Afterwards she went for a tramp on the moors, and steadied her nerve by the rapid swing of her walk, and the deep inbreathing of that glorious air. Once or twice she took a telegram from her pocket, stood still and read it; then tramped on, to the wonder of the words: "Special license easily obtained." Ah, the license might be easy to obtain; but how about his forgiveness? That must be obtained first. If there were only this darling boy to deal with, in his white flannels and yellow roses, with a May-Day madness in his veins, the license might come at once; and all he could wish should happen without delay. But this is a pa.s.sing phase of Garth. What she has to deal with is the white-faced man, who calmly said: "I accept the cross," and walked down the village church leaving her--for all these years. Loving her, as he loved her; and yet leaving her,--without word or sign, for three long years. To hire, was the confession; his would be the decision; and, somehow, it did not surprise her, when she came down to luncheon, a little late, to find HIM seated at the table.
"Miss Gray," he said gravely, as he heard her enter, "I must apologise for my behaviour this morning. I was what they call up here "fey."
Margery understands the mood; and together she and I have listened to kind Mother Earth, laying our hands on her sympathetic softness, and she has told us her secrets. Then I lay down under the fir trees and slept; and awakened calm and sane, and ready for what to-day must bring. For it WILL bring something. That is no delusion. It is a day of great things. That much, Margery knows, too."
"Perhaps," suggested Nurse Rosemary, tentatively, "there may be news of interest in your letters."
"Ah," said Garth, "I forgot. We have not even opened this morning"s letters. Let us take time for them immediately after lunch. Are there many?"
"Quite a pile," said Nurse Rosemary.
"Good. We will work soberly through them."
Half an hour later Garth was seated in his chair, calm and expectant; his face turned towards his secretary. He had handled his letters, and amongst them he had found one sealed; and the seal was a plumed helmet, with visor closed. Nurse Rosemary saw him pale, as his fingers touched it. He made no remark; but, as before, slipped it beneath the rest, that it might come up for reading, last of all.
When the others were finished, and Nurse Rosemary took up this letter, the room was very still. They were quite alone. Bees hummed in the garden. The scent of flowers stole in at the window. But no one disturbed their solitude.
Nurse Rosemary took up the envelope.
"Mr. Dalmain, here is a letter, sealed with scarlet wax. The seal is a helmet with visor--"
"I know," said Garth. "You need not describe it further. Kindly open it."
Nurse Rosemary opened it. "It is a very long letter, Mr. Dalmain."
"Indeed? Will you please read it to me, Miss Gray."
A tense moment of silence followed. Nurse Rosemary lifted the letter; but her voice suddenly refused to respond to her will. Garth waited without further word.
Then Nurse Rosemary said: "Indeed, sir, it seems a most private letter.
I find it difficult to read it to you."
Garth heard the distress in her voice, and turned to her kindly.
"Never mind, my dear child. It in no way concerns you. It is a private letter to me; but my only means of hearing it is through your eyes, and from your lips. Besides, the lady, whose seal is a plumed helmet, can have nothing of a very private nature to say to me."
"Ah, but she has," said Nurse Rosemary, brokenly.
Garth considered this in silence.
Then: "Turn over the page," he said, "and tell me the signature."
"There are many pages," said Nurse Rosemary.
"Turn over the pages then," said Garth, sternly. "Do not keep me waiting. How is that letter signed?"
"YOUR WIFE," whispered Nurse Rosemary.
There was a petrifying quality about the silence which followed. It seemed as if those two words, whispered into Garth"s darkness, had turned him to stone.
At last he stretched out his hand. "Will you give me that letter, if you please, Miss Gray? Thank you. I wish to be alone for a quarter of an hour. I shall be glad if you will be good enough to sit in the dining-room, and stop any one from coming into this room. I must be undisturbed. At the end of that time kindly return."
He spoke so quietly that Jane"s heart sank within her. Some display of agitation would have been rea.s.suring. This was the man who, bowing his dark head towards the crucifixion window, said: "I accept the cross."
This was the man, whose footsteps never once faltered as he strode down the aisle, and left her. This was the man, who had had the strength, ever since, to treat that episode between her and himself, as completely closed; no word of entreaty; no sign of remembrance; no hint of reproach. And this was the man to whom she had signed herself: "Your wife."
In her whole life, Jane had never known fear. She knew it now.
As she silently rose and left him, she stole one look at his face. He was sitting perfectly still; the letter in his hand. He had not turned his head toward her as he took it. His profile might have been a beautiful carving in white ivory. There was not the faintest tinge of colour in his face; just that ivory pallor, against the ebony lines of his straight brows, and smooth dark hair.
Jane softly left the room, closing the door behind her.
Then followed the longest fifteen minutes she had ever known. She realised what a tremendous conflict was in progress in that quiet room.
Garth was arriving at his decision without having heard any of her arguments. By the strange fatality of his own insistence, he had heard only two words of her letter, and those the crucial words; the two words to which the whole letter carefully led up. They must have revealed to him instantly, what the character of the letter would be; and what was the att.i.tude of mind towards himself, of the woman who wrote them.
Jane paced the dining-room in desperation, remembering the hours of thought which had gone to the compiling of sentences, cautiously preparing his mind to the revelation of the signature.
Suddenly, in the midst of her mental perturbation, there came to her the remembrance of a conversation between Nurse Rosemary and Garth over the pictures. The former had said: "Is she a wife?" And Garth had answered: "Yes." Jane had instantly understood what that answer revealed and implied. Because Garth had so felt her his during those wonderful moments on the terrace at Shenstone, that he could look up into her face and say, "My wife"--not as an interrogation, but as an absolute statement of fact,--he still held her this, as indissolubly as if priest, and book, and ring, had gone to the wedding of their union.
To him, the union of souls came before all else; and if that had taken place, all that might follow was but the outward indors.e.m.e.nt of an accomplished fact. Owing to her fear, mistrust, and deception, nothing had followed. Their lives had been sundered; they had gone different ways. He regarded himself as being no more to her than any other man of her acquaintance. During these years he had believed, that her part in that evening"s wedding of souls had existed in his imagination, only; and had no binding effect upon her. But his remained. Because those words were true to him then, he had said them; and, because he had said them, he would consider her his wife, through life,--and after. It was the intuitive understanding of this, which had emboldened Jane so to sign her letter. But how would he reconcile that signature with the view of her conduct which he had all along taken, without ever having the slightest conception that there could be any other?
Then Jane remembered, with comfort, the irresistible appeal made by Truth to the soul of the artist; truth of line; truth of colour; truth of values; and, in the realm of sound, truth of tone, of harmony, of rendering, of conception. And when Nurse Rosemary had said of his painting of "The Wife": "It is a triumph of art"; Garth had replied: "It is a triumph of truth." And Jane"s own verdict on the look he had seen and depicted was: "It is true--yes, it is true!" Will he not realise now the truth of that signature; and, if he realises it, will he not be glad in his loneliness, that his wife should come to him; unless the confessions and admissions of the letter cause him to put her away as wholly unworthy?
Suddenly Jane understood the immense advantage of the fact that he would hear every word of the rest of her letter, knowing the conclusion, which she herself could not possibly have put first. She saw a Higher Hand in this arrangement; and said, as she watched the minutes slowly pa.s.s: "He hath broken down the middle wall of part.i.tion between us"; and a sense of calm a.s.surance descended, and garrisoned her soul with peace.
The quarter of an hour was over.
Jane crossed the hall with firm, though noiseless, step; stood a moment on the threshold relegating herself completely to the background; then opened the door; and Nurse Rosemary re-entered the library.
CHAPTER x.x.xIV
"LOVE NEVER FAILETH"
Garth was standing at the open window, when Nurse Rosemary re-entered the library; and he did not turn, immediately.
She looked anxiously for the letter, and saw it laid ready on her side of the table. It bore signs of having been much crumpled; looking almost as a letter might appear which had been crushed into a ball, flung into the waste-paper basket, and afterwards retrieved. It had, however, been carefully smoothed out; and lay ready to her hand.
When Garth turned from the window and pa.s.sed to his chair, his face bore the signs of a great struggle. He looked as one who, sightless, has yet been making frantic efforts to see. The ivory pallor was gone.
His face was flushed; and his thick hair, which grew in beautiful curves low upon his forehead and temples, and was usually carefully brushed back in short-cropped neatness, was now ruffled and disordered.
But his voice was completely under control, as he turned towards his secretary.
"My dear Miss Gray," he said, "we have a difficult task before us. I have received a letter, which it is essential I should hear. I am obliged to ask you to read it to me, because there is absolutely no one else to whom I can prefer such a request. I cannot but know that it will be a difficult and painful task for you, feeling yourself an intermediary between two wounded and sundered hearts. May I make it easier, my dear little girl, by a.s.suring you that I know of no one in this world from whose lips I could listen to the contents of that letter with less pain; and, failing my own, there are no eyes beneath which I could less grudgingly let it pa.s.s, there is no mind I could so unquestioningly trust, to judge kindly, both of myself and of the writer; and to forget faithfully, all which was not intended to come within the knowledge of a third person."
"Thank you, Mr. Dalmain," said Nurse Rosemary.
Garth leaned back in his chair, shielding his face with his hand.
"Now, if you please," he said. And, very clearly and quietly, Nurse Rosemary began to read.