"All right, Jimmy," he said; "that will do for this morning. And here is a bright sixpence, because you have managed the blowing so well.
Hullo! It"s a shilling! Never mind. You shall have it because it is such a glorious day. There never was such a day, Jimmy; and I want you to be happy also. Now run off quickly, and shut the church door behind you, my boy."
Ah! how his voice, with its ring of buoyant gladness, shook her soul.
The red-headed boy, rather grubby, with a whole pepper-pot of freckles, but a beaming face of pleasure, came out from behind the organ, clattered down a side aisle; dropped his shilling on the way and had to find it; but at last went out, the heavy door closing behind him with a resounding clang.
Garth had remained standing beside the organ, quite motionless, without looking at Jane, and now that they were absolutely alone in the church, he still stood and waited a few moments. To Jane those moments seemed days, weeks, years, an eternity. Then he came out into the centre of the chancel, his head erect, his eyes shining, his whole bearing that of a conqueror sure of his victory. He walked down to the quaintly carved oaken screen and, pa.s.sing beneath it, stood at the step. Then he signed to Jane to come and stand beside him.
"Here, dearest," he said; "let it be here."
Jane came to him, and for a moment they stood together, looking up the chancel. It was darker than the rest of the church, being lighted only by three narrow stained-gla.s.s windows, gems of colour and of significance. The centre window, immediately over the communion table, represented the Saviour of the world, dying upon the cross. They gazed at it in reverent silence. Then Garth turned to Jane.
"My beloved," he said, "it is a sacred Presence and a sacred place. But no place could be too sacred for that which we have to say to each other, and the Holy Presence, in which we both believe, is here to bless and ratify it. I am waiting for your answer."
Jane cleared her throat and put her trembling hands into the large pockets of her tweed coat.
"Dal," she said; "my answer is a question. How old are you?"
She felt his start of intense surprise. She saw the light of expectant joy fade from his face. But he replied, after only a momentary hesitation: "I thought you knew, dearest. I am twenty-seven."
"Well," said Jane slowly and deliberately, "I am thirty; and I look thirty-five, and feel forty. You are twenty-seven, Dal, and you look nineteen, and often feel nine. I have been thinking it over, and--you know--I cannot marry a mere boy."
Silence--absolute.
In sheer terror Jane forced herself to look at him. He was white to the lips. His face was very stern and calm--a strange, stony calmness.
There was not much youth in it just then. "ANOINT AND CHEER OUR SOILED FACE"--The silent church seemed to wail the words in bewildered agony.
At last he spoke. "I had not thought of myself," he said slowly. "I cannot explain how it comes to pa.s.s, but I have not thought of myself at all, since my mind has been full of you. Therefore I had not realised how little there is in me that you could care for. I believed you had felt as I did, that we were--just each other"s." For a moment he put out his hand as if he would have touched her. Then it dropped heavily to his side. "You are quite right," he said. "You could not marry any one whom you consider a mere boy."
He turned from her and faced up the chancel. For the s.p.a.ce of a long silent minute he looked at the window over the holy table, where hung the suffering Christ. Then he bowed his head. "I accept the cross," he said, and, turning, walked quietly down the aisle. The church door opened, closed behind him with a heavy clang, and Jane was alone.
She stumbled back to the seat she had left, and fell upon her knees.
"O, my G.o.d," she cried, "send him back to me, oh, send him back! ...
Oh, Garth! It is I who am plain and unattractive and unworthy, not you.
Oh, Garth--come back! come back! come back! ... I will trust and not be afraid ... Oh, my own Dear--come back!"
She listened, with straining ears. She waited, until every nerve of her body ached with suspense. She decided what she would say when the heavy door reopened and she saw Garth standing in a shaft of sunlight. She tried to remember the VENI, but the hollow clang of the door had silenced even memory"s echo of that haunting music. So she waited silently, and as she waited the silence grew and seemed to enclose her within cruel, relentless walls which opened only to allow her glimpses into the vista of future lonely years. Just once more she broke that silence. "Oh, darling, come back! I WILL RISK IT," she said. But no step drew near, and, kneeling with her face buried in her clasped hands, Jane suddenly realised that Garth Dalmain had accepted her decision as final and irrevocable, and would not return.
How long she knelt there after realising this, she never knew. But at last comfort came to her. She felt she had done right. A few hours of present anguish were better than years of future disillusion. Her own life would be sadly empty, and losing this newly found joy was costing her more than she had expected; but she honestly believed "she had done rightly towards him, and what did her own pain matter?" Thus comfort came to Jane.
At last she rose and pa.s.sed out of the silent church into the breezy sunshine.
Near the park gates a little knot of excited boys were preparing to fly a kite. Jimmy, the hero of the hour, the centre of attraction, proved to be the proud possessor of this new kite. Jimmy was finding the day glorious indeed, and was being happy. "Happy ALSO," Garth had said. And Jane"s eyes filled with tears, as she remembered the word and the tone in which it was spoken.
"There goes my poor boy"s shilling," she said to herself sadly, as the kite mounted and soared above the common; "but, alas, where is his joy?"
As she pa.s.sed up the avenue a dog-cart was driven swiftly down it.
Garth Dalmain drove it; behind him a groom and a portmanteau. He lifted his hat as he pa.s.sed her, but looked straight before him. In a moment he was gone. Had Jane wanted to stop him she could not have done so.
But she did not want to stop him. She felt absolutely satisfied that she had done the right thing, and done it at greater cost to herself than to him. He would eventually--ah, perhaps before so very long--find another to be to him all, and more than all, he had believed she could be. But she? The dull ache at her bosom reminded her of her own words the night before, whispered in the secret of her chamber to him who, alas, was not there to hear: "Whatever the future brings for you and me, no other face will ever be hidden here." And, in this first hour of the coming lonely years, she knew them to be true.
In the hall she met Pauline Lister.
"Is that you, Miss Champion?" said Pauline. "Well now, have you heard of Mr. Dalmain? He has had to go to town unexpectedly, on the 1.15 train; and aunt has dropped her false teeth on her marble wash-stand and must get to the dentist right away. So we go to town on the 2.30.
It"s an uncertain world. It complicates one"s plans, when they have to depend on other people"s teeth. But I would sooner break false teeth than true hearts, any day. One can get the former mended, but I guess no one can mend the latter. We are lunching early in our rooms; so I wish you good-by, Miss Champion."
CHAPTER XII
THE DOCTOR"S PRESCRIPTION
The Honourable Jane Champion stood on the summit of the Great Pyramid and looked around her. The four exhausted Arabs whose exertions, combined with her own activity, had placed her there, dropped in the picturesque att.i.tudes into which an Arab falls by nature. They had hoisted the Honourable Jane"s eleven stone ten from the bottom to the top in record time, and now lay around, proud of their achievement and sure of their "backsheesh."
The whole thing had gone as if by clock-work. Two mahogany-coloured, finely proportioned fellows, in scanty white garments, sprang with the ease of antelopes to the top of a high step, turning to reach down eagerly and seize Jane"s upstretched hands. One remained behind, unseen but indispensable, to lend timely aid at exactly the right moment. Then came the apparently impossible task for Jane, of placing the sole of her foot on the edge of a stone four feet above the one upon which she was standing. It seemed rather like stepping up on to the drawing-room mantelpiece. But encouraged by cries of "Eiwa! Eiwa!" she did it; when instantly a voice behind said, "Tyeb!" two voices above shouted, "Keteer!" the grip on her hands tightened, the Arab behind hoisted, and Jane had stepped up, with an ease which surprised herself. As a matter of fact, under those circ.u.mstances the impossible thing would have been not to have stepped up.
Arab number four was water-carrier, and offered water from a gourd at intervals; and once, when Jane had to cry halt for a few minutes"
breathing s.p.a.ce, Schehati, handsomest of all, and leader of the enterprise, offered to recite English Shakespeare-poetry. This proved to be:
"Jack-an-Jill Went uppy hill, To fetchy paily water; Jack fell down-an Broke his crown-an Jill came tumbling after."
Jane had laughed; and Schehati, encouraged by the success of his attempt to edify and amuse, used lines of the immortal nursery epic as signals for united action during the remainder of the climb. Therefore Jane mounted one step to the fact that Jack fell down, and scaled the next to information as to the serious nature of his injuries, and at the third, Schehati, bending over, confidentially mentioned in her ear, while Ali shoved behind, that "Jill came tumbling after."
The familiar words, heard under such novel circ.u.mstances, took on fresh meaning. Jane commenced speculating as to whether the downfall of Jack need necessarily have caused so complete a loss of self-control and equilibrium on the part of Jill. Would she not have proved her devotion better by bringing the mutual pail safely to the bottom of the hill, and there attending to the wounds of her fallen hero? Jane, in her time, had witnessed the tragic downfall of various delightful jacks, and had herself ministered tenderly to their broken crowns; for in each case the Jill had remained on the top of the hill, flirting with that objectionable person of the name of Horner, whose cool, calculating way of setting to work--so unlike poor Jack"s headlong method--invariably secured him the plum; upon which he remarked "What a good boy am I!"
and was usually taken at his own smug valuation. But Jane"s entire sympathy on these occasions was with the defeated lover, and more than one Jack was now on his feet again, bravely facing life, because that kind hand had been held out to him as he lay in his valley of humiliation, and that comprehending sympathy had proved balm to his broken crown.
"d.i.c.kery, d.i.c.kery, dock!" chanted Schehati solemnly, as he hauled again; "Moses ran up the clock. The clock struck "one"--"
THE CLOCK STRUCK "ONE"?--It was nearly three years since that night at Shenstone when the clock had struck "one," and Jane had arrived at her decision,--the decision which precipitated her Jack from his Pisgah of future promise. And yet--no. He had not fallen before the blow. He had taken it erect, and his light step had been even firmer than usual as he walked down the church and left her, after quietly and deliberately accepting her decision. It was Jane herself, left alone, who fell hopelessly over the pail. She shivered even now when she remembered how its icy waters drenched her heart. Ah, what would have happened if Garth had come back in answer to her cry during those first moments of intolerable suffering and loneliness? But Garth was not the sort of man who, when a door has been shut upon him, waits on the mat outside, hoping to be recalled. When she put him from her, and he realised that she meant it he pa.s.sed completely out of her life. He was at the railway station by the time she reached the house, and from that day to this they had never met. Garth evidently considered the avoidance of meetings to be his responsibility, and he never failed her in this.
Once or twice she went on a visit to houses where she knew him to be staying. He always happened to have left that morning, if she arrived in time for luncheon; or by an early afternoon train, if she was due for tea. He never timed it so that there should be tragic pa.s.sings of each other, with set faces, at the railway stations; or a formal word of greeting as she arrived and he departed,--just enough to awaken all the slumbering pain and set people wondering. Jane remembered with shame that this was the sort of picturesque tragedy she would have expected from Garth Dalmain. But the man who had surprised her by his dignified acquiescence in her decision, continued to surprise her by the strength with which he silently accepted it as final and kept out of her way. Jane had not probed the depth of the wound she had inflicted.
Never once was his departure connected, in the minds of others, with her arrival. There was always some excellent and perfectly natural reason why he had been obliged to leave, and he was openly talked of and regretted, and Jane heard all the latest "Dal stories," and found herself surrounded by the atmosphere of his exotic, beauty-loving nature. And there was usually a girl--always the loveliest of the party--confidentially pointed out to Jane, by the rest, as a certainty, if only Dal had had another twenty-four hours of her society. But the girl herself would appear quite heart-whole, only very full of an evidently delightful friendship, expressing all Dal"s ideas on art and colour, as her own, and confidently happy in an a.s.sured sense of her own loveliness and charm and power to please. Never did he leave behind him traces which the woman who loved him regretted to find. But he was always gone--irrevocably gone. Garth Dalmain was not the sort of man to wait on the door-mat of a woman"s indecision.
Neither did this Jack of hers break his crown. His portrait of Pauline Lister, painted six months after the Shenstone visit, had proved the finest bit of work he had as yet accomplished. He had painted the lovely American, in creamy white satin, standing on a dark oak staircase, one hand resting on the bal.u.s.trade, the other, full of yellow roses, held out towards an unseen friend below. Behind and above her shone a stained-gla.s.s window, centuries old, the arms, crest, and mottoes of the n.o.ble family to whom the place belonged, shining thereon in rose-coloured and golden gla.s.s. He had wonderfully caught the charm and vivacity of the girl. She was gaily up-to-date, and frankly American, from the crown of her queenly little head, to the point of her satin shoe; and the suggestiveness of placing her in surroundings which breathed an atmosphere of the best traditions of England"s ancient ancestral homes, the fearless wedding of the new world with the old, the putting of this sparkling gem from the new into the beautiful mellow setting of the old and there showing it at its best,--all this was the making of the picture. People smiled, and said the painter had done on canvas what he shortly intended doing in reality; but the tie between artist and sitter never grew into anything closer than a pleasant friendship, and it was the n.o.ble owner of the staircase and window who eventually persuaded Miss Lister to remain in surroundings which suited her so admirably.
One story about that portrait Jane had heard discussed more than once in circles where both were known. Pauline Lister had come to the first sittings wearing her beautiful string of pearls, and Garth had painted them wonderfully, spending hours over the delicate perfecting of each separate gleaming drop. Suddenly one day he seized his palette-knife, sc.r.a.ped the whole necklace off the canvas with a stroke and, declared she must wear her rose-topazes in order to carry out his scheme of colour. She was wearing her rose-topazes when Jane saw the picture in the Academy, and very lovely they looked on the delicate whiteness of her neck. But people who had seen Garth"s painting of the pearls maintained that that sc.r.a.pe of the palette-knife had destroyed work which would have been the talk of the year. And Pauline Lister, just after it had happened, was reported to have said, with a shrug of her pretty shoulders: "Schemes of colour are all very well. But he sc.r.a.ped my pearls off the canvas because some one who came in hummed a tune while looking at the picture. I would be obliged if people who walk around the studio while I am being painted will in future refrain from humming tunes. I don"t want him to scoop off my topazes and call for my emeralds. Also I feel like offering a reward for the discovery of that tune. I want to know what it has to do with my scheme of colour, anyway."
When Jane heard the story, she was spending a few days with the Brands in Wimpole Street. It was told at tea, in Lady Brand"s pretty boudoir.
The d.u.c.h.ess"s Concert, at which Garth had heard her sing THE ROSARY, was a thing of the past. Nearly a year had elapsed since their final parting, and this was the very first thought or word or sign of his remembrance, which directly or indirectly, had come her way. She could not doubt that the tune hummed had been THE ROSARY.
"The hours I spent with thee, dear heart, Are as a string of pearls to me; I count them over, every one, apart."
She seemed to hear Garth"s voice on the terrace, as she heard it in those first startled moments of realising the gift which was being laid at her feet--"I have learned to count pearls, beloved."
Jane"s heart was growing cold and frozen in its emptiness. This incident of the studio warmed and woke it for the moment, and with the waking came sharp pain. When the visitors had left, and Lady Brand had gone to the nursery, she walked over to the piano, sat down, and softly played the accompaniment of "The Rosary." The fine unexpected chords, full of discords working into harmony, seemed to suit her mood and her memories.