"No, dearest, it is most natural. I have n.o.body to love, to trust, but you. Tell me that you feel as I do, that you want to be mine--mine wholly, and then I shall fight with a better heart, and be as brave as you have always been."
"Be brave, then," she said with a shadowy smile. "Yes, Alan, if it is any help to you to know it, I shall be glad when we need never part."
"I sometimes wonder," he murmured, "whether that day will ever come!"
"Oh, yes, it will come," she answered gently. "I think that after our long days of darkness there is sunshine for us--somewhere--by and by."
And then the music began, and as the two listened to the mighty harmonies, their hands met and clasped each other under cover of the book which Lettice held, and their hearts seemed to beat in unison as the joyous choral music pealed out across the hall--
"Freude, schoner Gotterfunken, Tochter aus Elysium, Wir betreten feuertrunken, Himmlische, dein Heiligthum, Deine Zauber binden wieder, Was die Mode streng getheilt; Alle Menschen werden Bruder, Wo dein sanfter Flugel weilt."
"I feel," said Alan, as they lingered for a moment in the dimness of the gallery when the symphony was over, and the crowd was slowly filing out into Regent Street and Piccadilly, "I feel as if that hymn of joy were the prelude to some new and happier life."
And Lettice smiled in answer, but a little sadly, for she saw no happier life before them but one, which must be reached through tortuous courses of perplexity and pain.
The dream of joy had culminated in that brief, impulsive, unconscious transmigration of soul and soul; but with the cessation of the music it dissolved again. The realities of their condition began to crowd upon them as they left the hall. But the disillusion came gradually. They still knew and felt that they were supremely happy; and as they waited for the cab, into which Alan insisted on putting her, she looked at him with a bright and grateful smile.
"I am so glad I saw you. It has been perfect," she said.
He had made her take his arm--more for the sake of closer contact than for any necessity of the crowd--and he pressed it as she spoke.
"It is not quite over yet," he said. "Let me take you home."
"Thank you, no. Not to-day, Alan. See, there is an empty hansom."
He did not gainsay her, but helped her carefully into the cab, and, when she was seated, leaned forward to clasp her hand and speak a parting word. But it was not yet spoken when, with a sharp cry, Lettice started and cast herself in front of him, as though to protect him from a danger which he could not see.
In the confused press of men and women, horses and carriages, which filled the street at this hour from side to side, she had suddenly caught sight of a never-forgotten face--a hungry face, full of malice, full of a wicked exultation, keen for revenge.
Cora Walcott, crossing the road, and halting for a moment at the central landing-place, was gazing at the people as they poured out of St. James"
Hall. As Alan helped Lettice into the hansom and bent forward to speak to her, she recognized him at once.
Without a pause she plunged madly into the labyrinth of moving carriages and cabs; and it was then that Lettice saw her, less than three yards away, and apparently in the act of hurling a missile from her uplifted hand.
It was all the work of an instant. The woman shrieked with impotent rage; the drivers shouted and stormed at her; men and women, seeing her danger, cried out in their excitement; and, just as she came within reach of her husband"s cab, she was struck by the shaft of a pa.s.sing brougham, and fell beneath the horse"s hoofs.
It was Lettice"s hands that raised the insensible body from the mire. It was Alan who lifted her into an empty cab, and took her to the nearest hospital--whence she never emerged again until her last narrow home had been made ready to receive her.
Cora did not regain consciousness before she died. There was no death-bed confession, no clearing of her husband"s name from the dishonor which she had brought upon it, no reawakening of any kind. Alan would have to go through the world unabsolved by any justification that she was capable of giving. But with Lettice at his side, he was strong enough, brave enough, to hear Society"s verdict on his character with a smile, and to confront the world steadily, knowing what a coward thing its censure not unfrequently is; and how conscious courage and purity can cause it to slink, away abashed.
On a certain evening, early in the session of 1885, some half-dozen men were gathered together in a quiet angle of the members" smoking-room at the Oligarchy Club.
During the past day or two there had been unwonted jubilation in every corner of the Oligarchy, and with reason, as the Oligarchs naturally thought; for Mr. Gladstone"s second Administration had suddenly come to an end. It had puzzled many good Conservatives to understand how that Administration, burdened by an acc.u.mulation of blunders and disasters, was able to endure so long; but at any rate the hour of doom had struck at last, and jubilation was natural enough amongst those who were likely, or thought they were likely, to profit by the change.
Sir John Pynsent and his friends had been discussing with much animation the probable distribution of the patronage which the see-saw of party government had now placed in the hands of the Conservative leader. Sir John, whose opinion on this subject was specially valued by his political a.s.sociates, had already nominated the Cabinet and filled up most of the subordinate offices; and he had not omitted to bestow a place of honor and emolument upon his ambitious relative, Sydney Campion.
The good-natured baronet was due that evening at the house of Lord Montagu Plumley, and he hurried away to keep his appointment. When he had gone the conversation became less general and more unrestrained, and there were even a few notes of scepticism in regard to some of Sir John"s nominations.
"Plumley is safe enough," said Mr. Charles Milton. "He has worked hard to bring about this result, and it would be impossible for the new Premier to pa.s.s him over. But it is quite another matter when you come to talk about Plumley"s friends, or his friends" friends. I for one shall be very much surprised if Campion gets the solicitorship."
"He"s not half a bad sort," said Tom Willoughby, "and his name is being put forward in the papers as though some people thought he had a very good chance."
"Ah, yes, we know how that kind of thing is worked. The point most in his favor is that there are not half-a-dozen men in Parliament good enough for the post."
"What is the objection to him?"
"I don"t say there is any objection. He is not a man who makes many friends: and I fancy some of his best cases have been won more by luck than by judgment. Then he has made one or two decidedly big mistakes. He will never be quite forgiven for taking up that prosecution of Walcott for a purely personal object. I know the late Attorney was much put out when he found how he had been utilized in that affair."
"Pynsent seems to think him pretty sure of the offer."
"Just so; and if anyone can help him to it, Pynsent is the man. That marriage was the best thing Campion ever did for himself, in more ways than one. He wants holding in and keeping straight; and his wife has him well in hand, as everybody can see."
"They seem a very happy couple."
"He is devoted to her, that is plain enough; and I never thought he had it in him to care for anybody but himself. I met them last Easter at Dalton"s place. They seemed to hit off extremely well."
"Oh, she has improved him; there is no doubt about that. She is a very charming woman. What on earth does Dalton do with himself at Angleford?"
"He has become an orchard man on a grand scale," said Willoughby. "Three years ago he planted nearly a hundred acres with the best young stocks he could find, and he says he has every apple in the _Pomona_ worth eating or cooking."
"He has got over that affair with Campion"s sister, I suppose?"
"I don"t know that he has. Brooke Dalton"s one of the finest fellows in existence: there"s a heart in him somewhere, and he does not easily forget. I came upon him and Campion one day in the garden, and though they knew I was close to them they went on talking about her and her husband. "You were always too hard on her, Sydney," Brooke was saying, "and now you have admitted as much." "I don"t wish to be hard on _her_, but I can"t bear that man," Campion said--meaning Walcott, of course.
"Well," Dalton said," I am perfectly sure that she would not have stuck to him through thick and thin, so bravely and so purely, unless she had been convinced of his innocence. As I believe in her, I am bound to believe in him. Don"t you think so?" he said, turning to me. "I hope every one who knows her will show her the respect and reverence that she deserves. Now that they have come back to England, Edith is going to call on her at once." Edith is his sister, you know: and she tells my mother that she called immediately."
"How did Campion take it?"
"Very well, indeed. He said, "You were always a good fellow, Brooke, and I may have been mistaken." New thing to hear Campion owning up, isn"t it?"
"So the Walcotts have come back?" said Milton, with some excitement. "By Jove, I shall leave my card to-morrow. Of course, he was innocent. I knew all about it, for I defended him at the Old Bailey.--No wonder Campion is uncomfortable about it."
The idea seemed to divert Milton very much, and he chuckled over it for two or three minutes.
"From what my mother says," Willoughby continued, "people seem disposed to take them up. Her books, you know, are awfully popular--and didn"t you see how well the papers spoke of his last poems? You mark my words--there will be a run upon the Walcotts by and by."
"Just the way of the world!" said Charles Milton. "Three or four years ago they would have lynched him. Poor devil! I remember when I was about the only man in London who refused to believe him guilty."
"One thing is plain enough," said Tom Willoughby. "He would have gone to the dogs long ago if it had not been for her. I have not come across many heroines in my time, though I have heard of plenty from other people; but I am bound to confess that I never heard of one who deserved the name better than Mrs. Walcott."
The world bestowed its free pardon upon Alan Walcott, and for the sake of her who had taught him to fight against despair and death he accepted graciously a gift which otherwise would have been useless to him.
Inspired by her, he had built a new life upon the ruins of his past; and if, henceforth, he lived and labored for the world, it was only with the new motives and the new energy which she had implanted in him.
The house at Chiswick is now their own. There Alan and Lettice crown the joys of a peaceful existence by remembering the sorrows of other days; and there, in the years to come, they will teach their children the faith of human sympathy, the hope of human effort, and the charity of service and sacrifice.