How dull and cold her words seemed! Yet what else was there to say in face of the tragedy?
"I"m deeply grateful to her and to Heaven; but I--I have nothing left.
It seems to me that the years have taken everything."
Mrs. Mumple put her hand down to his worn hand and caressed it.
"You"ll be better by-and-by, dear," she said.
"I"m deadened," he persisted sadly.
"Don"t feel like that," Sibylla implored. "Your life will come back to you in the sunshine and the country air. We shan"t let you feel like that. Why, it"s full of life here. There"s a wedding to-morrow, Mr.
Mumple! And another engaged couple--my brother and Miss Raymore! And you"ll like my husband, and I"ll bring my baby boy to see you."
"Such a pretty little dear," exclaimed Mumples.
"You must take an interest in us," smiled Sibylla; "and then you"ll be pleased when we are--won"t he, Mumples? Because you"re to be one of us, just as your wife is."
Mrs. Mumple suddenly turned away and, murmuring something about getting tea, escaped from the room. The old man fixed his eyes on Sibylla"s face in a long inquiring gaze.
"You say that to me, madame? I don"t deserve to have that said to me.
You"re a beautiful young lady, and very kind, I know, and good, I"m sure. Your husband is lucky, and so is your son. But I"ve been a convict for seventeen years, and it"s only by a chance I"m not a murderer. I"m not fit to come near you nor yours--no, not near your little boy."
Sibylla came to him and took his work-worn hand. He saw that she meant to kiss it and held it back.
"A convict and in heart a murderer, madame," he said, his lips trembling a little and his calm eyes very sad. "I"m not fit for you to touch."
"I"ll tell you something," said Sibylla. "You call me kind and good--you say my husband and my boy are lucky, and you tell me you"re not fit for me to touch--for me to touch! I tried to run away from my husband, and I was ready to leave my little boy to his death."
A great wonder came into the old man"s eyes; he asked no question, but he ceased to resist her persuading grasp. She raised his hand to her lips and kissed it.
"I thought my heart was dead, as you think yours is. But light and life have come back into mine, and you mustn"t shut yours against them. You must try to be happy, if it"s only for dear old Mumples" sake. She"s thought of nothing but making you happy all these years." She laid her hand on his shoulder. "And love us too. For my husband"s and my boy"s sake keep the secret I"ve told you, but remember it when you feel despairing. It wasn"t easy for me to speak of it, but I thought it would give you hope; and it will prevent you feeling the sort of thing you felt about me, and I hope about any of us."
He turned his eyes to hers.
"You"re telling me the truth, I know, madame," he said slowly. "It"s a very strange world. I"ll try not to despair."
"No, no, don"t despair; above all, don"t despair," whispered Sibylla.
"I have a remnant of my days, and I have the love of my wife. G.o.d has left me something out of the wreck that I"ve made."
Sibylla stooped and kissed him on the brow. He caught her hands and looked again in her eyes for a long time.
"It is true? And your eyes are like the eyes of an angel."
He relaxed his hold on her, and sank back in his chair with a sigh.
"I"m tiring you," said Sibylla. "I"ll go now, and leave you alone with Mumples. I"ll call her back here. No, I can"t stay to tea--you"ve made me think of too much. But I"ll come to-morrow and bring my little boy."
"If what you say is true, you must pray for yourself sometimes? Pray for me too, madame."
"Yes, I"ll pray for you the prayer I love best: "Those things which for our unworthiness we dare not and for our blindness we cannot ask----" I will pray for those, for you and for me. And because you"re an old man and have suffered, you shall give me your blessing before I go."
She knelt to receive his trembling benediction, then rose with a glad smile on her face. She saw Mumples standing now on the threshold of the room, and kissed her hand to her.
"The old is done, and the new is begun," she said to the old man as she pressed his hand in farewell.
She walked slowly up the hill in the peaceful dusk. Lights burned in the church: the village choir was laboriously practising an ambitious effort for the next day. There were lights in the windows over the post-office; one was open to the mild evening air, and Jeremy"s voice in a love-ballad competed enviously with the choir"s more pious strains, till it was drowned in a merry protest of youthful shouts. When she reached home, there was a light in the nursery, and the nurse was singing softly to the little boy. Her agitation was pa.s.sed, her emotion was gentle now, and her face peacefully radiant. Her grievances seemed small beside the old man"s suffering, her woes nothing beside his punishment, her return to life and light so much easier than his. He had but a remnant of life left--the rest had been demanded of him in ransom for his deed, and the ransom had been exacted to the uttermost farthing. He was poor, though not dest.i.tute; but she was rich. Her life lay still before her with all its meaning and its possibilities--its work and its struggles, its successes and its failures, the winning of more victories, the effort and the resolve not to lose what had been so hardly won. Soberly she looked forward to it, a.s.sessing and measuring her strength and weakness and the strength and weakness of those with whom her life was cast. She had no more of the blind and reckless confidence of her first essay; her eyes were open. Her knowledge did not forbid her soul reaching out to the joy that was to come, but it whispered that the joy was not all, and that the joy must be fairly won. Yet she welcomed the joy with the innate ardour of her mind, exultant that now she might take it, that now it could prove no delusion because she had learnt wherein lay the truth of it. The clue was in her fingers. The path might be rough sometimes, uphill sometimes, not all in pleasant valleys and soft beguiling scenes; there would be arid tracts, perhaps, and bleak uplands. Such was the Way of Life: she recognised it now. The clue was in her hand, and though she might weary and stumble, she would not be utterly lost or belated.
CHAPTER XXIX
WITH OPEN EYES
Sibylla had allotted to Christine a small sitting-room on the first floor of the house to be her private resort during her visit; they neither of them liked a drawing-room existence all day long. Here Christine sat waiting John Fanshaw"s arrival. She had taken much thought wherewithal she should be clothed, but that was rather the instinct which a.s.serted itself in her on any occasion of moment than a token of confidence in the weapon of becoming apparel. A fair appearance was never to be wholly neglected by the wise, but she did not rely on it now. The most that any charming could do would be to extort a pa.s.sing admiration, which in its turn might secure a transient forgiveness; but a reaction of feeling would surely wait on it. She did not want to be forgiven in that way. In truth she hardly wanted forgiveness at all; at any rate she would greatly dislike the process. She had been put in the corner, as she said. The position was not pleasant; but being called out again with the admonitions suitable to the moment was scarcely a more agreeable situation. By parting her from him, first in spirit, then in daily life, John had hardened her heart towards him. He had made her dwell more and more not on her sin, but on his right to inflict a penalty. More and more she had remembered what Caylesham had said, and had asked if he who benefited by the act--of his own will benefited by it--had any t.i.tle to despise the hand which was guilty of it. John"s distress, his doubts, struggles, and forlornness, had pleaded against this judgment of him while she was with him. The idea of them had grown faint with absence; John had left himself to be dealt with by reason then, and reason saw only what he had done; the eye could no longer trace the sorrow and the struggle which had gone with his deed.
Her mind was on Caylesham too. She had just read a letter from Anna Selford. It was full of Anna and her frocks. (Much advice was needed--when was Mrs. Fanshaw coming back to town?) It had a good deal to say of Blake and his handsome presents; and it touched on Caylesham with a rather acrimonious note. He had been to see them, and had not made himself very agreeable; really Anna did not see that there was anything to criticise, nor, above all, that Lord Caylesham had any call to set up as a critic if there were. Christine smiled over the pa.s.sage, picturing so well the veiled irony and the intangible banter which Caylesham would mingle with his congratulations and infuse into his praises. Anna would not shrink nor retreat, but she would be angry and rather helpless before the sting of these slender darts. Memories stamped on her very soul stood out in salient letters, and the face of Caylesham seemed to hang in the air before her eyes. To remember loving is not to love, but it may make all other love seem a second-rate thing.
She loved Caylesham no longer, but she was without power to love anyone as she had loved him. Others had his vices, others his virtues such as they were. The blend in him had been for her the thing her soul asked.
Time could not wither the remembrance, though it had killed the feeling itself. Not John"s displeasure was the greatest price she had paid; not John"s forgiveness could undo or blot out the past. John"s friendship and comradeship were the best thing the world had to offer her now--and she wanted them; but she wanted them not as the best, but because there was nothing better.
She had no thought of blame for Caylesham, nor of bitterness against him. Here her fairness of mind came in--her true judgment of herself.
All along she had known what he was and what he gave, as well as what she was and gave. He had given all he had ever professed to give. (She was not thinking of words or phrases, but of the essence of the attachment, well known to both.) If it had not been all she sought, still she had accepted it as enough--as enough to make her happy, enough return for all she had to offer. She would not repudiate the bargain now. Frank had been straight and fair with her, and she would cast no stone at him. Only it was just very unlucky that matters should fall out in the way they had, and that she should be the sort of person she was--a bad sinner, because she could not minimise nor forget--a bad penitent, because she could not feel remorse that the fault had been committed, nor humbly seek forgiveness for it. It had abided with her always--now as a pleasure, now as a threatening danger, as both together sometimes. Even at this moment it was at once the cause of all her sorrow and her greatest solace in the world.
Yet in the days between the end of her love for Caylesham and the discovery which had been made by John there had been another happiness--when she was on good terms with her old friend John, when things went well with them, when he admired her--yes, when he treated her as something precious, clever, and brilliant. Then she had rejoiced in his pride in her, and given of the best she had to preserve and to strengthen it. Now, in resentment against John, she sought to deny this.
But in what mood would John come? The maintenance of her denial depended largely on that.
Suddenly she heard the sound of wheels stopping before the gate of the house. She sat erect and listened. The hall-door opened. She waited till she heard it close again, then sprang up, cast a glance at a looking-gla.s.s over the mantelpiece, then turned and faced the door. Her lips were a little parted; she stood very still. Expectation mingled with defiance in her bearing. A few minutes pa.s.sed before there was a knock at the door. She cleared her throat to cry:
"Come in!"
John entered and closed the door carefully behind him; but he did not advance towards her at once. He stood where he was, with a curious deprecatory smile on his face. She thought he looked rather old and worn, and he was shabbily dressed, as his habit was when he had to look after his own wardrobe without advice and criticism. He carried the sense of forlornness, as he had when he sat with Caylesham"s cheque before him, and the air of being ashamed too. But his manner gave now no hint of anger. Christine"s heart went out to him in a quick impulse of sympathy; but she crushed the feeling down, and would give no outward sign of it. She waited in stillness and silence. It was for him to speak, for him to set the note of their interview, and of more than their interview--of their future life, and of how they were to be to one another henceforward.
"Here I am, Christine. Mrs. Grantley told me I should find you in this room; and here I am."
She nodded her head coolly, but gave him no other welcome. He came two or three steps towards her, holding out his hands in front of him in an awkward way, and with that ashamed pleading smile still on his lips.
"I can"t get on without my old girl," he said.
In a flash of her quick intuition she knew his mind. The one sentence revealed anything which his manner had left doubtful. He was doing what he thought wrong, and doing it because he could not help it. He was abandoning a great and just grievance, and thereby seemed to be sacrificing the claims of morality, condoning what deserved no forgiveness, impairing his own self-respect. His position, with all its obvious weakness, had not become untenable in theory, and his reason, hard-bound in preconceptions, was not convinced. He came under the stress of feeling, because his life had become intolerable, because, as he said in one of his phrases of rough affection, he could not get on without his old girl. The need he had of her conquered the grievance that he had against her, and brought him back to her. He came with no reproaches, no parade of forgiveness, with neither references to the past nor terms for the future.
It was a triumph for Christine, and of the kind she prized and understood best--a woman"s triumph. It had not been expected; it was none too well deserved. A colour came on her cheeks, and she breathed rather quickly as she realised the completeness of it. For a moment she was minded to use it to the full, and, since she was no longer the criminal, to play the tyrant in her turn. But the very perfection of the victory forbade. It inspired in her a feeling which reproaches would have been powerless to raise--a great pity for him, a new and more genuine condemnation of herself. Had she been so much as that to him, and yet had used him so ill?
"I"ve been lonely too, John," she said. "Come and kiss me, my dear."
He came to her diffidently, and hardly touched her cheek when he kissed her.
"That doesn"t feel a bit like you, John," she said, with a nervous laugh, as she made him sit by her on the sofa. "Now tell me all about everything! I know that"s what you want to do."