"It was no question of politics at all!" I exclaimed, and--
"Oh!" she exclaimed, swinging round to me with all her indifference gone.
"No," I went on, but reluctantly, for I was no longer sure that I ought to tell her, and quibbled accordingly. "There was some one in Keswick for whom I had news which would not wait."
"News of your escape?" she interposed, with a certain constraint in her voice.
"Partly that," I replied, and continued, "and from whom I most heartily desired news."
She sat for a moment with her face averted and very still.
"And what is she like?" she asked of a sudden.
The question startled me so that I jumped and stared at her open-mouthed. But by the time I had fashioned an answer, she had no longer any need for it For "No! No!" she exclaimed. "I have no wish to hear;" and she fell unaccountably to talking of Jervas Rookley, at first in something of a flurry, and afterwards in a tone as though she found great comfort in the thought of him. "He is not so black as he is painted," was the burden of her speech, and she played many variations on the tune.
Now, I had in my pocket a certain letter from Lord Derwent.w.a.ter, which was a clear disproof of her words, and, to speak the truth, her manner stung me. For whatever part of my misfortunes I did not owe to myself, that I owed to Mr. Jervas Rookley.
"And I never could bring myself to believe that story of the wad-mines," she said. "Never! Ah, poor man! What will he be doing now?
It is a thought which often troubles me, Mr. Clavering. Doubtless he is somewhere tossed upon the sea. It is a very n.o.ble life, a sailor"s.
There is no n.o.bler, is there?" and she asked the question as if she had no doubt whatever but that I should agree with her.
"I know nothing of that," I replied in some heat, "but as for the wad-mines I know that story to be true, for I have seen the shaft."
She shook her head at me with an air of disappointment. It seemed she thought I was slandering the man after slipping into his shoes. I whipped the letter out of my pocket and thrust it before her.
"There, Madam, there!" I exclaimed. "The thought of Mr. Rookley need no longer trouble you. I am glad, indeed, to have the opportunity of disposing of your trouble. It will be the one moment"s satisfaction the man has given me. He is nowhere tossed upon the sea, in that n.o.blest of all lives, as you will be able to perceive for yourself, if you will glance through this letter, but, on the contrary, sitting quietly in an armchair in whatever room at Blackladies pleases him best."
"I am not so short of sight," she observed sedately, "that I need the paper to be rubbed against my nose."
She took it and read it through once and a second time. I told her the story of my dealings with Mr. Rookley, from the moment of his coming to me at the Jesuit College in Paris, to the morning when I fled from Blackladies, and so much of his dealings with me as I was familiar with. It was, in fact, much the same story that I had told to my Lord and Lady Derwent.w.a.ter, and contained little mention of Mr. Herbert, except the fact that he was painting my portrait, and no mention whatsoever of Mr. Herbert"s wife. For I found that the whole account of my proceedings since I had come to England, fell very naturally into two halves, each of which to all seeming was in itself complete.
She heard me out to the end, and then in low, penitent voice, for which it seemed to me there was no occasion--
"I knew nothing of this," she said, "or I would never so much as have uttered Mr. Rookley"s name. I could not know. You will bear me out in this; I could not know." And she turned to me with the sweetest appeal in her grey eyes and a hand timidly outstretched.
"Indeed," said I, earnestly, "I will. You could not know, and I can well believe Mr. Jervas Rookley"s conduct was very different to you." With that I took her hand, and again took it gingerly by the finger-tips. Thereupon she s.n.a.t.c.hed it away, and got quickly to her feet.
"And for whom----" she began, and stopped, while she very deliberately fastened a b.u.t.ton of her glove which was already b.u.t.toned.
"For whom--what?" said I.
"It is no matter," she said carelessly, and then, "For whom was the picture intended?" and as though she was half-ashamed of the question, she ran lightly down the hillside without waiting for an answer.
"For no one," I cried out after her. "It was intended to hang in the great hall of Blackladies." But she descended into the house, and I--I pa.s.sed through the orchard and up the hillside behind it, and over the crest of the fell, until ridge upon ridge opened out beneath the overarching sky, and the valleys between them became so many furrows drawn by a giant"s plough. And coming into that great s.p.a.ce and solitude where no tree waved, no living thing moved, no human sound was heard, I dropped upon the ground, pressing a throbbing face down among the cool bracken, and twining my fingers about the roots of ferns. It was the blackest hour that had ever till then befallen me; mercifully I could not know that it was but a foretaste of others yet blacker which were to follow. Something very new and strange was stirring within me; I loved her. The truth was out that afternoon. I think it was her questioning which taught it me. For it brought Mrs.
Herbert into my thoughts, and so I learned this truth by the bitterest of all comparisons. I saw the two faces side by side, and then the one vanished and the other remained. Here, I thought, was my life just beginning to take some soul of meaning; here was its usual drab a-flush with that rosy light, as of all the sunrises and all the sunsets which had ever brightened across the world--and I must give it up, and through my own fault. There was the hardest part of the business--through my own fault! The knowledge stung and ached at my heart intolerably. There was nothing heroical in the reparation which I purposed; here was no laying down of one"s life at the feet of one"s mistress, with a blithe heart and even a grat.i.tude for the occasion, such as I had read of in Mr. Curwen"s romances--and how easy that seemed to me at this moment!--it was the mere necessary payment for a sordid act of shame.
It was drawing towards night when I rose to my feet and came down the mountain-side to Applegarth, and, as the outcome of my torturing reflections, one conviction, fixed very clearly in my mind before, had gained an added impulsion. I must needs hasten on this reparation. It was not, I am certain, the fear that delay in the fulfilment would weaken my purpose, which any longer spurred me; but of those two faces which had made my comparison: one, as I say, had vanished from my thoughts, the other now occupied them altogether, and it seemed to me that if by any chance I missed the opportunity of atonement, I should be doing the owner of that face an irreparable wrong.
Miss Dorothy Curwen came late from her room to supper, and the moment she entered the parlour where Mr. Curwen and I were waiting, it appeared that something had gone amiss with her, and that we were in consequence to suffer. Her face was pale and tired, her eyes hostile, and asperity was figured in the tight curve of her lips. From the crown of her head to the toe-tips, she was panoplied in aggression, so that the very ribands seemed to bristle on her dress.
It was plain, too, that she did but wait her opportunity. Mr. Curwen provided it by a question as to her looks, and a suggestion that her health was disordered.
"No wonder," says she, and "Not a doubt of it." She s.n.a.t.c.hed the occasion with both hands as it were, and said, I think, more than she intended. "I am much troubled by an owl that keeps me from my proper sleep."
"An owl?" asked Mr. Curwen, with an innocent sympathy.
"An owl?" I asked in a sudden heat.
Her eyes met mine, very cold and blank.
"O-w-l," she answered, spelling the word deliberately.
I could not think what had caused this sudden change in her.
"But, my dear," said Mr. Curwen in perplexity, "are you certain you have made no mistake?"
"Oh no, sir, there will be no mistake," says I, indignantly, or ever she could open her lips. But, indeed, I do not know whether in any case she would have opened them or not. For her face was like a mask.
"But I did not know there was an owl at Applegarth," says he.
"He is a new-comer," says I; "but you may take my word for it, there is an owl at Applegarth--a tedious, solemn owl."
Miss Dorothy nodded her head quietly at each epithet, and her action much increased my anger.
"Then you have heard it, Mr. Clavering," says Mr. Curwen; and "Indeed I have," I cried in a greater heat than ever, for I noticed a certain contentment begin to steal over the girl"s face at each fresh evidence of my rage. "Indeed I have--under the eaves at my bedroom window."
"But, my dear Mr. Clavering," expostulated Mr. Curwen, "what sort of an owl is it?"
"A very uncommon owl," said I.
"Oh dear no, not at all," said Miss Curwen, stonily, with a lift of her eyebrows.
"Well, we will have him out to-morrow," says the father.
"No, sir, to-night," says I, "this very night"
Dorothy gave a start and looked at me with a trace of anxiety.
"Yes," I repeated significantly, wagging my head in a fury, "to-night--no later."
"Oh, but I like owls," cried she of a sudden. "That can hardly be," I insisted, looking hard at her, "since they keep you awake o" nights."
At that she coloured and dropped her eyes from my face.
"Perhaps I exaggerated," she said weakly, and sat smoothing the table-cloth on each side of her with her fingers. She glanced up at me. I was still looking at her. She glanced from me to her father. He was waiting for her answer, utterly at a loss.
"But I like owls," she said again in a queer little, high-pitched, plaintive voice; and somehow I began to laugh, and in a moment she was laughing too. "You make too much of the trouble," said she.
"We will have him out to-morrow," said Mr. Curwen; and again she laughed, but with something of mischief, so that though for that night there the matter dropped, I suspected she had devised some plan by which I was to suffer a penalty for her present discomfiture. And that suspicion I found to be true no later than the next morning.