Now he stood n.o.bly from his chair and she was up with a little loving rush to his arms. Then, as he would have held her protectingly, she gently pushed away.
"Don"t--don"t take me yet, dear--I should be crying in another moment--I"m so--so _beaten_--and I want not to cry till I"ve told you, oh, so many things! Sit again and let us talk calmly first. Now why--_why_ did you pretend this wretched thing?"
He faced her proudly, with the big, honest, clumsy dignity of a rugged man--and there was a loving quiet in his tones that touched her ineffably.
"Poor Bernal had told me his--his _contretemps_. The rest is simple. He is my brother. The last I remember of our mother is her straining me to her poor breast and saying, "Oh, take care of little Bernal!"" Tears were glistening in his eyes.
"From the very freedom of the poor boy"s talk about religious matters, it is the more urgent that his conduct be irreproachable. I could not bear that even you should think a shameful thing of him."
She looked at him with swimming eyes, yet held her tears in check through the very excitement of this splendid new admiration for him.
"But that was foolish--quixotic--"
"You will never know, little woman, what a brother"s love is. Don"t you remember years ago I told you that I would stand by Bernal, come what might. Did you think that was idle boasting?"
"But you were willing to have me suspect _that_ of you!"
He spoke with a sad, sweet gentleness now, as one might speak who had long suffered hurts in secret.
"Dearest--dear little woman--I already knew that I had been unable to retain your love--G.o.d knows I tried--but in some way I had proved unworthy of it. I had come to believe--painful and humiliating though that belief was--that you could not think less of me--your words to-night proved that I was right--you would have gone away, even without this. But at least my poor brother might still seem good to you."
"Oh, you poor, foolish, foolish, man--And yet, Allan, nothing less than this would have shown you truly to me. I can speak plainly now--indeed I must, for once. Allan, you have ways--mannerisms--that are unfortunate.
They raised in me a conviction that you were not genuine--that you were somehow false. Don"t let it hurt now, dear, for see--this one little unstudied, impetuous act of devotion, simple and instinctive with your generous heart, has revealed your true self to me as nothing else could have done. Oh, don"t you see how you have given me at last what I had to have, if we were to live on together--something in you to _hold_ to--a foundation to rest upon--something I can know in my heart of hearts is stable--despite any outward, traitorous _seeming_! Now forever I can be loving, and loyal, in spite of all those signs which I see at last are misleading."
Again and again she sought to envelope him with acceptable praises, while he gazed fondly at her from that justified pride in his own stanchness--murmuring, "Nance, you please me--you _please_ me!"
"Don"t you see, dear? I couldn"t reach you before. You gave me nothing to believe in--not even G.o.d. That seeming lack of genuineness in you stifled my soul. I could no longer even want to be good--and all that for the lack of this dear foolish bit of realness in you."
"No one can know better than I that my nature is a faulty one, Nance--"
"Say unfortunate, Allan--not faulty. I shall never again believe a fault of you. How stupid a woman can be, how superficial in her judgments--and what stupids they are who say she is intuitive! Do you know, I believed in Bernal infinitely more than I can tell you, and Bernal made me believe in everything else--in G.o.d and goodness and virtue and truth--in all the good things we like to believe in--yet see what he did!"
"My dear, I know little of the circ.u.mstances, but--"
"It isn"t _that_--I can"t judge him in that--but this I must judge--Bernal, when he saw I did not know who had been there, was willing I should think it was you. To retain my respect he was willing to betray you." She laughed, a little hard laugh, and seemed to be in pain. "You will never know just what the thought of that boy has been to me all these years, and especially this last week. But now--poor weak Bernal! Poor _Judas_, indeed!" There was a kind of anguished bitterness in the last words.
"My dear, try not to think harshly of the poor boy," remonstrated Allan gently. "Remember that whatever his mistakes, he has a good heart--and he is my brother."
"Oh! you big, generous, good-thinking boy, you--Can"t you see that is precisely what he _lacks_--a good heart? Oh, dearest, I needed this--to show Bernal to me not less than to show you to me. There were grave reasons why I needed to see you both as I see you this moment."
There were steps along the hall and a knock at the door.
"It must be Bernal," he said--"he was to leave about this time."
"I can"t see him again."
"Just this once, dear--for _my_ sake! Come!"
Bernal stood in the doorway, hat in hand, his bag at his feet. With his hat he held a letter. Allan went forward to meet him. Nancy stood up to study the lines of an etching on the wall.
"I"ve come to say good-bye, you know." She heard the miserable embarra.s.sment of his tones, and knew, though she did not glance at him, that there was a shameful droop to his whole figure.
Allan shook hands with him, first taking the letter he held.
"Good-bye--old chap--G.o.d bless you!"
He muttered, with that wretched consciousness of guilt, something about being sorry to go.
"And I don"t want to preach, old chap," continued Allan, giving the hand a farewell grip, "but remember there are always two pairs of arms that will never be shut to you, the arms of the Church of Him who died to save us,--and my own poor arms, hardly less loving."
"Thank you, old boy--I"ll go back to Hoover"--he looked hesitatingly at the profile of Nancy--"Hoover thinks it"s all rather droll, you know--Good-bye, old boy! Good-bye, Nancy."
"My dear, Bernal is saying good-bye."
She turned and said "good-bye." He stepped toward her--seeming to her to slink as he walked--but he held out his hand and she gave him her own, cold, and unyielding. He went out, with a last awkward "Good-bye, old chap!" to Allan.
Nancy turned to face her husband, putting out her hands to him. He had removed from its envelope the letter Bernal had left him, and seemed about to put it rather hastily into his pocket, but she seized it playfully, not noting that his hand gave it up with a certain reluctance, her eyes upon his face.
"No more business to-night--we have to talk. Oh, I must tell you so much that has troubled me and made me doubt, my dear--and my poor mind has been up and down like a see-saw. I wonder it"s not a wreck. Come, put away your business--there." She placed the letter and its envelope on the desk.
"Now sit here while I tell you things."
An hour they were there, lingering in talk--talking in a circle; for at regular intervals Nancy must return to this: "I believe no wife ever goes away until there is absolutely no shred of possibility left--no last bit of realness to hold her. But now I know your stanchness."
"Really, Nance--I can"t tell you how much you please me."
There was a knock at the door. They looked at each other bewildered.
"The telephone, sir," said the maid in response to Allan"s tardy "Come in."
When he had gone, whistling cheerily, she walked nervously about the room, studying familiar objects from out of her animated meditation.
Coming to his desk, she snuggled affectionately into his chair and gazed fondly over its litter of papers. With a little instinctive move to bring somewhat of order to the chaos, she reached forward, but her elbow brushed to the floor two or three letters that had lain at the edge of the desk.
As she stooped to pick up the fallen papers the letter Bernal had left lay open before her, a letter written in long, slanting but vividly legible characters. And then, quite before she recognised what letter it was, or could feel curious concerning it, the first illuminating line of it had flashed irrevocably to her mind"s centre.
When Allan appeared in the doorway a few minutes later, she was standing by the desk. She held the letter in both hands and over it her eyes flamed--blasted.
Divining what she had done, his mind ran with lightning quickness to face this new emergency. But he was puzzled and helpless, for now her hands fell and she laughed weakly, almost hysterically. He searched for the key to this unnatural behaviour. He began, hesitatingly, expecting some word from her to guide him along the proper line of defense.
"I am sure, my dear--if you had only--only trusted me--implicitly--your opinion of this affair--"
At the sound of his voice she ceased to laugh, stiffening into a wild, grim intensity.
"Now I can look that thing straight in the eyes and it can"t hurt me."
"In the eyes?" he questioned, blankly.
"I can _go_ now."