"You must give him up," said Lady Newhaven, her hands fumbling under her crape cloak. "I've come to tell you that you must let him go."
The fact that Hugh had drawn the short lighter, and had not taken the consequences, did not affect Lady Newhaven's feelings towards him in the least, but she was vaguely aware that somehow it would affect Rachel's, and now it would be Rachel's turn to suffer.
Rachel paused a moment, and then said, slowly:
"He does not wish to be let go."
"He is mine."
"He was yours once," said Rachel, her face turning from white to gray. That wound was long in healing. "But he is mine now."
"Rachel, you cannot be bad all through." Lady Newhaven was putting the constraint upon herself which that tightly clutched paper, that poisoned weapon in reserve, enabled her to assume. For Hugh's sake she would only use it if other means failed. "You must know that you ought to look upon him as a married man. Don't you see"—wildly—"that we must marry, to put right what was wrong? He owes it to me. People always do."
"Yes, they generally do," said Rachel; "but I don't see how it makes the wrong right."
"I look upon Hugh as my husband," said Lady Newhaven.
"So do I."
"Rachel, he loves me. He is only marrying you for your money."
"I will risk that."
"I implore you on my knees to give him back to me."
And Lady Newhaven knelt down with bare, white outstretched hands. (Tableau number one. New Series.)
Rachel shrank back involuntarily.
"Listen, Violet," she said, "and get up. I will not speak until you get up." Lady Newhaven obeyed. "If I gave back Hugh to you a hundred times it would not make him love you any more, or make him marry you. I am not keeping him from you. This marriage is his own doing. Oh! Violet, I'm not young and pretty. I've no illusions about myself; but I believe he really does love me, in spite of that, and I know I love him."
"I don't believe it," said Lady Newhaven. "I mean about him. Not about you, of course."
"Here he is. Let him decide," said Rachel.
Hugh came in unannounced. Upon his grave face there was that concentrated look of happiness which has settled in the very deep of the heart and gleams up into the eyes.
His face changed painfully. He glanced from one woman to the other. Rachel was sorry for him. She would fain have spared him, but she could not.
"Hugh," she said, gently, her steadfast eyes resting on him, "Lady Newhaven and I were talking of you. I think it would be best if she heard from your own lips what she, naturally, will not believe from mine."
"I will never believe," said Lady Newhaven, "that you will desert me now, that all the past is nothing to you, and that you will cast me aside for another woman."
Hugh looked at her steadily. Then he went up to Rachel, and taking her hand, raised it to his lips. There was in his manner a boundless reverent adoration that was to Lady Newhaven's jealousy as a match to gunpowder.
Rachel kept his hand.
"Are you sure you want him, Rachel?" gasped Lady Newhaven, holding convulsively to a chair for support. "He has cast me aside. He will cast you aside next, for he is a coward and a traitor. Are you sure you want to marry him? His hands are red with blood. He murdered my husband."
Rachel's hand tightened on Hugh's.
"It was an even chance," she said. "Those who draw lots must abide by the drawing."
"It was an even chance," shrieked Lady Newhaven. "But who drew the short lighter, tell me that? Who refused to fulfil his part when the time was up? Tell me that."
"You are mad," said Rachel.
"I can prove it," said Lady Newhaven, holding out the letter in her shaking hands. "You may read it, Rachel. I can trust you. Not him, he would burn it. It is from Edward; look, you know his writing, written to tell me that he," pointing at Hugh, "had drawn the short lighter, but that, as he had not killed himself when the time came, he, Edward, did so instead. That was why he was late. We always wondered, Rachel, why he was two days late. Read it! Read it!"
"I will not read it," said Rachel, pushing away the paper. "I do not believe a word of it."
"You shall believe it. Ask him to deny it, if he can."
"You need not trouble to deny it," said Rachel, looking full at Hugh.
The world held only her and him. And as Hugh looked into her eyes his soul rose up and scaled the heights above it till it stood beside hers.
There is a sacred place where, if we follow close in Love's footsteps, we see him lay aside his earthly quiver and his bitter arrows, and turn to us as he is, with the light of God upon him, one with us as one with God. In that pure light lies cease to be. We know them no more, neither remember them, for love and truth are one.
Hugh strode across to Lady Newhaven, took the letter from her, and threw it into the heart of the fire. Then he turned to Rachel.
"I drew the short lighter," he said. "I meant to take the consequences at first, but when the time came—I did not. Partly I was afraid, and partly I could not leave you."
If Lady Newhaven yearned for revenge she had it then. They had both forgotten her. But she saw Rachel's eyes change as the eyes of a man at the stake might change when the fire reached him. She shrank back from the agony in them. Hugh's face became pinched and thin as a dead man's. A moment ago he saw no consequences. He saw only that he could not lie to her. His mind fell headlong from its momentary foothold. What mad impulse had betrayed him to his ruin?
"You drew the short lighter, and you let me think all the time he had," said Rachel, her voice almost inaudible in its fierce passion. "You drew it, and you let him die instead of you, as any one who knew him would know he would. And when he was dead you came to me, and kept me in ignorance even—that time—when I said I trusted you."
The remembrance of that meeting was too much.
Rachel turned her eyes on Lady Newhaven, who was watching her terror-stricken.
"I said I would not give him up, but I will," she said, violently. "You can take him if you want him. What was it you said to me, Hugh? That if you had drawn the short lighter you would have had to abide by it. Yes, that was it. Your whole intercourse with me has been one lie from first to last. You were right, Violet, when you said he ought to marry you. It will be another lie on the top of all the others."
"It was what Edward wished," faltered his widow. "He says so in the letter that has just been burned."
"Lord Newhaven wished it," said Rachel, looking at the miserable man between them. "Poor Lord Newhaven! First his honor. Then his life. You have taken everything he had. But there are still his shoes."
"Rachel!" said Hugh, suddenly, and he fell on his knees before her, clasping the hem of her gown.
She pushed him violently from her, tearing her gown in releasing it from his frenzied grasp.
"Leave me," she whispered. Her voice was almost gone. "Coward and liar, I will have nothing more to do with you."
He got upon his feet somehow. The two gray desperate faces spent with passion faced each other. They were past speech.
He read his death-warrant in her merciless eyes. She looked at the despair in his without flinching.
He stood a moment, and then feeling his way, like one half blind, left the room, unconsciously pushing aside Lady Newhaven, whom both had forgotten.
She gave one terrified glance at Rachel, and slipped out after him.
Chapter LI
*
I thought, "Now, if I had been a woman, such
As God made women, to save men by love—
By just my love I might have saved this man."
—ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.
"Has Lady Newhaven been here?" said the Bishop, coming into the study, his hands full of papers. "I thought I saw her carriage driving away as I came up."
"She has been here."
The Bishop looked up suddenly, his attention arrested by Rachel's voice. There is a white heat of anger that mimics the pallor of a faint
ing fit. The Bishop thought she was about to swoon, until he saw her eyes. Those gentle faithful eyes were burning. He shrank as one who sees the glare of fire raging inside familiar windows.
"My poor child," he said, and he sat down heavily in his leather arm-chair.
Rachel still stood. She looked at him, and her lips moved, but no sound came forth.
The Bishop looked intently at her.
"Where is Scarlett?" he said.
"Hugh is gone," she said, stammering. "I have broken off my engagement with him. He will never come back."
And she fell suddenly on her knees, and hid her convulsed face against the arm of a chair.
The Bishop did not move. He waited for this paroxysm of anger to subside. He had never seen Rachel angry before in all the years he had known her, but he watched her without surprise. Only stupid people think that coal cannot burn as fiercely as tow.
She remained a long time on her knees, her face hidden. The Bishop did not hurry her. At last she began to sob silently, shuddering from head to foot.
Then he came and sat down near her, and took the cold clinched hands in his.
"Rachel, tell me," he said, gently.
She tried to pull her hands away, but he held them firmly. He obliged her to look up at him. She raised her fierce, disfigured face for a moment, and then let it fall on his hands and hers.
"I am a wicked woman," she said. "Don't trouble about me. I'm not worth it. I thought I would have kept all suffering from him, but now—if I could make him suffer—I would."
"I have no doubt he is suffering."
"Not enough. Not like me. And I loved him and trusted him. And he is false, too, like that other man I loved; like you, only I have not found you out yet; like Hester; like all the rest. I will never trust any one again. I will never be deceived again. This is—the—second time."
And Rachel broke into a passion of tears.
The Bishop released her hands and felt for his own handkerchief.
Then he waited, praying silently. The clock had made a long circuit before she raised herself.
"I am very selfish," she said, looking with compunction at the kind, tired face. "I ought to have gone to my room instead of breaking down here. Dear Bishop, forgive me. It is past now. I shall not give way again."
"Will you make me some tea?" he said.
She made the tea with shaking hands and awkward, half-blind movements. It was close on dinner-time, but she did not notice it. He obliged her to drink some, and then he settled himself in his leather arm-chair. He went over his engagements for the evening. In half an hour he ought to be dining with Canon Glynn to meet an old college friend. At eleven he had arranged to see a young clergyman whose conscience was harrying him. He wrote a note on his knee without moving, saying he could not come, and touched the bell at his elbow. When the servant had taken the note he relapsed into the depths of his arm-chair and sipped his tea.
"I think, Rachel," he said at last, "that I ought to tell you that I partly guess at your reason for breaking off your engagement. I have known for some time that there was trouble between the Newhavens. From what Lady Newhaven said to me to-day, and from the fact that she has been here, and that immediately after seeing her you broke your engagement with Scarlett, I must come to the conclusion that Scarlett had been the cause of this trouble."
Rachel had regained her composure. Her face was white and hard.
"You are right," she said. "He was at one time—her lover."
"And you consider, in consequence, that he is unfit to become your husband?"
"No. He told me about it before he asked me to marry him. I accepted him, knowing it."
"Then he was trying to retrieve himself. He acted towards you, at any rate, like an honorable man."
Rachel laughed. "So I thought at the time."
"If you accepted him, knowing about his past, I don't see why you should have thrown him over. One dishonorable action sincerely repented does not make a dishonorable man."
"I did not know all," said Rachel. "I do now."
The Bishop looked into the fire.
Her next words surprised him.
"You really cared for Lord Newhaven, did you not?"
"I did."
"Then as you know the one thing he risked his life to conceal for the sake of his children—namely, his wife's misconduct—I think I had better tell you the rest."
So Rachel told him in harsh, bald language the story of the drawing of lots, and how she and Lady Newhaven had remained ignorant as to which had drawn the short lighter. How Hugh had drawn it; how when the time came he had failed to fulfil the agreement; how two days later Lord Newhaven had killed himself; and how she and Lady Newhaven had both, of course, concluded that Lord Newhaven must have drawn the short lighter.
Rachel went on, her hard voice shaking a little.
"Hugh had told me that he had had an entanglement with a married woman. I knew it long before he spoke of it, but just because he risked losing me by owning it I loved and trusted him all the more. I thought he was, at any rate, an upright man. After Lord Newhaven's death he asked me to marry him, and I accepted him. And when we were talking quietly one day"—Rachel's face became, if possible, whiter than before—"I told him that I knew of the drawing of lots. (He thought no one knew of it except the dead man and himself.) And I told him that he must not blame himself for Lord Newhaven's death. He had brought it on himself. I said to him"—Rachel's voice trembled more and more-"'It was an even chance. You might have drawn the short lighter yourself.' And—he—said that if he had, he should have had to abide by it."
The Bishop shaded his eyes with his hand. It seemed cruel to look at Rachel, as it is cruel to watch a man drown.
"And how do you know he did draw it?" he said.
"It seems Lord Newhaven left his wife a letter, which she has only just received, telling her so. She brought it here to-day to show me."
"Ah! A letter! And you read it?"
"No," said Rachel, scornfully, "I did not read it. I did not believe a word she said about it. Hugh was there, and I told him I trusted him; and he took the letter from her, and put it in the fire."
"And did he not contradict it?"
"No. He said it was true. He has lied to me over and over again; but I saw he was speaking the truth for once."
There was a long silence.
"I don't know how other people regard those things," said Rachel at last, less harshly—she was gradually recovering herself—"but I know to me it was much worse that he could deceive me than that he should have been Lady Newhaven's lover. I did feel that dreadfully. I had to choke down my jealousy when he kissed me. He had kissed her first. He had made that side of his love common and profane; but the other side remained. I clung to that. I believed he really loved me, and that supported me and enabled me to forgive him, though men don't know what that forgiveness costs us. Only the walls of our rooms know that. But it seems to me much worse to have failed me on that other side as well—to have deceived me—to have told me a lie—just when—just when we were talking intimately."
"It was infinitely worse," said the Bishop.
"And it was the action of a coward to draw lots in the first instance if he did not mean to abide by the drawing, and the action of a traitor, once they were drawn, not to abide by them. But yet, if he had told me—if he had only told me the whole truth—I loved him so entirely that I would have forgiven—even that. But whenever I alluded to it, he lied."
"He was afraid of losing you."
"He has lost me by his deceit. He would not have lost me if he had told me the truth. I think—I know—that I could have got over anything, forgiven anything, even his cowardice, if he had only admitted it and been straightforward with me. A little plain dealing was all I asked, but—I did not get it."
The Bishop looked sadly at her. Straightforwardness is so seldom the first requirement a woman makes of the man she loves. Women, as a rule, regard men and their conduct only from the point
of view of their relation to women—as sons, as husbands, as fathers. Yet Rachel, it seemed, could forgive Hugh's sin against her as a woman, but not his further sin against her as a friend.
"Yet it seems he did speak the truth at last," he said.
"Yes."
"And after he had destroyed the letter, which was the only proof against him."
"Yes."
Another silence.
"I am glad you have thrown him over," said the Bishop, slowly, "for you never loved him."
"I deceived myself in that case," said Rachel, bitterly. "My only fear was that I loved him too much."
The Bishop's face had become fixed and stern.
"Listen to me, Rachel," he said. "You fell desperately in love with an inferior man. He is charming, refined, well-bred, and with a picturesque mind, but that is all. He is inferior. He is by nature shallow and hard (the two generally go together), without moral backbone, the kind of man who never faces a difficulty, who always flinches when it comes to the point, the stuff out of which liars and cowards are made. His one redeeming quality is his love for you. I have seen men in love before. I have never seen a man care more for a woman than he cares for you. His love for you has taken entire possession of him, and by it he will sink or swim."
The Bishop paused. Rachel's face worked.
"He deceived you," said the Bishop, "not because he wished to deceive you, but because he was in a horrible position, and because his first impulse of love was to keep you at any price. But his love for you was raising him even while he deceived you. Did he spend sleepless nights because for months he vilely deceived Lord Newhaven? No. Rectitude was not in him. His conscience was not awake. But I tell you, Rachel, he has suffered like a man on the rack from deceiving you. I knew by his face as soon as I saw him that he was undergoing some great mental strain. I did not understand it, but I do now."
Rachel's mind, always slow, moved, stumbled to its bleeding feet.
"It was remorse," she said, turning her face away.
"It was not remorse. It was repentance. Remorse is bitter. Repentance is humble. His love for you has led him to it. Not your love for him, Rachel, which breaks down at the critical moment; his love for you which has brought him for the first time to the perception of the higher life, to the need of God's forgiveness, which I know from things he has said, has made him long to lead a better life, one worthier of you."
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