He closed the door, tossed his stick into a corner, and, taking both the girl"s hands, drew her into the little dining-room.
"Miss Allonby," he said, in tones whose affectionate warmth was in itself a comfort--"Miss Allonby, if you are in trouble, I must help you.
I have come at the right moment. Now, what is it? Do you feel able to tell me?"
She sank upon a chair, turning her quivering face away out of his sight.
"Oh!" she said, "how can I tell you? How can I? It is all so miserable, so.... What a way to receive you!... You must have thought me mad."
"I thought nothing of the kind. I could see that you were utterly over-wrought. For pity"s sake, don"t make apologies--don"t treat me as if I were a stranger. Tell me what the trouble is."
She lifted her eyes, the lashes drowned in tears that could not fall.
"I will show you, I think," said she. "Come."
Rising, she hastily went out, he following, expecting he knew not what.
She led him into the studio.
It was a fair-sized room, built out behind the small house. Usually it was a charming place. Girlish fingers had arranged quaint pottery and artistic draperies--placing lamps in dark corners, flowers in vases, and tinting the shabby furniture with color. The piano stood there, and near the fire a well-worn sofa, and two or three capacious wicker chairs.
To-day a nameless desolation overspread the very air. Mr. Fowler entered, and looked straight before him. An enormous canvas was mounted on a screw easel in the best light the room afforded. The landscape had been put in with masterly freedom, and was almost finished. But a hole a foot square gaped in the centre of the picture, and the canvas was hacked and torn away in strips, some lying on the floor beneath. Near this ruin was a gilt frame, the portrait from which had been slit clean out, torn across and across, and left in fragments. So all round the room. Picture after picture had been torn from the wall, and dashed to the ground as if by a frenzied hand. A pile of delicate water-color studies on paper lay in the grate half charred, wholly destroyed. The whole scene was one of utter and hopeless wreckage. The mischief was irremediable.
The visitor uttered an exclamation of consternation. "What does it mean?" he asked.
"I don"t think I ought to tell you," said the girl, who was standing against the wall as if for support, her head thrown back, her eyes raised as if to avoid seeing the desolation which surrounded her.
"Nonsense. You _must_ tell me," said Henry, bluntly.
Slowly she took a letter from her pocket, went forward, and laid it on a table which stood near the centre of the room. The table was heaped with a confusion of brushes, tubes of color, palette knives, varnish bottles, and mugs of turpentine, all of which had been pushed hastily together, that the letter might occupy a prominent position by itself.
"When I went to call my brother this morning," said Wyn, obeying his mandate as if she could not help herself, "I could not make him hear. At last I went in. He was not in his room; he had not been to bed at all.
It seemed to give me a terrible shock: I--I--partly guessed ... I knew I ought to have told him; but I...."
"Don"t reproach yourself--go straight on," said Henry, anxiously.
"I rushed down here: for he has done such a thing as sit up all night.
He was gone; the room was as you see it. That letter was on the table."
He possessed himself of the envelope. It was hastily scrawled on the outside in pencil, "For Wynifred." In a tremor of apprehension, he drew out the enclosure. It was in Elsa"s hand-writing.
"DEAR MR. ALLONBY,
"I am afraid this letter will make you very angry, and this makes me sorry to write, as I have always liked you so much, ever since I knew you. But I think I ought to let you know that I have found out that I do not love you well enough to marry you some day, as you hoped. I am engaged to be married to Mr. Percivale, who was so kind and good when everyone else thought that I had killed my brother. I hope this will not disappoint you too much, and that we shall always be friends. I send my love to your sisters, and remain,
"Yours sincerely,
"ELAINE BRADBOURNE.
"P.S.--You see I had not seen Mr. Percivale when I said I would marry you."
CHAPTER XLV.
Now I may speak; you fool, for all Your lore! WHO made things plain in vain?
What was the sea for? What the grey Sad church, that solitary day, Crosses and graves, and swallows call?
Was there nought better them to enjoy, No feat which, done, would make time break And let us pent-up creatures through Into eternity, our due?
_Dis aliter visum._
At this letter Mr. Fowler stared, as though some magnetic power rivetted his eyes to the sheet.
At last he slowly lifted his gaze, to fix it on Wyn.
"Is this the only intimation--the only explanation she has given him?"
The girl a.s.sented.
"It is my fault," she said, huskily. "I knew it two days ago, Mr.
Cranmer told me, but I had not the heart nor the strength to tell Osmond; I could not!"
"It is monstrous, heartless. I cannot understand it," he said, in a hara.s.sed voice. "Something should be done--she should be made to feel--I think Percivale should see this letter!"
"Oh, no! No! You must not think of such a thing!" Leaping up, the girl caught the letter from his hand. "It is not her fault--not her fault--it was poor Osmond"s!... What she says is true. She had seen no one when he spoke to her. She did not understand what it meant! Her mind was like a child"s--unformed. She could not have remained as she was then. It is natural, it is what I felt would come."
"But this unnatural, insolent brevity!" cried Henry, indignantly. "See here: "To be married, as _you_ hoped." "I hope _you_ will not be disappointed." Nothing of what it costs her to write and own her change of feeling. I call it intolerable."
"Oh, it is better so! Better any brevity, however crude, than hollow professions, or--or useless regret. You must not blame her, please, Mr.
Fowler. It will be all right soon, as soon as I hear that he is safe,"
panted poor Wyn, biting her pale lips.
"How can you take her part, here in the ruin she has caused?" demanded Henry, fiercely.
"She did not cause it. I will be just," said Wyn, faintly but firmly.
"Osmond has deluded himself. She never loved him--he should have known it. She had forgotten him in a month. She never came here, never wrote to us, never took any steps to renew the intimacy, yet he would go on, hugging his folly, though I told him what it would be."
Even in his agitation he had time for a pa.s.sing feeling of fervent admiration for the woman who could be just at such a crisis.
"I will spend no more time in lamenting over spilt milk," he said, "but see if I cannot help you, Miss Wynifred. I suppose your brother"s absence is the chief trouble?"
She answered by a movement of the head.
"What steps have you taken?"
"Mr. Haldane, who is engaged to Jacqueline, has gone to Scotland Yard. I thought it was his knock when you came--that was why I went to the door.
The girls are gone together to telegraph to a friend of his who lives in a little remote village; he sometimes goes there, we thought it was possible he might have done so to-day."