Yes, ghosts! Even when he went into the empty fencing-school that had been so full of strong, young life, Jordan felt a deadness, a sense of a season that was ended. Tom Nando haunted him here, and when he stood and remembered Mrs. Merris sitting up yonder in the sunlit gallery he seemed to see a little frail ghost come between him and her.
"You have promised," it said; "I see all. You would not wound me, Jordan, would you? I loved you so much, and of that love I died."
He felt very helpless, very lonely. It seemed to him that all the old life was dead, and that he had no power in him to make it alive again. There was an unbridgeable gap between it and him, and he stood on new ground, on the edge of a new world, bewildered, shaken, unable to see things clearly, still conscious of memories which would not be left behind.
When two weeks had gone by Jordan took his first definite step. He shut up the house in Spaniards Court, sent the wenches away, and joined Mary Nando at St. Pancras. The fencing-school was reopened, but most of the work was left in old Bertrand's hands, Jordan having no heart for it. He began to realize that he did not want to go back to the old life, and the only thing that weighed with him was Mrs. Mary's pride in Thomas Nando's fencing-school.
He spoke to her about it.
"Mother, would it hurt you if I gave up being a fencing-master?"
She was slow in answering, for like Jordan she was finding the new life difficult. To lose things when one is old is far harder than when youth offers new adventures and new chances.
"You must please yourself, my dear. Your life is your own."
"No man's life is quite his own, mother. And as it is I do not know what to do with it."
Mrs. Mary bent her head over her work.
"That will pass, my dear. Why, you are just coming to your full strength. What is in your mind?"
Jordan went and stood by the window and looked at the flowers in the garden.
"I don't quite know."
"Ah," said she, "not yet!"
"So much depends——"
"My dear, don't let an old woman stand in your way."
He was touched! He came and leant upon the back of her chair.
"I don't think you have ever stood in my way, mother. No, you have had the making of me. But I am restless; I feel that some change is coming, as though I were a soldier waiting for an order."
"Well—it will come."
"But—maybe—it will be an order that I cannot obey."
He let his hand rest gently on her shoulder.
"Bear with me, mother. I am not thinking only of myself. And that is what life seems to be whipping into me just now, that no man stands quite alone."
Mary Nando nodded her head.
"That's true, Jordan. But some day——"
"Some day?"
"You will want to marry again, my dear. No—no, don't think me hard and practical."
"Mother, I promised never to marry again."
Mrs. Mary let her hands drop to her lap.
"My dear!"
"Yes, just before she died. And, after all, a promise is a promise."
"Yes, a promise is a promise," she answered.
Before a week was out Jordan had sold the goodwill of Nando's Fencing-School to a Captain Stenning, on the stipulation that old Bertrand should be kept on there until he chose to retire. And when the deed was done, and the agreement had been sealed and signed, Jordan felt that the distance between him and the past had broadened immeasurably, and that with a few scratches of a quill he had signed away the world of his unthinking youth. He was strangely solemn over it, saddened. He took a last look at the big room, shook hands with old Bertrand, who showed many symptoms of emotion, and mounting his horse which a boy was holding in the yard, he rode out from that old world into the new. Nor did he go back at once to Mary Nando's house. He set his horse for the country, for the country called him. He wanted the greenness of it, the solitude, the great spaces, the open sky, the wind.
But even here he had to keep to the roads and the lanes. He was in a land of gates and of hedges where other men had been before him, and had set their seal upon the land. There was no real elbow-room here, save on a few heaths where certain adventurous vagabonds took the purses of the men of property. Not that Jordan had any prejudice against property. He was a northerner, with all the northerner's passion for the land, a possessive passion that was ready to add acre to acre.
Open country! A new land in which neither men nor fields were marked off by hedges and ditches, a land in which that which he could accomplish would be his. Yes, that was what he wanted, and he knew it, as he had known it for the last two or three years.
The new world!
Raw, perhaps, and difficult, but wild and splendid. He would be a man in it, a man with strong arms and a steady eye. In the old world he was just nothing and a fencing-master; in the new world he might be himself.
He pulled up his horse on the top of a hill, and looked back upon London. Yes, it was great and full of strong life, but it's greatness was not for him. "Your servant, sir!" He was beginning to swear to himself that he would be a servant to no man.
He smiled, as a man smiles sometimes when he is conscious of bitter yet tender thoughts.
"Douce, little thing, you may have done this for me. You have made me a bondman, and you have set me free. I am alone—now. A man who sets out to fight for his own land should not be cumbered with women."
He rode down the hill, and as the distant greyness that was London sank away behind the trees he knew that his stoicism had a flaw in it. He knew it because he felt it, which is the surest way of knowing. That other love was there, greater than ever, because he felt cut off from it, a splendid dream of passion and comradeship and understanding, of fine devotion and honour, and all that makes life beautifully human.
"I should like to tell her—I ought to tell her," he thought "but not—not yet."
He did not know that their thoughts had crossed, and that while he was out there under the open sky Mrs. Merris was learning of his tragedy.
She had sent someone to inquire for Douce, and her message had found the house in Spaniards Court shut up, but falling in with old Bertrand she had heard some of the news.
"Mrs. March died two weeks ago, madam; she died in childbirth."
Mrs. Merris' eyes had a frightened look.
"Dead! And the child?"
"It was never born, madam."
"Dear God, how heartless things are! And did you hear——?"
"Mr. March has sold the fencing-school. The house is shut up."
"Thank you, Kate. I never thought to hear such news when I sent you out to ask after the little lady."
She was shocked by the very unexpectedness of the tragedy, and challenged by the intimate personal message that it delivered to her. Her inner self stood at gaze. There were certain tendencies that she had thrust into the background of her mind and hidden behind her pride, but now a barrier had been rolled back, and she saw herself facing life as one faces some crisis that is inevitable. She had more than a feeling that Jordan would come to her. It was her right, for she had stood for the right all through, and she had nothing to regret. She foresaw his need of her, or imagined it. And she was full of a smiling compassion and of the impulse towards giving.
But he had not come to her yet, and she had to confess that she was both surprised and not surprised. She found herself wondering whether he would dare to come, whether he would wait for some word from her. But she would send him no word. She would wait. The privilege of coming to her was his.
A week passed, and at the end of it Mary Nando noticed a change in Jordan. He was less restless, more silent, but not less sad, and yet she felt a different texture in his sadness. He had the air of a man who had come through some inward struggle, and had found strength in a settled purpose. She suspected that he had something to tell her, and that he was finding the approach to it difficult and uneasy. He was very gentle with her. His eyes always seemed to be asking a quest
ion, a question which it would be hard for her to answer.
But one night he asked it. They had gone out together into the garden, and were wandering slowly round Tom Nando's flower-beds with their edging of clipped box. Jordan had been more silent than usual, and Mrs. Mary knew that he had something in his mind.
"Mother—I want to ask you a question, a hard question."
"Yes, my dear."
"I want to go to a new country, but I do not want to leave you."
She understood. She understood by reason of the love that was in her, and she stood very still looking at the spring of the little fountain that was playing in the sunk stone cistern. She saw the glitter and heard the soft splash of it, and she knew that she was an old woman and that age clings to certain things, provided that it has good memories and is not greedy for the last apple. Yet she was wounded in making this last choice. Little puckers of pain showed on her face. She was so alone now, with no man to run to, no one to care very greatly whether she was happy or sad. And yet, she had the courage to find a smile.
"I am too old, my dear."
He answered her at once, and very calmly.
"That decides it, mother. I shall stay."
She drew a deep breath and nerved herself to fight against her own longings.
"No—my dear, if you feel the call—you must go. I am an old woman."
She laid a hand upon his arm.
"Don't think I do not understand, or that I do not care. It is because I care so much, my dear, that I would not hold you back."
Jordan bent and kissed her white hair.
"I know that. And I am not going. How many years have you given to me?"
"My dear, I had my happiness out of them. Should I grudge you yours?"
"It is I who grudge them, mother. I do not think I should be happy all alone out there with you alone over here. That settles it."
"No, my dear, no."
"But it does."
She could not move him, and though she attempted it time after time as the days passed she failed. So determined was he that he set about trying to rent or buy a farm in the neighbourhood as though he had no other thought than to anchor himself there. He rode all over the country and spent many hours working in Thomas Nando's garden, but with all this appearance of finality he could not satisfy Mary Nando's heart. She was divided against herself. She wanted to keep him, and she wanted to send him away.
Meanwhile, another woman was waiting in the centre of her little painted world of gallants and simpering ladies, and looking out upon it from her window or from the window of her coach, and thinking how little it all said to her. She was too young, and she was too old. She was being made love to by a precise and witty gentleman with dead eyes and a face the colour of clay, and she suffered him for the sake of the contrast. This bleating, complacent, scurrilous creature, whose one idea of a man's dignity was that he should fit well into his coat! She let herself be pleasantly wearied. She indulged her glimmering scorn, listening to Sir Egremond Sarsnet's flattery, the flattery of a thin-lipped man with a yellow liver. She knew that he loved his petty cruelties, his little pin-points of venom, and she thought of a big hand flattening him as a big hand might flatten a gadfly.
She indulged herself in this contrast. The woman in her spread Sir Egremond out upon a board, and pinned out all his insect anatomy. His littlenesses and his sallowness made her inward love seem so good and fresh. She took draughts of the "wit" as though his acidity cleaned her tongue. He was all that her man was not, and nothing that she wished him to be. The fellow's complacency delighted her. He went about blowing into his conceit as though it were a bladder.
"These yellow, dead-eyed men never did move me."
Sir Egremond was with her, and making polite fun of Aunt Julia and Aunt Julia's parrot, when Mrs. Merris saw Jordan on horseback under her window. She rose and, leaning forward, made a sign to him to dismount. The "wit's" head joined her at the window, inquisitive, facetious.
"Why—March, the fencing fellow!"
She ignored him; she was smiling at Jordan with a significant seriousness.
"I will send a boy to take your horse to the stables. Yes—I am alone. This gentleman is going."
She turned on Sir Egremond. She was gracious, casual.
"I am sorry you must go, sir. I am sure poor Poll will miss you."
He looked astonished. He moistened his thin lips, gave her one glare, and made his bow.
"I was not aware, madam——"
"Oh—Mr. March and I are very old friends, and with me friends come first. Please remember the two steps at the end of the landing. Aunt, dear, would you oblige me by ringing the bell for Sambo?"
Sir Egremond bowed himself out, while the parrot set up a sudden, exultant screaming. The insect game was over; the bladder had been pricked for once, and though the "wit" cocked a yellow-braided hat over a yellow face, he was still an angry fly on spindle legs. Mrs. Merris stood at the window. She held Jordan's eyes. Her seriousness was half light, half shadow.
She knew at once when he entered the room that he had something to tell her, and she had a vague feeling that it was not what she had expected to hear. Miss Stamford, strangely wise for once, crept out and left them alone together.
"I suppose you know, madam, what his happened to me?"
"Yes—I know."
She sat down in her chair, while he leant against the window-casing, and looked lost; for it is so easy to tell a thing to an imagined person, and so hard to tell it to a real one, the most real one of all.
"A tragedy," she said. "Sometimes one does not wish to speak. I understand!"
"Yes, that depends," he said, and stealing a glance at her as she sat there, was smitten with all the longing that he had ever known, that helpless longing. The frame of her dark hair enclosed the rich and mysteriously satisfying beauty of her face. Yes, it was so rich, so mature; yet there was a wildness about it that made him think of rich, wild country. She was no painted jade whose mouth and eyes would lose their mystery after the first kisses.
She felt his glance, and the restrained and helpless ardour of it, and looking up her eyes met his.
"How very weary you must be."
She saw his surprise.
"Yes, that is true. One does not realize how such a loss empties one."
"Poor Mr. Jordan!"
He made a little movement, and then seemed to restrain himself. He turned to the window.
"I have given up the fencing-school. The place was dead to me. Perhaps you know the feeling, when you seem to have crossed a frontier."
"O, yes—I know it. One has shed one's old skin, and you feel raw and strange."
"Yes, raw and strange."
She wondered what was on his mind, for he was labouring towards some point with hesitation and with difficulty, nor could she be sure that he was not still in some pit of desolation, accusing himself, reproaching himself. Death leaves the conscience very raw, and this man was big and human.
"She had you such a little while. But—then—she was happy."
"I wonder?"
"O—surely!"
He remained very still, thinking, and presently she had to glance at him, for his silence began to overshadow her like a cloud. She wanted to see through it, to discover the clearer sky beyond the inevitableness of his regrets and self-reproaching compassions.
"I do not think I realized," he said slowly, "how much a woman could care."
"Not till she was dying?"
"Yes."
"Poor little wife! Like a child, frightened, being carried away from one like the sea when the ship goes down."
Mariana saw him straighten as he stood, and she knew that she had touched the inmost core of him.
"Yes, just like that. Washed away from you almost before you have time to speak. A cry, and it is all over. She had time to cry out to me, to make me promise something."
He paused for a moment, mouth set, eyes steady. The truth was coming, and with a flash of intuition
she envisaged it, and all the pity of it.
"She made you promise?"
"That I never would marry again."
"Poor little thing! And you made her that promise? Yes, you would. I know how such words rush from the heart into the mouth."
Mrs. Merris waited. She could not believe that he would hold such a promise to be final, but in looking at Jordan as he stood there she was made to realize that he felt himself bound. The emotion born of his wife's tragedy was still very strong in him. It dominated him for the time being, and she understood that he would try to keep that promise.
But did he wish to keep it? That was what troubled her. She was more wounded by the thought of it than Jordan knew, and yet she held back the cry of protest and refused to question the selfishness of Douce's last words. She did not tell him that no woman had any right to wring such a promise from a man, for if the desire in him to discover its selfishness was strong enough he would discover it for himself.
"So life begins afresh," she said. "What are you going to do with it?"
He gave her one quick look, a glance in which he betrayed half the hope that was in him. She had accepted his promise, and in his heart of hearts he had hoped that she might help him to break it. Something cried out in her, but she held fast to her silence. It was Jordan who must break that promise, if ever it was to be broken.
"You have all your life before you. What will you do with it?"
He sat down in a chair as though he felt tired. His eyes had a resigned look, but at the back of them lurked a spirit of protest.
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