"I am not sure that I understand you," I answered. "I certainly did not originate any plot against you."
"Nay, but you fell in with it. I know all about it, so you may just as well confess. Miss Berdenstein was to leave off making inconvenient inquiries about Philip Maltabar, and you were to be as rude to me as you could. Wasn"t that something like the arrangement? You see I know all about it. I have had the benefit of a full confession."
"If you know," I remarked, "you do not need to ask me."
"That is quite true," he answered, opening a gate and motioning me to precede him. "But at the same time I thought that it would be rather--well, piquant to hear the details from you."
"You are very ungenerous," I said, coldly.
"I hope not," he answered. "Do you know I only discovered this diabolical affair yesterday, and----"
"Mr. Deville!"
He turned round and looked at me. I was standing in the middle of the path, and I daresay I looked as angry as I felt.
"I will tell you the truth," I said. "Afterwards, if you allude to the matter at all I shall go away at once. The girl has it in her power, as you know, to do us terrible harm. She, of her own accord, offered to forego that power forever--although she is quite ignorant of its extent--if I would not see or talk with you. She was a little fool to make the offer, of course, but I should have been more foolish still if I had not accepted it. She imagined that our relative positions were different. However, that is of no consequence, of course. I made the bargain, and I kept my part of it. I avoided you, and I left the neighborhood. You have reminded me that I am not keeping to the letter of my agreement in being here with you. I should prefer your leaving me, as I can find my way home quite well alone."
"It is unnecessary," he said. "The agreement is off. Miss Berdenstein and I have had an understanding."
"You are engaged, then?" I faltered.
"Well, no," he said, coolly, "I should perhaps have said a misunderstanding."
"Tell me the truth at once," I demanded.
"I am most anxious to do so," he answered. "She was, as you remarked, a little fool. She became sentimental, and I laughed at her. She became worse, and I put her right. That was last night. She was silly enough to get into a pa.s.sion, and from her incoherencies I gathered the reason why you were so unapproachable those last few days at the Vicarage. That is why I got up at six o"clock this morning and rode into Eastminster."
"Have you come here this morning?" I asked.
"Yes, it"s only thirty miles," he answered, coolly. "I wanted to see you."
I was silent for a few moments. This was news indeed. What might come of it I scarcely dared to think. A whole torrent of surmises came flooding in upon me.
"Where is she?" I asked.
"In London, I should think, by this time," he answered.
I drew a long breath of relief. To be rid of her for a time would be happiness.
"I believe," he continued, "that she intends to return to Paris."
After all it was perhaps the best thing that could happen; if she had been in earnest--and I knew that she had been in earnest--she would hate England now. At any rate she would not want to come back again just yet. My face cleared. After all it was good news.
"She has gone--out of our lives, I hope," he said, quietly, "and in her hysterics she left one little legacy behind for me--and that is hope. I know that I am not half good enough for you," he said, with an odd little tremble in his tone, "but you have only seen the worst of me. Do you think that you could care for me a little? Would you try?"
Then when I should have been strong I was pitiably weak. I struggled for words in despair. He was so calm, so strong, so confident. How was I to stand against him?
"It is impossible," I said; "you know who I am. I shall never marry."
He laughed at me scornfully.
"If that is all," he said, taking my hands suddenly into his, "you shall not leave me until you have promised."
"But--I----"
Then he was very bold, and I should have been very angry, but was not. He looked coolly round, and finding that there was no one in sight, he drew me to him and kissed me. His arms were like steel bars around me, I could not possibly escape. After that there were no words which I could say. I was amazed at myself, but I was very happy. The twilight was falling upon the city when we walked once more through the little streets, and my veil was closely drawn to hide my wet eyes.
My lover--I dared to call him that at last--was coming home with me, and for a few brief moments my footsteps seemed to be falling upon air.
I allowed myself the luxury of forgetfulness; the load of anxiety which had seemed crushing had suddenly rolled away. But at the entrance to the close a little dark figure met us face to face, and my blood ran cold in my veins, for she lifted her veil, and my dream of happiness vanished into thin air. Her face was like the face of an evil spirit, yet she would have pa.s.sed me without a word, but that I held out my hand and stopped her.
"What are you doing here?" I asked. "What do you want?"
She smiled at me with the malice of a fiend.
"It was a little call," she said, "which I was paying upon your father. He was unfortunately not at home. No matter, I shall call again; I shall call again and again until I see him. I am in no hurry to leave. Eastminster is such an interesting place!"
Then my heart died away within me, and the light of my sudden happiness grew dim. She looked from one to the other of us, and her eyes were lit with a new fury. Some subtle instinct seemed to guide her to the truth.
"May I congratulate you both?" she asked, with a sneer in her tone. "A little sudden, isn"t it?"
We did not answer. I had no words, and Bruce remained grimly and contemptuously silent. She gathered up her skirts, and her eyes flashed an evil light upon us.
"After all," she exclaimed, "it is an admirable arrangement! How happy you both look! Don"t let me keep you! I shall call later on this evening."
She flitted away like a dark shadow and pa.s.sed underneath the stone archway out of the close. I covered my face with my hands and moaned. It had come at last, then. All that I had done had been useless. I was face to face with despair.
CHAPTER XXIX
THE BREAKING OF THE STORM
It was at evensong in the great cathedral that she tasted the first fruits of her triumph. During the earlier portion of the service the shadows had half enveloped the huge body of the building, and the white faces of the congregation had been only dimly visible to us from where we sat in one of the high side pews. But when my father ascended the steps into the pulpit, and stood for a minute looking downwards with the light from a little semi-circle of candles thrown upon his pale, delicate face, I caught the sound of a sharp, smothered cry from a seat close to ours. With a little shiver of dread I looked around. She had half risen from her seat, and was leaning over the front of the pew. Her eyes were riveted upon him, and her thin, sallow face was white with sudden excitement. I saw him look up, and their eyes met for one terrible moment. He did not flinch or falter. But for the slightly prolonged resting of his eyes upon her eager, strained face he took no more notice of her than of any other member of the congregation. I alone knew that her challenge had been met and answered, and it was my hard fate to sit there and suffer in silence.
There was no mark of nervousness or weakness of any sort in the sermon he preached. He seemed to be speaking with a consciousness perhaps that it might be for the last time, and with a deliberate effort that some part of those delicately chosen sentences might leave an everlasting mark behind him. Already his fame as a preacher was spreading, and many of the townspeople were there, attracted by his presence. They listened with a rare and fervid attention. As for me, it seemed that I should never altogether lose the memory of that low, musical voice, never once raised above its ordinary pitch, yet with every word penetrating softly and clearly into the furthermost corner of the great building. There was a certain wistfulness in his manner that night, a gentle, pathetic eloquence which brought glistening tears into the eyes of more than one of the little throng of listeners. For he spoke of death, and of the leaving behind of all earthly things--of death, and of spiritual death--of the ties between man and woman and man and G.o.d. It was all so different to what is generally expected from a preacher with the reputation of eloquence, so devoid of the usual arts of oratory, and yet so sweetly human, aesthetically beautiful that when at last, with a few words, in a sense valedictory he left the pulpit, and the low strains of the organ grew louder and louder. I slipped from my seat and groped across the close with my eyes full of blinding tears. I had a pa.s.sionate conviction that I had misjudged my father. Suddenly he seemed to loom before my eyes in a new light--the light of a martyr. My judgments concerning him seemed harsh and foolish. Who was I to judge such a man as that?
He was as far above me as the stars, and I had refused him my sympathy. He had begged for it, and I had refused it! I had left him to carry his burden alone! It seemed to me then that never whilst I lived could I escape from the bitterness of this sudden whirlwind of regret.
Swiftly though I had walked from the cathedral, he was already in his study when I entered the house. I opened the door timidly. He was sitting in his chair leaning back with half-closed eyes like a man overcome with sudden pain. I fell on my knees by his side and took his fingers in mine.
"Father!" I cried, "I have done my best to keep her away! I have done all that I could!"
His hand pressed mine gently. Then there was a loud ringing at the bell. I sprang up white with fear.
"I will not let her come here!" I cried. "We will say that you are ill! She must go away!"