"Katherine," she began, and her grey eyes filled with tears, "before I go, I want to tell you something----"
"What is it?"
"I want you to know that I really loved Vincent all the time."
She waited to see the effect of her words, but Katherine set her teeth firmly and said nothing. Audrey went on, still kneeling. "I don"t know what made me get engaged to Ted,--I liked him, you know, dear boy, but--I think it was because Vincent would not understand me; and he wanted to hurry things so. And you see I didn"t know then how much I loved him. Then afterwards----" She stopped; she had come to the difficult part of her confession.
"Well?"
"Then, you see, I knew Mr. Wyndham, and he----" Another pause.
"What did Mr. Wyndham do?" It was better that she should talk about Mr.
Wyndham than about Vincent.
"I don"t know what he did, but he made me mad; he made me think I cared for him. He was so clever. You know I always adored clever people; and, well--n.o.body could call poor Vincent clever, _could_ they?"
In spite of herself, Katherine"s lip curled with scorn. But Audrey was too much absorbed in her confession to see it.
"I suppose that fascinated me. Then afterwards when Vincent took to those dreadful ways--whatever my feelings were, you _know_, Katherine, it was impossible."
Katherine could bear it no longer, but she managed to control her voice in answering. "Why do you tell me these things? Do you suppose I care to hear about your "feelings"?--if you do feel."
"If I _do_ feel? Kathy!"
"Well, why can"t you keep quiet, now it"s too late?"
"Because--because I wanted you to know that I loved him."
There was silence. Presently Audrey put one hand on Katherine"s knee.
"Kathy----"
"I"d rather you didn"t call me that, if you don"t mind."
"Why?" Audrey stared with large, incomprehensive eyes.
"I can"t tell you why."
"Katherine, then--it _is_ prettier. Do you know, I sometimes think it"s better, oh, infinitely better, that he should have died."
Katherine rose from her seat, to end it, looking down on the kneeling figure, as she answered bitterly--
"It was indeed--infinitely better."
But irony, like so many other things of the kind, was beyond Audrey.
"I suppose I ought to go now," she said, rising. Katherine made no answer.
Audrey went away to get ready, a little reluctantly, for she had so much more to say. It had never occurred to her to be jealous of Katherine.
That may have been either because she did not know, or because she did not care. She had been so sure of Vincent.
Presently she came back with her hat on. She carried her bearskins in her hand, and under the shade of the broad black beaver her face wore an expression of anxious thought.
"Katherine,"--she held out her cape and m.u.f.f, and Katherine remembered that they were those which Vincent had given her,--"I suppose I can wear my furs still, even if I _am_ in mourning?"
There was neither scorn nor irony in the look that Katherine turned on her, and Audrey understood this time. As plainly as looks can speak, it condemned her as altogether lighter than vanity itself; and while condemning, it forgave her.
"_He_ gave them to me, you know," she said at last. Audrey"s pathos generally came too late.
She drove away, wrapped in her furs, and for once unconscious of her own beauty, so dissatisfied was she with the part she had played in the great tragedy. Somehow her parts seemed always to dwindle this way in retrospect.
That afternoon a parcel arrived, addressed to Hardy by his publishers.
Katherine opened it. It contained early copies of the Pioneer-book, the book that after all Vincent was never to see.
She saw with a pang her own design blazing in gold on the cover, and her frontispiece sketch of the author. Then she turned to the dedication page, and read--
TO HER WHO HAS INSPIRED ALL THAT THERE MAY BE OF GOOD IN IT THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED BY HER AFFECTIONATE COUSIN, VINCENT HARDY.
It was an epitaph.
CHAPTER XXVI
One day"s work among the poor of St. Teresa"s, Lambeth, is enough to exhaust you, if you are at all sensitive and highly strung, and Audrey had had three days of it. No wonder, then, that as she leaned back in a particularly hard wooden chair in the vicar"s study every nerve in her body was on edge.
It was a year after Vincent"s death. With lapse of time that event had lost much of its oppressive magnificence, and it affected Audrey more in looking back than it had done in reality. Time, too, had thrown her relations with Wyndham into relief; and as she realised more and more their true nature, the conscience that had been so long quiescent began to stir in her. Its voice seemed to be seconding Wyndham"s and Katherine"s verdict. She became uneasy about herself. Once more, this time in serious sincerity, she felt the need of a stronger personality upholding and pervading her own. Absolute dependence on somebody else"s character had become a habit of her nature: she could no more live now without some burning stimulus to thought and feeling than the drunkard can satisfy his thirst with plain water. Naturally she thought of Mr.
Flaxman Reed, as Katherine had thought of him the midnight before Vincent"s death, or as she had thought of him herself in the day of her temptation. This time she had ended by going to him, as many a woman had gone before, with her empty life in her hands, begging that it might be filled. For all cases of the kind Mr. Flaxman Reed had one remedy--work in the parish of St. Teresa"s; as a rule it either killed or cured them.
But he had spared Audrey hitherto, as he would have spared some sick child a medicine too strong and bitter for it. Finally, much to his surprise, she asked him for the work of her own accord, and he gave it to her.
And now she had had three days of it. It was enough. It made her head ache yet to think of all she had gone through. For the first two days she had been sustained by a new and wholly delightful sensation, the consciousness of her own goodness; on the third day that support had suddenly given way. A woman"s coa.r.s.e word, the way a man had looked at her as she lifted her silk petticoats out of the mud, some bit of crude criticism such as Demos publishes at street corners in the expressive vernacular, had been sufficient to destroy all the bright illusions that gilded the gutters of Lambeth--reflections of a day that was not hers.
And yet, she had come into a new world with new ideas and new emotions; if not the best of all possible worlds, it was better than any which had once seemed probable, and she wanted to stay in it. She was dazzled by the splendour of religion. The curtain had risen on the great miracle-play of the soul; she, too, longed to dance in the masque of the virtues and the graces. Every fresh phase of life had presented itself to Audrey in spectacular magnificence; she could not help seeing things so, it was the way her mind worked. The candles burning on the high altar of St. Teresa"s were only footlights in the wrong place; and the veil that Mr. Flaxman Reed had lifted a little for her was the curtain going up before another stage. Meanwhile while she had to consider his possible criticism of her own acting. Sitting in the hard ascetic chair, she looked round the room and tried to understand a little of its owner"s life. Every detail in it was a challenge to her intelligence.
She perplexed herself with questions. Why didn"t Mr. Flaxman Reed have a proper carpet on the floor? Why didn"t he hang a curtain over that ugly green baize door? It led into the room where he held his cla.s.ses and entertained his poorer parishioners; that room was also his dining-room.
How could he eat his meals after all those dreadful people had been in it, poor things? Why only common deal book-cases, a varnished desk, and that little painted table underneath the big crucifix? Why these painfully uneasy chairs, and--yes--only one picture, and that of the most emaciated of Madonnas? Could not her old favourite Botticelli have supplied him with a lovelier type? Or there was Raphael. Sometimes, on a Sunday evening after service, she had come in here from the rich, warm, scented church, with the music of an august liturgy ringing in her ears, and the chill place had struck like death to all her senses. And this was the atmosphere in which his life was spent--this, and the gaunt streets and the terrible slums of Lambeth.
She was not left long alone, for Mr. Flaxman Reed never kept any one waiting if he could help it. As he seated himself opposite to her, the set lines of his face relaxed and his manner softened. Her eyes followed the outline of his face, which stood out white and sharp against the dark window-curtain. She noted the crossed legs, the hands folded on his knees, the weary pose of the whole wasted figure. It ought to have been an appeal to her pity. The poor man was suffering from many kinds of hunger, and from intense exhaustion. He had just dismissed a tiresome parishioner, and, vexed with himself for having kept Audrey waiting, had left his dinner in the next room untouched, and came all unnerved to this interview which he dreaded yet desired. He listened quietly to the story of her failure; it was not only what he had expected, but what he had wished.
"It"s no good my trying any more," she urged in the pleading voice that she could make so sweet. "I can"t do anything. The sight of those poor wretches" misery only makes me miserable too. I dream of it at night. I a.s.sure you it"s been the most awful three days I ever spent in my life."
"Has it?"
"Yes. I feel things so terribly, you know; and it"s not as if I could do anything--I simply can"t. What _must_ you think of me?"
"I think nothing. I knew that you would tell me this, and I am glad."
"Are you? Glad that I failed?"