He liberated his hands, and began to tramp the room as before, but with head down dud hands linked behind him.
"It will be cruel to deceive him," he said.
"No, Philip, but kind. Death is not cruel. The wound it makes will heal.
It won"t bleed for ever. Once he thinks I am dead he will weep a little perhaps, and then "--she was stifling a sob--"then it will be all over.
"Poor girl," he will say, "she was much to blame. I loved her once, and never did her any wrong. But she is gone, and she was the mother of little Katherine--let us forget her faults"----"
He had not heard her; he was standing before the window looking down.
"You are right, Kate, I think you must be right."
"I"m sure I am."
"He will suffer, but he will get over it."
"Yes, indeed. And you, Philip--he will torture you no longer. No more letters, no more presents, no more messages----"
"I"ll do it--I"ll do it to-morrow," he said.
She opened her arms wide, and cried, "Kiss me, Philip, kiss me. We shall live again. Yes, we shall laugh together still--kiss me, kiss me."
"Not yet--when I come back."
"Very well--when you come back."
She sank into a chair, crying with joy, and he went out as he had entered, noiselessly, stealthily, like a shadow.
When a man who is not a criminal is given over to a deep duplicity of life, he will clutch at any lie, wearing the mask of truth, which seems to shield him from shame and pain. He may be a wise man in every other relation, a shrewd man, a far-seeing and even a cunning man, but in this relation--that of his own honour, his own fame, his own safety--he is certain to be a blunderer, a bungler, and a fool. Such is the revenge of Nature, such is G.o.d"s own vengeance!
XVII.
Philip was walking from Ballure House to Elm Cottage. It was late, and the night was dark and silent--a muggy, dank, and stagnant night, without wind or air, moon or stars. The road was quiet, the trees were still, the sea made only a far-off murmur.
And as he walked he struggled to persuade himself that in what he was about to do he would be doing well. "It will not be wrong to deceive him," he thought. "It will only be for his own good. The suspense would kill him. He would waste away. The sap of the man"s soul would dry up.
Then why should I hesitate? Besides, it is partly true--true in its own sense, and that is the real sense. She _is_ dead--dead to him. She can never return to him; she is lost to him for ever. So it is true after all--it is true."
"It is a lie," said a voice at his ear.
He started. He could have been sure that somebody had spoken. Yet there was n.o.body by his side. He was alone in the road. "It must have been my own voice," he thought. "I must have been thinking aloud." And then he resumed his walk and his meditation.
"And if it is a lie, is it therefore a crime?" he asked himself. "Sure it is--how very sure!--it was a wise man that said so--a great fault once committed is the first link in a chain. The other links seem to be crimes also, but they are not--they are consequences. _Our_ fault was long ago, and even then it was partly the fault of Fate. If the past could be recalled we could not act differently unless our fates were different. And what has followed has been only the consequence. It was the consequence when Kate was married to Pete; it was the consequence when she left him--and _this_ is the consequence."
"It is a lie," said the same voice by his side.
He stopped. The darkness was gross around him--he could see nothing.
"Who"s there?" he demanded.
There was no answer. He stretched his hand out nervously. There was no one at his side. "It must have been the wind in the trees," he thought; but there could be no wind in the stagnant dampness of that air. "It was like my own voice," he thought. Then he remembered how his man in Douglas had told him that he had contracted a habit of talking to himself of late. "It was my own voice," he thought, and he went on again.
"A lie is a bad foundation to build on--that"s certain. The thing that should be cannot rest on the thing that is not. It will topple down; it will come to ruin; it will wreck everything. Still----"
"It is a lie," said the voice again. There could be no mistaking it this time. It was a low, deep whisper. It seemed to be spoken in the very cavity of his ear. It was not his own voice, and yet it struck upon his sense with the sound as of his own. It must be his own voice speaking to himself!
When this idea took hold of him, he was seized with a deadly shuddering.
His heart knocked against his ribs, and an icy coldness came over him.
"Only the same tormenting dream," he thought. "Before it was a vision; now it is a voice. It is generated by solitude and separation. I must resist it I must be strong. It will drive me into an oppression as of madness. Men do not "see their souls" until they are bordering on madness from religious mania or crime."
"A lie! a lie!" said the voice.
"This is madness itself. To paint faces on the darkness, to hear voices in the air, is madness. The madman can do no more."
"A lie!" said the voice again. He cast a look over his shoulder. It was the same as if some one had touched him and spoken.
He walked faster. The voice seemed to walk with him. "I will hold myself firm," he thought; "I will not be afraid. Reason does not fail a man until he allows himself to _believe_ that it is failing. "I am going mad," he thinks; and then he shrieks and is mad indeed. I will not depart from my course. If I do so now, I shall be lost. The horror will master me, and I shall be its slave for ever."
He had turned out of Ballure into the Ramsey Road, and he could see the town lights in the distance. But the voice continued to haunt him persistently, besiegingly, despotically.
"Great G.o.d!" he thought, "what is the imaginary devil to the horror of this presence? Your own eye, your own voice, always with you, always following you! No darkness so dense that it can hide the sight, no noise so loud that it can deaden the sound!"
He walked faster. Still the voice seemed to stride by his side, an invisible thing, with deliberate and noiseless step, from which there was no escape.
He drew up suddenly and walked slower. His knees were tottering, he was treading as on waves; yet he went on. "I will not yield. I will master myself. I will do what I intended. I am not mad," he thought.
He was at the gate of Elm Cottage by this time, and, with a strong glow of resolution, he walked boldly to the door and knocked.
XVIII.
Pete had not awakened until late that morning. While still in bed he had heard Grannie and Nancy in the room below. The first sound of their voices told him that something was amiss.
"Aw, G.o.d bless me, G.o.d bless me!" said Nancy, as though with uplifted hands.
"It was Kelly the postman," said Grannie in a doleful tone--the tone in which she had spoken between the puffs of her pipe.
"The dirt!" said Nancy.
"He was up at Caesar"s before breakfast this morning," said Grannie.
"There now!" cried Nancy. "There"s men like that, though. Just aiger for mischief. It"s sweeter than all their prayers to them.... But where can she be, then? Has she made away with herself, poor thing?"
"That"s what I was asking Caesar," said Grannie. "If she"s gone with the young Ballawhaine, what for aren"t you going to England over and fetching her home?" says I.
"And what did Caesar say?"