh had drawn it; how when the time came he had failed to fulfil the agreement; how two days later Lord Newhaven had killed himself; and how she and Lady Newhaven had both, of course, concluded that Lord Newhaven must have drawn the short lighter.

Rachel went on, her hard voice shaking a little.

"Hugh had told me that he had had an entanglement with a married woman. I knew it long before he spoke of it, but just because he risked losing me by owning it I loved and trusted him all the more. I thought he was, at any rate, an upright man. After Lord Newhaven's death he asked me to marry him, and I accepted him. And when we were talking quietly one day"—Rachel's face became, if possible, whiter than before—"I told him that I knew of the drawing of lots. (He thought no one knew of it except the dead man and himself.) And I told him that he must not blame himself for Lord Newhaven's death. He had brought it on himself. I said to him"—Rachel's voice trembled more and more-"'It was an even chance. You might have drawn the short lighter yourself.' And—he—said that if he had, he should have had to abide by it."