"Yes," said Fay, her eyes on the floor.
Magdalen went slowly to the door, feeling her way as if half blind.
"Come back," shrieked Fay suddenly. "Magdalen, come back. I shall never say it all, I shall keep back part unless you are there to hold me to it. Come back. Come back."
Magdalen returned and sat down. The Bishop watched them both in silence.
"I have confessed once, already," said Fay in a low hurried voice, "under the promise of silence. Magdalen promised not to say, and I told her everything, weeks ago. I thought I should feel better then, but it wasn"t any good. It only made it worse."
"It is often like that," said the Bishop. "We try to do something right but not in the best way, and just the fact of trying shows us there is a better way--only harder, so hard we don"t know how to bring ourselves to it. Isn"t that what you feel?"
"Yes."
"But there is no rest, no peace till we come to it."
"No," whispered Fay. "Never any rest."
"That is G.o.d"s Hand drawing you," said the Bishop, his mind seeming to embrace and support Fay"s tottering soul. "There are things He wants done, which He needs us to do for Him, which perhaps only we can do for Him. At first we don"t understand that, and we are so ignorant and foolish that we resist the pressure of His Hand. Then we suffer."
Fay shivered.
"That resistance is what some people call sin. It is unendurable, the only real anguish in the world. You see we are not meant to bear it. And it is no manner of use to resist Him, for G.o.d is stronger than we are, and He loves us too much ever to lose heart with us, ever to blame us, ever to leave us to ourselves. He sees we don"t understand that He can"t do without us, and that we can"t do without Him. And at last, when we feel G.o.d"s need of us, then it becomes possible"--the Bishop paused--"to say the difficult word, to do the difficult deed."
Did she understand? Who shall say! Sometimes it seems as if no actual word reaches us that Love would fain say to our unrest and misery. But our troubled hearts are nevertheless conscious by some other channel, some medium more subtle than thought and speech, that Love and Peace have drawn very near to us. It is only reflected dimly through dear human faces that some of us can catch a glimpse of "the light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world."
The small tortured face relaxed between the two calm ones. The sunny room was quite still. Fear shrank to a shadow.
Suddenly the fire drew itself together with a little encouraging sound.
Fay started slightly, looked at it, and began to speak rapidly in a low clear voice.
As Magdalen listened she prayed with intensity that Fay might really tell the Bishop the whole story, as she had told it to herself, that stormy night in March, half a life-time ago.
The little voice went on and on. It faltered, sank, and then struggled up again. One point after another was reached in safety, was pa.s.sed.
Nothing that Fay had already admitted was left out. Gradually, as Magdalen listened, a faint shame laid hold of her. Her whole life had for the time centred in one pa.s.sionate overwhelming desire that Fay should make to the Bishop as full a confession as she had made to herself. Now she realised that Fay was saying even more than she had done on that occasion, was excusing herself less, was blaming others less.
Fay herself saw no discrepancy between her first and second account of the tragedy. But then she never did see discrepancies. Her mind had shifted a little towards the subject, that was all. This mysterious unconscious shifting of the mind had been hidden from Magdalen, who had felt with anguish that all she had said on that night of the storm had had no effect on Fay"s mind. She had never seen till now a vestige of an effect. Fay had shrunk from her persistently afterwards, that was all.
Strong and ardent souls often wonder why an appeal which they know, if made to themselves, would clinch them forever into a regenerating repentance is entirely powerless with a different cla.s.s of mind. But although an irresistible truth spoken in love will renovate our being, and will fail absolutely to reach the mind of another, nevertheless the weaker, vainer nature will sometimes pick out of the uncomfortable appeal, to which it turns its deaf ear, a few phrases less distressing to its _amour propre_ than the rest. To these it will listen. Fay had retained in her mind Magdalen"s vivid description of the love her husband and Michael had borne her. She had often dwelt upon the remembrance that she had been greatly loved. During the miserable weeks when she had virtually made up her mind not to speak, that remembrance had worked within her like leaven, unconsciously softening her towards her husband, drawing her towards compa.s.sion on Michael.
Now that she did speak again she did not reproach them. She who had blamed them both so bitterly a few short weeks ago blamed them no longer. Nor did she say anything about the culpable silence of the real murderer. That mysterious criminal, that scapegoat who had so far aroused her bitterest animosity had ceased to darken her mind.
Fay had pa.s.sed unconsciously far beyond the limitations of Magdalen"s anxious prayer on her behalf. The love of Andrea and Michael, tardily seen, only partially realised, had helped her at last.
The Bishop listened and listened, a little bent forward, his eyes on the floor, his chin in his hand. Once he made a slight movement when Fay reached Michael"s arrest, but he quickly recovered himself.
The faint voice faltered itself out at last. The story was at an end.
The Duke was dead and Michael was in prison.
"I have kept him there two years," said Fay, and was silent.
How she had raged against the cruelty of her husband"s dying words. What pa.s.sionate, vindictive tears she had shed at the remembrance of them.
Now, unconsciously, she adopted them herself. She had ceased to resist them, and the sting had gone clean out of them.
"Two years," said the Bishop. "Two years. Fast bound in misery and iron.
You in misery and he only in iron. You two poor children."
His strong face worked, and for a moment he shaded it with his hand.
Then he looked keenly at Fay.
"And you have come to me to ask me to advise you how to set Michael and yourself free?"
"Yes," whispered Fay.
"It was time to come."
There was a short silence.
"And you understand, my dear, dear child, that you can only rescue Michael by taking heavy blame upon yourself, blame first of all for having a clandestine meeting with him, and then blame for letting him sacrifice himself for your good name, and lastly blame for keeping an innocent man in prison so long."
Fay shook like a leaf.
The Bishop took her lifeless hands in his, and held them. He made her meet his eyes. Stern, tender, unflinching eyes they were, with a glint of tears in them.
"You are willing to bear the cross, and endure the shame?" he said.
Two large tears gathered in Fay"s wide eyes, and rolled down her bloodless cheeks.
You could not look at her, and think that the poor thing was willing to endure anything, capable of enduring anything.
The Bishop looked at her, through her.
"Or would you rather go home and wait in misery a little longer, and keep him in his cell a little longer: another week--another month--another _year_! You know best how much longer you can wait."
Silence.
"And Michael can wait, too."
"Michael must come out," said Fay, with a sob. "He was always good to me."
"Thank G.o.d," said the Bishop, and he rose abruptly and went to the window.
Magdalen and Fay did not move. They leaned a little closer together.
Fay"s timid eyes sought her sister"s like those of a child which has repeated its lesson, and looks to its teacher to see if it has done well.
Magdalen kissed her on the eyes.