"I don"t see why you should object to say "yes" or "no" to a charge which, if true, must destroy all brotherly and sisterly feeling between us."
"But you _are_ my brother! Ask me your own questions, and I will answer.
I will not answer that woman"s!"
She stood in front of him, by far the more proud and dignified of the two, and waited for him to begin.
"Did you bring that man with you here from the prison?"
"I brought Mr. Walcott here."
"And is he here now?"
"Yes."
"What more is there to be said? Wretched woman, it is well for you that your parents are beyond the reach of this disgrace!"
Whether he meant it or not, he pointed, as he spoke, to the infant in her arms.
Lettice heard a step outside. She went to the door, and spoke in a low voice to Mrs. Jenny. Then she came back again, and said,
"What do you mean, Sydney, by "this disgrace"?"
"Can you say one word to palliate what you have already admitted? Can you deny the facts which speak for themselves? Great Heaven! that such a shameful thing should fall upon us! The name of Campion has indeed been dragged through the mire of calumny, but never until now has so dark a stain been cast upon it!"
Theatrical in his words, Sydney was even more theatrical in his action.
He stood on the hearth-rug, raised his hands in horror, and bowed his head in grief and self-pity.
"You pointed at the child just now," said Lettice, steadily; "what do you mean by that?"
"Do not ask me what I mean. Is not its very existence an indelible disgrace?"
"Perhaps it is," she said, kissing the little face which was blinking and smiling at her. "But to whom?"
"To whom!" Sydney cried, with more of real indignation and anger in his voice. "To its miserable mother--to its unscrupulous and villainous father!"
Lettice"s keen ears caught the sound of light and hesitating footsteps in the pa.s.sage outside. She opened the door quickly, and drew in the unfortunate Milly.
Sydney started back, and leaned for support upon the mantelpiece behind him. His face turned white to the very lips.
"Milly," said the remorseless Lettice, "tell Mr. Campion who is the father of this child!"
The poor mother who had been looking at her mistress in mute appeal, turned her timid eyes on Sydney"s face, then sank upon the floor in an agony of unrestrained weeping.
Except for that sound of pa.s.sionate weeping, there was complete silence in the room for two or three minutes, whilst Sydney"s better and worse self strove together for the mastery.
"Milly!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed at last, in a hoa.r.s.e undertone, "I did not know!
Good G.o.d, I did not know."
Then, to his sister--"Leave us alone."
So Lettice went out, but before she went she saw him stride across the floor to Milly and bend above her as if to raise and perhaps to comfort her. He did not ask to see his sister again. In a short ten minutes, she saw him walking hastily across the Common to the station, and she noticed that his head was bent, and that the spring, the confidence of his usual gait and manner had deserted him. Milly locked herself with her baby in her room, and sobbed until she was quieted by sheer exhaustion.
But there was on her face next day a look of peace and quietude which Lettice had never seen before. She said not a word about her interview, and Lettice never knew what had pa.s.sed between her brother and the woman whom he had wronged. But she thought sometimes, in after years, that the extreme of self-abas.e.m.e.nt in man or woman may prove, to natures not radically bad or hopelessly weak, a turning-point from which to date their best and most persistent efforts.
CHAPTER x.x.xVII.
"COURAGE!"
The reawakening of Alan"s mind to old tastes and old pursuits, though fitful in the first instance, soon developed into a steady appet.i.te for work. Much of his former freshness and elasticity returned; ideas and forms of expression recurred to him without trouble. He had seized on a dramatic theme suggested in one of the books which Lettice had been reading, and a few days later admitted to her that he was at work on a poetic drama. She clapped her hands in almost childlike glee at the news, and Alan, without much need for pressing, read to her a whole scene which had pa.s.sed from the phase of thought into written words.
Lettice had already occupied her mornings in writing the story which she had promised to Mr. MacAlpine. Fortunately for her, she now found little difficulty in taking up the threads of the romance which she had begun at Florence. The change of feeling and circ.u.mstance which had taken place in her own heart she transferred, with due reservation and appropriate coloring, to the characters in her story, which thus became as real to her in the London fog as it had been under the fleckless Tuscan sky.
So long as Alan was out of health and listless, it was not easy for her to apply herself to this regular morning work. But now that he was fast recovering his spirit and energy, and was busy with work of his own, she could settle down to her writing with a quiet mind.
Alan had not accepted the hospitality of Lettice without concern or protest, and, of course, he had no idea of letting her be at the expense of finding food and house-rent for him.
"Why do you not bring me the weekly bills?" he said, with masculine bluntness, after he had been at Chiswick for nearly three weeks.
She looked at him with a pained expression, and did not answer.
"You don"t think that I can live on you in this cool way much longer?
You are vexed with me! Do not be vexed--do not think that I value what you have done for me according to a wretched standard of money. If I pay everything, instead of you, I shall be far more grateful, and more truly in your debt."
"But think of my feelings, too!" she said. "I have had my own way so far, because you could not help it. If you are going to be unkind and tyrannical as soon as you get well, I shall find it in my heart to be almost sorry. Do not let money considerations come in! You promised that you would not say anything of the kind before the end of the month."
"I promised something; but I don"t think I am breaking my promise in spirit. Look here; I have not been in retreat for six months without a certain benefit in the way of economy. Here"s a cheque for a hundred pounds. I want you to get it cashed, and to use it."
"I have plenty of money," Lettice said, patting impatiently with her foot on the floor. "I cannot take this; and until the month is out I will not talk about any kind of business whatsoever. There, sir!"
Alan did not want to annoy her, and let the subject drop for the time.
"You shall have your way in all things, except that one," he said; "but I will not mention it again until you give me leave."
The truth is that Lettice did not know what was to happen at the end of the month, or whenever her tenancy of Bute Lodge might be concluded. How was she to leave Alan, or to turn him out of doors, when the object of her receiving him should have been accomplished? Was it already fully accomplished? He had been saved from despair, and from the danger of a physical relapse; was he now independent of anything she could do for him? It gave her a pang to think of that possibility, but she would have to think of it and to act upon it very soon. She could not put off the evil day much beyond the end of November; before Christmas they must come to an understanding--nay, she must come to an understanding with her own heart; for did not everything depend on her firmness and resolution?
Not everything! Though she did not know it, Alan was thinking for her just what she could not think for herself. He could not fail to see that Lettice had staked her reputation to do as she had done for him. As his perception grew more keen, he saw with increasing clearness. A man just recovering from serious illness will accept sacrifices from his friends with little or no demur, which in full health he would not willingly permit. Alan could not have saved Lettice from the consequences of her own act, even if he had realized its significance from the first--which he did not. But now he knew that she was giving more as a woman than he, as a man, had ever thought of taking from her; and he also, with a somewhat heavy heart, perceived that a change in their relations to one another was drawing near.
Lettice was sitting in her little study one morning, turning over in her mind the question which so deeply agitated her, and trying to think that she was prepared for the only solution which appeared to be possible or acceptable. Alan and she were to go their separate ways: that was, she told herself, the one thing fixed and unalterable. They might meet again as friends, and give each other help and sympathy; but it was their irrevocable doom that they should live apart and alone. That which her heart had sanctioned hitherto, it would sanction no longer; the cause and the justification were gone, and so were the courage and the confidence.
Lettice had appropriated to her own use as a study a little room on the ground floor, opening upon the garden. In warm weather it was a particularly charming place, for the long windows then always stood open, and pleasant scents and sounds from the flower-beds and leafy trees stole in to cheer her solitude. In winter, it was a little more difficult to keep the rooms warm and cosy; but Lettice was one of the women who have the knack of making any place where they abide look home-like and inviting, and in this case her skill had not been spent in vain, even upon a room for the furniture of which she was not altogether responsible. Heavy tapestry curtains excluded the draught; a soft rug lay before the old-fashioned high bra.s.s fender, and a bright fire burned in the grate. Lettice"s writing-table and library chair half filled the room; but there was also a small table heaped high with books and papers, a large padded leather easy-chair, and a bookcase. The walls were distempered in a soft reddish hue, and such part of the floor as was not covered with a bordered tapestry carpet of divers tints had been stained dark brown. One of Lettice"s favorite possessions, a large autotype of the Sistine Madonna, hung on the wall fronting her writing-table, so that she could see it in the pauses of her work.
It was at the door of this room that Alan knocked one stormy December day. The month which Lettice had fixed as the period of silence about business affairs had pa.s.sed by; but Alan was so very far from strong when November ended that she had managed, by persuasion and insistence, to defer any new and definite arrangement for at least another fortnight. But he had gained much physical and mental strength during those two weeks, and he had felt more and more convinced from day to day that between himself and Lettice there must now be a complete understanding. He knew that she had taken the house until the end of December; after that date she would be homeless, like himself. What were they both to do? It was the question which he had come to put.
Lettice received him with a touch of surprise, almost of embarra.s.sment in her manner. She had never made him free of her study, for she felt it better that each should have a separate domain for separate work and a separate life. She had no wish to break down more barriers than circ.u.mstances demanded; and the fact that she had utterly outraged the laws of conventionality in the eyes of the world did not absolve her from the delicate reticence which she had always maintained in her personal relations with Alan. He saw the doubt in her face, and hastened to apologize for his intrusion. "But I could not work this morning," he said, "and I wanted to speak to you. Milly told me you were here, and----"