Though they soon became more intimate than they had ever been, Agnes never told Ferrier what it was that had turned her from a happy, unquestioning child into a miserable woman; but, of course, he guessed.
And gradually Frank also had come to know that she knew, and, man-like, he spent less and less time in his now uncomfortable home. He would go away in the morning an hour earlier than usual, and then, under pretext of business keeping him late at the office, he would come back after having dined, doubtless with "Janey," in town.
Soon Agnes began to draw a terrible comparison between these two men--between the husband who had all she had of heart, and the friend whom she now acknowledged to herself--for hypocrisy had fallen away from her--had lived only for her, and for the hours they were able to spend together, during two long years, and yet who had never told her of his love, or tried to disturb her trust in Frank.
Yes, Gerald Ferrier was all that was n.o.ble--Frank Barlow all that was ign.o.ble. So she told herself with trembling lip a dozen times a day, taking fierce comfort in the knowledge that Ferrier was n.o.ble. But she was destined even to lose that comfort; for one day, a week before the day when we find her walking to Summerfield station, Ferrier"s n.o.bility, or what poor Agnes took to be such, suddenly broke down.
They had been walking together in Battersea Park, and, after one of those long silences which bespeak true intimacy between a man and a woman, he had asked her if she would come back to his rooms--for tea.
She had shaken her head smilingly. And then he had turned on her with a torrent of impetuous, burning words--words of ardent love, of anguished longing, of eager pleading. And Agnes had been frightened, fascinated, allured.
And that had not been all.
More quietly he had gone on to speak as if the code of morality in which his friend had been bred, and which had hitherto so entirely satisfied her, was, after all, nothing but a narrow counsel of perfection, suited to those who were sheltered and happy, but wretchedly inadequate to meet the needs of the greater number of human beings who are, as Agnes now was, humiliated and miserable. His words had found an echo in her sore heart, but she had not let him see how much they moved her. On the contrary, she had rebuked him, and for the first time they had quarrelled.
"If you ever speak to me like that again," she had said coldly, "I will not come again."
And once more he had turned on her violently. "I think you had better not come again! I am but a man after all!"
They parted enemies; but the same night Ferrier wrote Agnes a very piteous letter asking pardon on his knees for having spoken as he had done. And his letter moved her to the heart. Her own deep misery--never for one moment did she forget Frank, and Frank"s treachery--made her understand the torment that Ferrier was going through.
For the first time she realized, what so few of her kind ever realize, that it is a mean thing to take everything and give nothing in exchange.
And gradually, as her long, solitary hours wore themselves away, Agnes came to believe that if she did what she now knew Ferrier desired her to do,--if, casting the past behind her, she started a new life with him--she would not only be doing a generous thing by the man who had loved her silently and faithfully for so long, but she would also be punishing Frank--hurting him in his honour, as he had hurt her in hers.
And then the stars that fight in their courses for those lovers who are also poets fought for Ferrier.
The day after they had quarrelled and he had written her his piteous letter of remorse, Gerald Ferrier fell ill. But he was not too ill to write. And after he had been ill four days, and when Agnes was feeling very, very miserable, he wrote and told her of a wonderful vision which had been vouchsafed to him.
In this vision Ferrier had seen Agnes knocking at the narrow front door of the lonely flat where he lived solitary; and through the door had slipped in his angelic visitant, by her mere presence bringing him peace, health, and the happiness he was schooling himself to believe must never come to him through her.
The post which brought her the letter in which Ferrier told his vision brought also to Agnes Barlow a little registered parcel containing a pearl-and-diamond pendant from Frank.
For a few moments the two lay on her knee. Then she took up the jewel and looked at it curiously. Was it with such a thing as this that her husband thought to purchase her forgiveness?
If Ferrier"s letter had never been written, if Frank"s gift had never been despatched, it may be doubted whether Agnes would have done what we now find her doing--hastening, that is, on her way to make Ferrier"s dream come true.
At last she reached the little suburban station of Summerfield.
One of her father"s many kindnesses to her each year was the gift of a season ticket to town; but to-day some queer instinct made her buy a ticket at the booking-office instead.
The booking-clerk peered out at her, surprised; then made up his mind that pretty Mrs. Barlow--she wore to-day a curiously thick veil--had a friend with her. But his long, ruminating stare made her shrink and flush. Was it possible that what she was about to do was written on her face?
She was glad indeed when the train steamed into the station. She got into an empty carriage, for the rush that goes on each evening Londonward from the suburbs had not yet begun.
And then, to her surprise, she found that it was the thought of her husband, not of the man to whom she was going to give herself, that filled her sad, embittered heart.
Old memories--memories connected with Frank, his love for her, her love for him--became insistent. She lived again, while tears forced themselves into her closed eyes, through the culminating moment of her marriage day, the start for the honeymoon,--a start made amid a crowd of laughing, cheering friends, from the little station she had just left.
She remembered the delicious tremor which had come over her when she had found herself at last alone, really alone, with her three-hour-old bridegroom.
How infinitely kind and tender Frank had been to her!
And then Agnes reminded herself, with tightening breath, that men like Frank Barlow are always kind--too kind--to women.
Other journeys she and Frank had taken together came and mocked her, and especially the journey which had followed a month after little Francis"s birth.
Frank had driven with her, the nurse, and the baby, to the station--but only to see them off. He had had a very important case in the Courts just then, and it was out of the question that he should go with his wife to Littlehampton for the change of air, the few weeks by the sea, that had been ordered by her good, careful doctor.
And then at the last moment Frank had suddenly jumped into the railway carriage without a ticket, and had gone along with her part of the way!
She remembered the surprise of the monthly nurse, the woman"s prim remark, when he had at last got out at Horsham, that Mr. Barlow was certainly the kindest husband she, the nurse, had ever seen.
But these memories, now so desecrated, did not make her give up her purpose. Far from it, for in a queer way they made her think more tenderly of Gerald Ferrier, whose life had been so lonely, and who had known nothing of the simpler human sanct.i.ties and joys, and who had never--so he had told her with a kind of bitter scorn of himself--been loved by any woman whom he himself could love.
In her ears there sounded Ferrier"s quick, hoa.r.s.ely uttered words: "D"you think I should ever have said a word to you of all this--if you had gone on being happy? D"you think I"d ask you to come to me if I thought you had any chance of being happy with him--now?"
And she knew in her soul that he had spoken truly. Ferrier would never have tried to disturb her happiness with Frank; he had never so tried during those two years when they had seen so much of each other, and when Agnes had known, deep down in her heart, that he loved her, though it had suited her conscience to pretend that his love was only "friendship."
III
The train glided into the fog-laden London station, and very slowly Agnes Barlow stepped down out of the railway carriage. She felt oppressed by the fact that she was alone. During the last few weeks Ferrier had always been standing on the platform waiting to greet her, eager to hurry her into a cab--to a picture gallery, to a concert, or of late, oftenest of all, to one of those green oases which the great town still leaves her lovers.
But now Ferrier was not here. Ferrier was ill, solitary, in the lonely rooms which he called "home."
Agnes Barlow hurried out of the station.
Hammer, hammer, hammer went what she supposed was her heart. It was a curious, to Agnes a new sensation, bred of the fear that she would meet some acquaintance to whom she would have to explain her presence in town. She could not help being glad that the fog was of that dense, stifling quality which makes every one intent on his own business rather than on that of his neighbours.
Then something happened which scared Agnes. She was walking, now very slowly, out of the station, when a tall man came up to her. He took off his hat and peered insolently into her face.
"I think I"ve had the pleasure of meeting you before," he said.
She stared at him with a great, unreasonable fear gripping her heart. No doubt this was some business acquaintance of Frank"s. "I--I don"t think so," she faltered.
"Oh, yes," he said. "Don"t you remember, two years ago at the Pirola in Regent Street? I don"t _think_ I can be wrong."
And then Agnes understood. "You are making a mistake," she said breathlessly, and quickened her steps.
The man looked after her with a jeering smile, but he made no further attempt to molest her.
She was trembling--shaken with fear, disgust, and terror. It was odd, but such a thing had never happened to pretty Agnes Barlow before. She was not often alone in London; she had never been there alone on such a foggy evening, an evening which invited such approaches as those she had just repulsed.
She touched a respectable-looking woman on the arm. "Can you tell me the way to Flood Street, Chelsea?" she asked, her voice faltering.
"Why, yes, Miss. It"s a good step from here, but you can"t mistake it.
You"ve only got to go straight along, and then ask again after you"ve been walking about twenty minutes. You can"t mistake it." And she hurried on, while Agnes tried to keep in step behind her, for the slight adventure outside the station became retrospectively terrifying. She thrilled with angry fear lest that--that brute should still be stalking her; but when she looked over her shoulder she saw that the pavement was nearly bare of walkers.