"I must. You did not care then. If a flagrant case came before you you gave something like other uncharitable people who hate feeling uncomfortable. But you care now. You seek out those who need you. Answer me. Were they cheaply bought or not, that compassion and love for the degraded and the suffering which were the outcome of your years of poverty in Museum Buildings?"
"They were cheaply bought," said Rachel, with conviction, speaking with difficulty.
"Would you have learned them if you had gone on living in Portman Square?"
"Oh, Hester! would anybody?"
"Yes, they would. But that is not the question. Would you?"
"N—no," said Rachel.
There was a long silence.
Rachel's mind took its staff and travelled slowly, humbly, a few more difficult steps up that steep path where "Experience is converted into thought as a mulberry-leaf is converted into satin."
At last she turned her grave eyes upon her friend.
"I see what you mean," she said; "I have not reached the place yet; but I can believe that I shall come to it some day, when I shall feel as thankful for that trouble as I do feel now for having known poverty. Yes, Hester, you are right. I was a hard woman, without imagination. I have been taught in the only way I could learn—by experience. I have been very fortunate."
Hester did not answer, but bent down and kissed Rachel's hands. It was as if she had said, "Forgive me for finding fault with one so far above me." And the action was so understood.
Rachel colored, and they sat for a moment hand close in hand, heart very near to heart.
"How is it you are so sure of these things, Hester?" said Rachel, in a whisper. "When you say them I see they are true, and I believe them, but how do you know them?"
A shadow, a very slight one, fell across Hester's face. "'Love knows the secret of grief.' But can Love claim that knowledge if he is asked how he came by it by one who should have known?" The question crept in between the friends and moved them apart. Hester's voice altered.
"Minna would say that I picked them up from the conversation of James. You know the Pratts are perfectly aware of what I have, of course, tried to conceal, namely, that the love-scenes in the Idyll were put together from scraps I had collected of James's engagement to Minna. And all the humorous bits are claimed by a colony of cousins in Devonshire who say that any one 'who had heard them talk' could have written the Idyll. And any one who had not heard them apparently. The so-called profane passages are all that are left to me as my own."
"You are profane now," said Rachel, smiling, but secretly wounded by the flippancy which she had brought upon herself.
A distant whoop distracted their attention, and they saw Regie galloping towards them, imitating a charger, while Fräulein and the two little girls followed.
Regie stopped short before Rachel, and looked suspiciously at her.
"Where is Uncle Dick?" he said.
"I don't know," said Rachel, reddening, in spite of herself, and her eyes falling guiltily before her questioner.
"Then he has not come with you?"
Regie's mind was what his father called "sure and steady." Mr. Gresley often said he preferred a child of that kind to one that was quick-witted and flashy.
"No, he has not come with me."
"Mary!" shrieked Regie, "he has not come."
"I knew he had not," said Mary. "When I saw he was not there I knew he was somewhere else."
Dear little Mary was naturally the Gresleys' favorite child. However thoroughly they might divest themselves of parental partiality, they could not but observe that she was as sensible as a grown-up person.
"I thought he might be somewhere near," explained Regie, "in a tree or something," looking up into the little yew. "You can't tell with a conjurer like Uncle Dick, can you, Auntie Hester, whatever Mary may say?"
"Mary is generally wrong," said Hester, "but she is right for once."
Mary, who was early acquiring the comfortable habit of hearing only the remarks that found an echo in her own breast, heard she was right, and said, shrilly:
"I told Regie when we was still on the road that Uncle Dick wasn't there. Mother doesn't always go with father, but he said he'd run and see."
"We shall be ver'r late for luncheon," said Fräulein, hastily, blushing down to the onyx brooch at her turn-down collar, and drawing Mary away.
"Perhaps he left the half-penny with you," said Regie. "Fräulein would like to see it."
"No, no," said Fräulein, the tears in her eyes. "I do not vish at all. I cry half the night when I hear of it."
"I only cry when baby beats me," said Mary, balancing on one leg.
"I have not got the half-penny," said Rachel, the three elders studiously ignoring Mary's personal reminiscences.
The children were borne away by Fräulein, and the friends kissed and parted.
"I am coming to Wilderleigh to-morrow," said Rachel. "I shall be much nearer to you then."
"It is no good contending against Dick and fate," said Hester, shaking her finger at her. "You see it is all decided for you. Even the children have settled it."
Chapter XXI
*
If a fool be associated with a wise man all his life, he will perceive the truth as little as a spoon perceives the taste of soup.—Buddhist Dhammapada.
"I can't think what takes you to Wilderleigh," said Lady Newhaven to Rachel. "I am always bored to death when I go there. Sybell is so self-centred."
Perhaps one of the reasons why Lady Newhaven and Sybell Loftus did not "get on" was owing to a certain superficial resemblance between them.
Both exacted attention, and if they were in the same room together it seldom contained enough attention to supply the needs of both. Both were conscious, like "Celia Chettam," that since the birth of their first child their opinions respecting literature, politics, and art had acquired additional weight and solidity, and that a wife and mother could pronounce with decision on important subjects where a spinster would do well to hold her peace. Each was fond of saying, "As a married woman I think this or that"; yet each was conscious of dislike and irritation when she heard the other say it. And there is no doubt that Sybell had been too unwell to appear at Lady Newhaven's garden-party the previous summer, because Lady Newhaven had the week before advanced her cherished theory of "one life one love," to the delight of Lord Newhaven and the natural annoyance of Sybell, whose second husband was at that moment handing tea and answering "That depends" when appealed to.
"As if," as Sybell said afterwards to Hester, "a woman can help being the ideal of two men."
"Sybell is such a bore now," continued Lady Newhaven, "that I don't know what she will be when she is older. I don't know why you go to Wilderleigh, of all places."
"I go because I am asked," said Rachel, "and partly because I shall be near Hester Gresley."
"I don't think Miss Gresley can be very anxious to see you, or she would have come here when I invited her. I told several people she was coming, and that Mr. Carstairs, who thinks so much of himself, came on purpose to meet her. It is very tiresome of her to behave like that, especially as she did not say she had any engagement. You make a mistake, Rachel, in running after people who won't take any trouble to come and see you. It is a thing I never do myself."
"She is buried in her book at present."
"I can't think what she has to write about. But I suppose she picks up things from other people."
"I think so. She is a close observer."
"I think you are wrong there, Rachel, for when she was here some years ago she never looked about her at all. And I asked her how she judged of people, and she said, 'By appearances.' Now that was very silly, because, as I explained to her, appearances were most deceptive, and I had often thought a person with a cold manner was cold-hearted, and afterwards found I was quite mistaken."
Rachel did not answer. She wondered in what the gift consisted, which Lady Newhaven and Sybell both possessed, of bringing all c
onversation to a stand-still.
"It seems curious," said Lady Newhaven, after a pause, "how the books are mostly written by the people who know least of life. Now, the Sonnets from the Portuguese. People think so much of them. I was looking at them the other day. Why, they are nothing to what I have felt. I sometimes think if I wrote a book—I don't mean that I have any special talent—but if I really sat down and wrote a book with all the deep side of life in it, and one's own religious feelings, and described love and love's tragedy as they really are, what a sensation it would make! It would take the world by storm."
"Any book dealing sincerely with one of those subjects could not fail to be a great success."
"Oh yes. I am not afraid I should fail. I do wish you were not going, Rachel. We have so much in common. And it is such a comfort to be with some one who knows what one is going through. I believe you feel the suspense, too, for my sake."
"I do feel it—deeply."
"I sometimes think," said Lady Newhaven, her face aging suddenly under an emotion so disfiguring that Rachel's eyes fell before it—"I am sometimes almost certain that Edward drew the short lighter. Oh! do you think if he did he will really act up to it when the time comes?"
"If he drew it he will certainly take the consequences."
"Will he, do you think? I am almost sure he drew it. He is doing so many little things that look as if he knew he were not going to live. I heard Mr. Carstairs ask him to go to Norway with him next spring, and Edward laughed, and said he never looked more than a few months ahead."
"I am afraid he may have said that intending you to hear it."
"But he did not intend me to hear it. I overheard it." Rachel's face fell.
"You did promise after you told me about the letter that you would never do that kind of thing again."
"Well, Rachel, I have not. I have not even looked at his letters since. I could not help it that once, because I thought he might have told his brother in India. But don't you think his saying that to Mr. Carstairs looks—"
Rachel shook her head.
"He is beyond me," she said. "There may be something more behind which we don't know about."
"I have a feeling, it has come over me again and again lately, that I shall be released, and that Hugh and I shall be happy together yet."
And Lady Newhaven turned her face against the high back of her carved oak chair and sobbed hysterically.
"Could you be happy if you had brought about Lord Newhaven's death?" said Rachel.
Her voice was full of tender pity, not for the crouching unhappiness before her, but for the poor atrophied soul. Could she reach it? She would have given everything she possessed at that moment for one second of Christ's power to touch those blind eyes to sight.
"How can you say such things? I should not have brought it about. I did not even know of that dreadful drawing of lots till the thing was done. That was all his own doing."
Rachel sighed. The passionate yearning towards her companion shrank back upon herself.
"The fault is in me," she said to herself. "If I were purer, humbler, more loving, I might have been allowed to help her."
Lady Newhaven rose, and held Rachel tightly in her arms.
"I count the days," she said, hoarsely, shaking from head to foot. "It is two months and three weeks to-day. November the twenty-ninth. You will promise faithfully to come to me and be with me then? You will not desert me? Whatever happens you will be sure—to come?"
"I will come. I promise," said Rachel. And she stooped and kissed the closed eyes. She could at least do that.
Chapter XXII
*
Brother, thy tail hangs down behind. —Song of the Bandar-log.
Rachel arrived after tea at Wilderleigh, and went straight to her room on a plea of fatigue. It was a momentary cowardice that tempted her to yield to her fatigue. She felt convinced that she should meet Hugh Scarlett at Wilderleigh. She had no reason for the conviction beyond the very inadequate one that she had met him at Sybell's London house. Nevertheless, she felt sure that he would be among the guests, and she longed for a little breathing-space after parting with Lady Newhaven before she met him. Presently Sybell flew in and embraced her with effusion.
"Oh! what you have missed!" she said, breathlessly. "But you do look tired. You were quite right to lie down before dinner, only you aren't lying down. We have had such a conversation down-stairs. The others are all out boating with Doll but Mr. Harvey, the great Mr. Harvey, you know."
"I am afraid I don't know."
"Oh yes, you do. The author of Unashamed."
"I remember now."
"Well, he is here, resting after his new book, Rahab. And he has been reading us the opening chapters, just to Miss Barker and me. It is quite wonderful. So painful, you know. He does not spare the reader anything; he thinks it wrong to leave out anything—but so powerful!"
"Is it the same Miss Barker whom I met at your house in the season, who denounced The Idyll?"
"Yes. How she did cut it up! You see, she knows all about East London, and that sort of thing. I knew you would like to meet her again because you are philanthropic, too. She hardly thought she could spare the time to come, but she thought she would go back fresher if the wail were out of her ears for a week. The wail! Isn't it dreadful? I feel we ought to do more than we do, don't you?"
"We ought, indeed."
"But then, you see, as a married woman, I can't leave my husband and child and bury myself in the East End, can I?"
"Of course not. But surely it is an understood thing that marriage exempts women from all impersonal duties."
"Yes, that is just it. How well you put it! But others could. I often wonder why, after writing The Idyll, Hester never goes near East London. I should have gone straight off, and have cast in my lot with them if I had been in her place."
"Do you ever find people do what you would have done if you had been in their place?"
"No, never. They don't seem to see it. It's a thing I can't understand the way people don't act up to their convictions. And I do know, though I would not tell Hester so for worlds, that the fact that she goes on living comfortably in the country after bringing out that book makes thoughtful people, not me, of course, but other earnest-minded people, think she is a humbug."
"It would—naturally," said Rachel.
"Well, now I am glad you agree with me, for I said something of the same kind to Mr. Scarlett last night, and he could not see it. He's rather obtuse. I dare say you remember him?"
"Perfectly."
"I don't care about him, he is so superficial, and Miss Barker says he is very lethargic in conversation. I asked him because—don't breathe a word of it—but because, as a married woman, one ought to help others, and—do you remember how he stood up for Hester that night in London?"
"For her book, you mean."
"Well, it's all one. Men are men, my dear. Let me tell you he would never have done that if he had not been in love with her."
"Do you mean that men never defend obvious truths unless they are in love?"
"Now you are pretending to misunderstand me," said Sybell, joyously, making her little squirrel face into a becoming pout. "But it's no use trying to take me in. And it's coming right. He's there at this moment!"
"At the Vicarage?"
"Where else? I asked him to go. I urged him. I said I felt sure she expected him. One must help on these things."
"But if he is obtuse and lethargic and superficial, is he likely to suit Hester?"
"My dear, the happiest lot for a woman is marriage. And you and I are Hester's friends. So we ought to do all we can for her happiness. That is why I just mentioned this."
The dressing-gong began to boom.
"I must fly," said Sybell, depositing a butterfly kiss on Rachel's forehead. And she flew.
"I wish I knew what I felt about him," said Rachel to herself. "I don't much like hearing him called obtuse and superficial, but I suppose I should like still l
ess to hear Sybell praise him. I have never heard her praise anything but mediocrity yet."
If Rachel had been at all introspective she might have found a clew as to her feeling for Hugh in the unusual care with which she arranged her hair, and her decision at the last moment to discard the pale-green gown lying in state on the bed for a white satin one embroidered at long intervals with rose-colored carnations. The gown was a masterpiece, designed especially for her by a great French milliner. Rachel often wondered whose eyesight had been strained over those marvellous carnations, but to-night she did not give them a thought. She looked with grave dissatisfaction at her pale, nondescript face and nondescript hair and eyes. She did not know that only women with marriageable daughters saw her as she saw herself in the glass.
As she left her room a door opened at the farther end of the same wing, and a tall man came out. The middle-class element in her said, "Superfine." His fastidious taste said, "A plain woman."
In another instant they recognized each other.
"Superfine! What nonsense," she thought, as she met his eager, tremulous glance.
"A plain woman. Rachel plain!" He had met the welcome in her eyes, and there was beauty in every movement, grace in every fold of her white gown.
As they met the gong suddenly boomed out close beneath them, and they could only smile at each other as they shook hands. The butler, who was evidently an artist in his way, proved the gong to the uttermost; and they had descended the staircase together, and had crossed the hall before its dying tremors allowed them to speak.
As he was about to do so he saw her wince suddenly. She was looking straight in front of her at the little crowd in the drawing-room. For an instant her face turned from white to gray, and she involuntarily put out her hand as if to ward off something. Then a lovely color mounted to her cheek; she drew herself up and entered the room, while Hugh, behind her, looked fiercely at each man in succession.
It is always the unexpected that happens. As Rachel's half-absent eyes passed over the group in the brilliantly lighted drawing-room her heart reared, without warning, and fell back upon her. She had only just sufficient presence of mind to prevent her hand pressing itself against her heart. He was there; he was before her—the man whom she had loved with passion for four years, and who had tortured her.
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