"From Lesley herself?"
Caspar bowed his head. He was conscious of a violent dislike to bringing Lesley"s name into the discussion. Mrs. Romaine went on rapidly.
"As to Lesley, of course I cannot say. I don"t know whether he failed or succeeded. Oliver very seldom failed with women when he tried. But, of course, he was going to marry Ethel; and that meant that if he _had_ succeeded Lesley had been thrown over. It is not like me to put things so baldly, is it? I see that I disgust you. But I do not know that I need apologize. You are man of the world enough to understand that at certain crises we are obliged to speak our minds, to face the truth boldly and see what it means. Is it not so?"
"It may be so, but I am not aware that the present crisis demands such plain speaking."
"Then you must be blind," said his hearer, with a burst of indignation, "blind--blind--_blind_! Or mad? is that it? What sort of crisis do you expect? What can be worse than the present state of things? Are not your life and her character at stake? Why do you not take your present opportunity and save her and yourself? Look the matter in the face and decide?"
"I would rather not discuss it," said Caspar. "The course you indicate is not one that could be taken by any honorable man. It is--it is--absurd." The last word was evidently the subst.i.tute for a much stronger one in his mind. "I see no use in talking about the matter. We are only giving ourselves useless pain."
There was a short silence. Mrs. Romaine drew her veil more tightly round her face, and seemed to deliberate. Caspar threw a longing glance--which she intercepted--towards the door.
"Men are such cowards," she said at last, in a low and bitter tone. "I have proved _that_ in every way: I ought to be prepared for cowardice--even from you. They want to slip out of every unpleasant position, and leave some woman to bear the brunt of it. You, for instance, want to go now, this minute, because I have said one or two things that pain you. You don"t care enough for what I think to make you wish to alter my opinion--to fight it out and conquer me; you only want to get away and leave me to "cool down," as you would call it. You are mistaken. I am not speaking from any momentary irritation: what I say to you to-day is the result of long thought, long consideration, long patience. It would be better for you to have the courage and the manliness to listen to me."
"You talk in a very extraordinary way, Rosalind,", said Caspar. "I do not understand it, and I fail to see its justice towards me. I have never refused to listen to you, have I? As for cowardice--it seemed to me that you were trying to persuade me to do a very cowardly thing just now; but perhaps I was mistaken. I will hear all that you have to say: if I was anxious to go, it was only that I might save you from tiring or hurting yourself."
"It matters so much whether I am tired or hurt, does it not?" she said, with the faintest possible flicker of a smile on her white lips. "That is what you all think of--whether one suffers--suffers physically. It is my soul that is hurt, my heart that is tired--but you don"t concern yourself with that sort of thing."
"I a.s.sure you that I am very sorry----," he began, and then he stopped short. She had made it very difficult for him to say anything so commonplace, and yet so true.
"If you are sorry," she said, in a softer tone, "and if you want to make me happier--_save yourself_."
"No," said Caspar, roughly--almost violently--"by Heaven, I won"t do that."
"You don"t wish to save yourself?"
"Not at that price--the price of my honor."
"Listen to me," she said, drawing nearer to him and speaking very softly. "I have made it my business during the last day or two--when I gathered that you would be let out on bail--to collect all the information that might be useful to you. You could get away to-morrow or next day by a vessel that leaves Southampton at the time I have marked on this paper. It is not an ordinary steamer--not a pa.s.senger-ship at all--and no one will know that you are on board. It would take you to Oporto. You would be safe enough in the interior--a friend of mine who went there once told me that there were charming palaces and half-ruined castles to let, where one could live as in paradise, amidst the loveliest gardens, full of fountains and birds and flowers."
Her voice took on a caressing tone, as if she were dreaming of perfect happiness. "How like a woman," thought Caspar to himself, "to think only of the material side of life?" Then he corrected himself: "Like some women: not like all, thank-G.o.d!"
"So you would condemn me to exile and loneliness as well as to dishonor?" he said. It was as much as he could do not to laugh outright at the chimerical idea.
"It is no exile to a cosmopolitan like yourself to live out of England,"
she answered, scornfully. "As to dishonor--what will you not have to suffer if you stay in England? Where is your reputation now? And as to loneliness--don"t you know--do you not see--that you need not go--alone?"
She put her left hand gently on his arm, and for a moment there was silence in the room. Her heart beat so loudly that she was afraid of his hearing it. But she need not have feared; his mind was far too much occupied with more important matters to be able to take cognizance of such a detail as the state of Mrs. Romaine"s pulse.
His first impulse was one of intense indignation and anger. His second was one of pity. These feelings alternated in him when at last he forced himself to speak. Which of the two predominated he hardly knew. Perhaps pity: because it drove him, almost as a matter of self-respect, to make a pretence of not knowing what she meant.
"Anything is exile to a man who leaves his home," he said sternly. "To a man who leaves his wife and daughter--do you understand? As for the dishonor of such a course, it seems as if you could not comprehend that: my feelings on the subject are evidently beyond your ken. But you can understand this--first, that I should go nowhere into no exile, into no new home, without my wife; and, secondly, that _she_, at least, trusts me--she knows that I have not your brother"s blood upon my hands."
Rosalind"s fingers had slipped from his arm when he began to speak: she knew that if she had not removed them then they would have been shaken off. He could see them amongst the folds of black lace at her breast--clutching, tearing, as if she had not room to breathe.
"Your wife!" she said, with a gasp. "I did not know.... She has been beforehand with me, then! And it is she--she--that you will take--to Spain?"
"There is no question of Spain. I mean to stay here in England and fight the matter out. My wife would be the first person to tell me so. I cannot imagine her speaking to me again if I were coward enough to run away."
"She would not do for you what I have done!" cried the unhappy woman, now, as it seemed, beside herself. "If she believes you innocent, so much the easier for her! But I--I--believe you guilty--yes, Caspar Brooke, I believe that you killed my brother--and I do not care! I loved him, yes; but I love you--_you_--a thousand times more!"
"You do not know what you are saying. You are mad. Be silent, Rosalind,"
said Caspar Brooke, in a deep tone of anger. But she raved on.
"Have I not been silent for years? And who is as faithful to you as I have been? It is easy to love a man who is innocent; but not a man who is guilty! Guilty or not--I do not care. It is you that I care for--and you may have as many sins as you please upon your soul--but they are nothing to me. I am past anything now but speaking the truth. Have you no pity for a woman to whom you are dearer than her own soul?"
She would have thrown herself at his feet, if he had not prevented her.
He was touched a little by her suffering, but he was also immeasurably angered and disgusted. An exhibition of uncontrolled feeling was not the way to charm him. His one desire now became the desire to escape.
"I should have no pity," he said, gravely, "for my own selfishness and cowardice, if I took advantage of this moment of weakness on your part.
It _is_ weakness, I hope--I will not call it by any other name. You will recover from it when the stress of this painful time is over, and you will be glad to forget it as I shall do. Believe me, I will not think of it again. It shall be in my mind as though you had not said it; and, though it will be impossible for us to continue on our former terms of friendship, I shall always wish for your welfare, and hope that time will bring you happiness and peace."
She made no answer. She lay where he had placed her, her head buried amongst the cushions, crushed to the very earth. She would not look at him, would not make semblance to have heard. And he, without hesitation, went deliberately to the door and let himself out. He gained the street without being intercepted, and drew a long breath of relief when he felt the soft night air playing on his heated brow. The moralist would have said that he came off victor; but he had a sense, as he went out along the pavement, of being only a defeated and degraded man. There was not even the excitement of gratified vanity, for an offered love which did not include perfect trust in his honor was an insult in itself. And Caspar Brooke"s integrity of soul was dear to him.
It was perhaps impossible for him--a mere man--to estimate the extent of suffering to which his scorn had subjected the woman that he left behind. Rosalind remained as he had seen her, crouching on the ground, with her head on the sofa cushions, for full two hours or more. When she rose she went to her own room and lay upon her bed, refusing for many hours either to eat or to speak. She did not sleep: she lay broad awake all night, recalling every tone of Caspar"s voice, and every pa.s.sing expression of his face. She was bitterly humiliated and ashamed. But she was not ashamed in the sense of shame for wrong-doing: she was only ashamed because he had rebuffed her. She was sick with mortification.
She had offered him everything in her power--peace, safety, love: she had offered him _herself_ even, and been rejected with scorn. Nothing crushes a woman like this humiliation. And in some women"s natures such an experience will produce dire results; for loss of self-respect is resented as the worst injury that man can inflict, and is followed by deadly hatred to the man who has inflicted it. It may be argued by the more logical male that the woman has brought it all upon herself; but no affronted, humiliated, shame-stricken woman will ever allow this to be the fact. The sacrifice she conceives to have been all her own; but the pain has come from _him_.
This was the way in which Rosalind looked at the matter. And mistaken as she was in her view of the moralities and proprieties of the situation, she suffered an amount of pain which may well arouse in us more pity than Caspar Brooke felt for her. The burning, stinging sense of shame seemed to make her whole soul an open wound. It was intolerable. The only way out of it, she said to herself at first, is to die. There was an old song that rang in her ears continually, as if somebody were repeating it over and over again. She could not remember it all--only a line here and there. "When lovely woman stoops to folly," it began, what art can wash her tears and stains and shame away? And the answer was what Rosalind herself had already given: the only way "to rouse his pity" was "to die!" She almost laughed at herself for repeating the well-worn, hackneyed, century-old ditty. People did not die now-a-days, either of broken hearts or of chloral, when their lovers deserted them.
And Caspar Brooke had never been her lover. No, he had only given her pain; and she wished that she could make him suffer, too. "Revenge" was too high-flown a word; but if she could see him heartbroken, ruined, disgraced, she would be--not satisfied, but she would feel her pain allayed.
Caspar Brooke walked for an hour before he was calm enough to remember that he ought to go home. When this idea once occurred to him, he felt a pang of shame for his own forgetfulness. What would Alice think of him? And this was the first day that she had been with him in his house for so many years. He must go home and make his apologies. Not that she would expect very much attention from him. Had she not said that she was only trying to do her duty? Probably she disliked him still.
He let himself in with his latch-key, and walked straight into the study. A shaded lamp had been lighted, and but faintly illuminated the corners of the room. But there was light enough for him to see that Lady Alice was sitting in his chair. He came up to the table, and looked at her without speaking. There was a strange tumult of feeling in his heart. He wished that he could tell her how gratified he was by her trust in him, how much he prized the very things that had once irritated him against her--her reserve, her fine perception, her excellent fastidiousness of taste, even that little air of coldness that became her so well. To come into her presence was like entering a fragrant English garden, after stifling for an hour in a conservatory where the air was heavy with the perfume of stephanotis.
She rose, as he continued silent, and stood on the rug, almost face to face with him. She did not find it easy to speak, and there was something in his air which frightened her a little. She made a trivial remark at last, but with great difficulty.
"You have been away a long time," she said.
She was not prepared for the answer. He put out his hand and drew her close to him. "You were away a great deal longer," he said, looking down at her fair, serious face. She could not reply. "Twelve years, is it not?" he went on. "That"s a long time out of one"s life, Alice. I feel myself an old man now."
"No, no, Caspar!" she said, tremulously.
"What was it all about, Alice? You know I never really understood it.
Can"t you make me understand? Was it that I was simply unbearable? too disagreeable to be put up with any longer."
"No, it was not that. I will speak the truth now, Caspar. I was jealous--I thought you cared for Rosalind Romaine."
"But you know now--surely--that that was not true?"
"Could you swear it?" she asked, suddenly and sharply, with a quick look into his face.
For a moment he was annoyed. Then his brow cleared, and he answered, very gravely--
"I can and will, if you like. But I thought--having trusted me so far--that you could trust me without an oath. Alice, I never loved any woman but one: and that one was yourself. Have you been as true to me as I have been to you?"
"I don"t think I ever knew that I loved you until now," said Alice, laying her head with a deep sigh upon her husband"s breast.