Mr. Hamilton was drunk, fiercely and unmistakably drunk. There could be no doubt about it, although he betrayed none of the usual signs of plebeian intoxication. He was not shouting or singing, or displaying any violent signs of affection for his boon companion and partner. He was not—in a word—maudlin. He sat on a wooden bench with his hands on his knees and his chin thrust forward; whilst opposite to him, as though fascinated by the fierce glare of those red, bloodshot eyes, Mr. Skein was indulging in a very hollow affectation of thoroughly enjoying himself. With his hands in his pockets, and his sallow cheeks flushed by his very moderate share of the empty bottle which lay between them, he was feebly essaying to sing the chorus of a popular comic song:
“Oh, my, tell ‘em to stop!
Such was the cry of Maria
When she cried ‘Whoa!’
They said Let her go!’
And—”
“Shut up that d—d row, you blithering idiot!”
Mr. Skein closed his jaws with a snap.
“What’s the matter with it?” he asked feebly. “I know I haven’t got much of a voice, but that’s no reason why you should snarl a fellow’s head off.”
“Much of a voice! It’s like the squeak of a hell-cat,” Mr. Hamilton remarked between his teeth. “Turn your rat’s face this way. I’m drunk, and you know it. Now, hark ‘ee. What the hell do you mean by sitting there and asking me questions about my private affairs, eh?”
“I—I didn’t mean any harm,” faltered Skein, with chattering teeth. “I’ve told you all about myself.”
“All about yourself! Yes, and it sounded like a blooming pack of lies,” growled the other. “Bah! what do I care about you and your pettifogging, crawling little life? Sit up, man, and pull yourself together. Don’t crouch there and look at me out of the corners of your eyes, as though I were going to eat you.”
“You’re such an odd fellow, Jim. You’re—”
“Ay, you’ll find I’m odd before you’ve done with me. Pick up that bottle. Is it empty?”
Skein turned it upside down. Not a drop trickled out. Mr. Hamilton expressed his disappointment with a savage growl.
“Open that cupboard.”
Skein obeyed promptly.
“There’s a black bottle there, half full, unless you’ve been guzzling it on the sly. Out with it.”
Skein’s head and shoulders disappeared in the recess. In a moment he produced the bottle and passed it over. Mr. Hamilton handled it for awhile with affection, passing his hands up and down it with affectionate gentleness. Then he raised it to his lips, and held it there while it gurgled seven times. As he set it down he caught his partner’s eye watching him timidly. He held out the bottle to him.
“Drink,” he commanded.
Skein took the bottle, raised it to his lips, and set it down. Mr. Hamilton scowled. He had been listening for the gurgle, and there had been none. Naturally he felt annoyed.
He got up with some difficulty, and seized the bottle with one hand, and the back of his partner’s head with the other.
“Now, drink,” he shouted thickly. “Drink, you puling idiot! No shamming. Down with it like a man.”
With a trembling hand Skein guided the neck of the bottle to his mouth. Instantly it was held there like a vice. The raw, fierce spirit poured down his throat as hot as liquid fire. He coughed, spluttered, yelled. The tears streamed down his cheeks, and he grew purple to the forehead. Then with a mighty laugh Mr. Hamilton withdrew his hand, and, carrying the bottle with him, resumed his seat.
“Hark ‘ee, Christopher,” he said, frowning till his thick eyebrows met, and his eyes glowed underneath them like pieces of live coal. “You know I’m drunk. You’ve shirked the bottle yourself on purpose. You’ve been asking me questions—pumping me, by thunder, just as though I was some commonplace idiot to be turned inside out by a sick-faced insect like you. Perhaps you didn’t mean anything. Better for you that you didn’t. Perhaps I’m suspicious. Dare say I am. I don’t mind telling you this much, you miserable young cub. I’m low down, low down as hell, but I’ve been a gentleman, and an English gentleman, too, and hunted and shot, and had my town place and country place, and seen more of life than you’ve ever heard or read of. And I’m not quite done yet. I’ve got the disposal of a huge estate and a great name in my hand at this very moment. Ha, ha, ha! It’s a fine thing! There’s a man in the old country who trembles and turns pale at the mention of my name. He’s a proud man, too, one of the old sort, but you go to him and tell him that Jim Hu—Hamilton’s outside to have a word with him, and, Lord, how he’d flop!”
Mr. Skein was himself again. His teeth had ceased to chatter, and his bead-like eyes were sparkling. He seemed to have forgotten even his fear.
“Why don’t you bleed him?” he whispered.
Mr. Hamilton laughed softly. It was an evil laugh. Even his admiring partner drew a little further away. It was a laugh which suggested a good many things, but certainly not mirth.
“Ay, why don’t I?” he said. “Well, I’ll tell you, pard. You ain’t a bad little sort, and you wouldn’t try any games on me, I don’t think. I’m a bit hasty with my shooting irons when I’m roused. You remember that, my kid, and if you don’t want daylight letting into your body, keep a still tongue in your ugly head. Now I’ll tell you. I was in England—not very long ago—never mind how long. There are two of them; one don’t know, the other does. I was fixing things up when I got into a row—never mind what sort—it was a hell of a row, though! I had to bolt. Out here a man’s life more or less don’t count. Lord, it’s the sort of place to be jolly in, this is! But I’ve written to those chaps. I’m going to run ‘em up, one against the other. Christopher, my boy, if you were pards with me here,” he clapped his hand upon his chest, “your fortune would be made. But you ain’t, you see.”
Skein was trembling all over, not with fear this time but with excitement. He had distinctly heard the rustle of paper when his partner had struck his chest. It was there, sewn into his coat, very likely. How his heart was beating! Oh, if only he were not such a coward!
“What is it, Jim?” he asked, with quavering voice. “Documents?”
Mr. Hamilton shot a furious glance at his questioner. There was a look in the lean, craven face and hungry, piercing eyes, which did not take his fancy. He was aware that he had talked too much. The fumes of the spirit had worked like fire in his brain. What had he said? Perhaps it would be safer—
He drew out his revolver, and began to examine the priming. He spat on the barrel and polished it, glancing every now and then at his companion, who was almost falling off his seat with terror.
There was an intense silence between the two men, so deep that the faint night sounds from the wood, and the music of the softly flowing river in the valley below, floated in through the open doorway to their ears. Suddenly they both gave a great start. Skein sprang up with a cry of fear. His partner, leaning over, seized him fiercely by the arm.
“Listen, you d—d fool!” he muttered savagely. “If you breathe a word I’ll knock your brains out!”
They listened motionless. A slight rustling sound again broke the deep night hush. What was it? A sudden breeze in the tree-tops, a stray wolf attracted by the light, or the faint rustling of a woman’s gown over the short grass?
“Some one has been lying there listening!” Mr. Hamilton hissed. “Quick!”
He staggered towards the door, the revolver in his hand. Half-way there, he reeled against the wall. The shanty was spinning round. He was blind drunk. He held out the revolver to Skein.
“Take it quick!” he muttered. “Outside! Blaze away!”
Skein snatched it from him, and rushed to the doorway. But he did not even glance out. He turned round and faced his partner. His cheeks were ghastly pale, and his eyes seemed starting from his head.
“Not inside, you blarsted idiot!” yelled Mr. Hamilton. “What the hell are you doing? D—n!”
Two shots rang out, one after the other. Mr. Hamilton, with a fearful oath upon his lips, fell sideways across the floor, with his hand pressed to his side. His partner, throwing down the revolver, leaped through the thick smoke, and knelt over the fallen body. His tongue was protruding between his teeth, and his eyes seemed starting from his head. With shaking fingers he commenced to undo the wounded man’s coat. Before he got to the last button Mr. Hamilton opened his eyes, and he drew back with a shriek.
“You’ve—done for me—you devil!” muttered Mr.
Hamilton. “Oh, if I could feel my hands around—around your neck!”
“Give me the—paper in your coat, and I’ll leave you alone!” Skein whispered. He was breathing hard, and his lips and eyeballs were burning. It was not quite so easy to kill a man, after all! Mr. Hamilton thrust his hand into his breast, and his partner bent eagerly down. It was a rashness of which he had reason to repent, for, instead of the paper, he received Mr. Hamilton’s fist full in his face. He staggered against the wall, sick and dizzy. Then the wounded man raised himself with a little moaning cry.
“Myra!” he gasped. “Myra! he’s shot me! Hold him!”
Skein turned round, quaking. Standing upon the threshold, with the moonlight falling upon her white, horrified face, and her slender figure clearly outlined against the deep blue sky, was the girl from the shanty opposite. He did not hesitate for a moment. He leaped past her like a cat, and went headlong down the gorge. She did not try to stop him. Her limbs were paralyzed with horror.
“Myra!” he faltered. “I’m done! Will you come here?”
She did not hesitate then for a moment. She fell on her knees by his side, and took his hand. She forgot her loathing, and she forgot her wrongs. She forgot everything except that she was a woman!
On the seventh day after her first visit to him, Myra stood once more in Amies Rutten’s library. She had found it empty; he was at dinner with some friends, the servant told her, and she would probably have to wait for an hour. But in less than five minutes he pushed aside the curtains and entered the room; his pale face flushed a little, perhaps with wine, or was it with the triumph of her visit?
He walked calmly across the great room, banishing all traces of expectation from his face, as self-possessed and impassive in manner as he was immaculate in the white shirt-front and plain gold stud of his evening dress. He placed a chair for her, and greeted her kindly, choosing to ignore altogether the dumb misery stamped into her white face.
“You have come to see me, then, Myra,” he said. “That’s well!”
“Yes, I have come,” she answered. “I do not want to talk much. I am tired.”
“You look it,” he answered pityingly. “Wait a moment.”
He unlocked a cabinet, and poured out a glass of rich ruby-coloured wine. Then he brought it to her, and after a moment’s hesitation she accepted and drank it. It ran through her veins like lightning, and brought even a faint flush into her cheeks.
“Poor child!” he said softly. “Myra, why did you set yourself against me? Sooner or later I was bound to win. Now tell me; you have a proposition to make.”
She bowed her head. “Yes.”
“Well, don’t hurry about it. My time is my own. I have told my friends that I may be engaged for some time.”
“Thank you. I am a little faint. It was hot, waiting. I will rest for a minute.”
She half closed her eyes, and he watched her steadily for a few seconds. He understood too well the meaning of those sunken cheeks, and the dark rims under her eyes. It was not only mental suffering that had worked this havoc, it was hunger, starvation. He crossed to one of the speaking-tubes, and whispered a few sentences down it. When she opened her eyes, there was a small table by her side, spread with a white cloth, a silver dish of oysters, some pbti, fruit, and a bottle of gold-foiled wine, a glass of which was already poured out.
“You were fond of oysters once, Myra!” he said, coming over to her. “Take some; you need food.”
She shrank back, and covered her face with her hands. But he insisted quietly, and in the end she yielded. After all, if this thing was to be, she might just as well eat his food and drink his wine. She ate, the first time for twenty-four hours, and took a few sips of the wine. Then she called to him; he had walked across to his desk, and was sitting there, writing, or pretending to write.
He came to her at once.
“I am here, Myra,” he said.
She stood up—stood away from the table, and as near as possible to the lamp.
“I want you to look at me!” she said, in a dull, mechanical tone. “I want you to see me exactly as I am. I am thin—thinner than I have ever been in my life. Look at my face! I have lost my beauty! I am just a wreck, and I never expect to be anything better. Do you still want me?”
“More than ever!” he answered quietly. “More than ever, that I may show you a life which knows no privations, and no unhappiness.”
“Let me go right on, please!” she said slowly. “I dislike you more than any living man. I think that I hate you! The touch of your fingers would make me shudder now, as it has done before! You understand that! Do you still want me?”
“More than ever!” he answered, in the same tone. “I shall show you that I am not the man you think I am! I do not blame you for hating me now! I shall teach you to love me!”
“II never could! Never! never!”
“That is my risk!” he answered. “I am content!”
She drew her hands together and shivered, half-closing her eyes. For a full minute there was silence between them. Then she spoke again, and her voice had an odd far-away sound in it.
“I am willing to come to you!” she said. “There is a condition. You must hear it first!”
He turned his head away. He did not wish her to see the sudden glow of passion which had transformed his cold, set face.
“I am listening!” he said.
“I want you to give the papers now—to-night; and some money. I will come to you to-morrow!”
His face darkened. He had no fear of her not keeping her word, but he had a particular reluctance to letting her go. He knew with whom she was sharing her room, and the thought was like fire in his brain. She wanted to go back to him! It was but for a single night, and yet—curse him!
“You do not care to trust me?” she asked.
He did not answer her immediately. He walked to his desk, and, unlocking a drawer, took out a little pile of bills. Then he took a sealed packet from the same place, and thrust them all into her hands.
“I am not afraid to trust you, Myra!” he said gravely. “Good night!”
She gave him her hand with a little shiver, which he affected not to notice.
“Good night!” she answered. “I—I shall be here to-morrow!”
“One moment, Myra!” he said slowly. “I am afraid that you find this very terrible to look forward to! You do not love me—and there is some one else whom you do love! The money and the papers are, I presume, for him. He is welcome to them!”
There was a ring of fine scorn in his tone. Myra’s eyes fell before his.
“That is nothing!” he continued. “All that I want to say is this, Myra; I love you, and as surely as I have drawn you into my arms, so surely will I make you happy there! Try and believe that! Now, good night! You will find a carriage waiting for you at the door!”
She let down her veil, and passed out without a word, following the servant whom he had summoned. And Amies Rutten went back to his guests with a quiet smile upon his lips, and a curiously bright light in his gray-blue eyes.
“At last, Myra! Great Heavens, what a time you have been!”
She laid down her hat upon the table, and looked at him.
Directly their eyes met he knew that something had happened. The handwriting of tragedy was in her pale face and gleaming eyes.
“Has it seemed long?” she said absently. “I did not think that you would notice!”
“Where have you been?” he asked.
“No matter! Tell me! You want to go back to England, don’t you?”
He turned his face away from her, and looked across the great shadowy gulf of the city, with its blaze of lights. Beyond was the sea. His eyes caught the gleam of the harbour lights flashing upon its dark bosom, and he sighed.
“Don’t mind telling me, Bryan!” she said. “You want to go, don’t you?”
He turned round.
“God knows I do!” he answered. “I am dying here!”
Her heart beat quickly. In the unlit room he could see her bosom rising and falling underneath her thin, threadbare dress, and her dark eyes wet with tears. She tried to speak, but a great lump was in her throat.
He had more to say now that the ice was broken.
“I am only a wretched, miserable burden to you here, Myra! If only I could find the money to go home, I might live! I have given up all hopes of the papers. I only want to get away from this cruel, awful place. The very air here chokes me! And to think that I am living on you all this time! If I could only get to England, I could work, and send you out some money! You’ve been a real brick to me, Myra! I—”
“Stop!”
His flow of eloquence was suddenly checked by that quick staccato cry—the cry of a woman whose heart-strings are being roughly handled. He looked up at her in surprise. Her face was convulsed with pain.
“I do not want money! I shall not want it any more! Here are your papers, and here is the money to go home with!”
She flung them upon the table before him. He looked at them, and then at her. In a dim, vague sort of way he began to understand. He leaned on the back of the chair, and looked at her.
“You are going to him!” he muttered hoarsely. “Well?”
She flung the challenge across at him. Her eyes were bright and dry; now and then there was a scarlet glow in her cheeks.
“Well, what would you have me do? You are going away! It doesn’t much matter, does it? There are the papers for which you came here, and there is money sufficient to take you home!”
He could not keep the light from his eyes as he looked at them, but as yet he had not taken them up. His face was troubled. He had an uneasy feeling in his heart. He was irresolute! He did not understand. He was not capable of it! Between him and her was fixed a mighty gulf. She, the offspring of a western lumberman who had married the daughter of a small farmer, the pioneers of a new race upon a new soil, had inherited in some mysterious way a leaven of all that is sweetest and greatest and best in womankind. She had given her love to this man, had loved him to the extent of a glorious self-immolation beyond any possible understanding of his. Far below on the plane of humanity, he looked up at her, uneasy, yet wholly incapable of appreciating this sacrifice of herself which she was offering to him. With the eyes that she saw, he could not see, and the pains which rent her heart, he could not suffer. In the days to come, before he and she should meet again in a larger world, some knowledge of these things had dawned upon him. There were days when the memory of these few moments in the little dark chamber high up amongst the slums of San Francisco was an exquisite torture to him—when her calm, white face seemed to haunt him like an everlasting reproach, and the shame of her sacrifice sank into his very soul. But that was when he too had been quickened into a larger life and understanding, when he had become a man of his generation, a creature of Nature’s great system of education. To-night, he realized none of these things.
“I do not quite understand!” he said. “Only a few days ago, you shuddered at the mention of this man’s name!”
She laughed. The echoes of that laugh, too, lingered with him. There were days to come when the memory of it should be like a keen torture.
“Ah, that was when you were ill and helpless—before you had become homesick! I have changed! Amies Rutten is well enough, and he has the wealth of a prince! Go and get your ticket before the office closes!”
She held out a handful of the notes. Still he hesitated. “I don’t like touching his money!” he muttered. “It is not his!” she answered. “It is mine!”
He raised his hand, and their fingers touched for a moment as he took the notes. Hers were deathly cold, but he did not seem to notice. He left her, and hurried out without a word.
He walked swiftly through the brilliantly-lit streets on his way to the ticket-office. His weakness was all forgotten! He had money in his hand, and the papers which had been the desire of his life, in his pocket. His cheeks were flushed with joy, and his eyes were bright. And in that little lone room high up above the roar of the great city, a woman lay, face downwards upon the floor, dry-eyed, but moaning softly like some beautiful wild creature whose life-blood is ebbing slowly away.
He took a ticket to New York, and booked a Cunard passage to Liverpool at the same office. Then he bought food and wine—Myra and he should have their last little supper together! But, when he got back, the little room where they had lived together was empty. She had gone!
In the hall the two men parted. Lord Wessemer went into the library, and Bryan turned aside to the drawing-room. He was going to find Lady Helen. The fascination of knowing that she was in the same house, that in all probability they would spend the next hour together, was irresistible. He entered the drawing-room, and in the little yellow chamber he found her writing.
She laid down her pen as he entered, with the calm air of a hostess whose duty it is to entertain, raising her eyebrows a little as though surprised at his coming.
“I thought that you and Lord Wessemer would play billiards!” she remarked. “Won’t you sit down?”
Bryan took a chair, and brought it a little nearer to hers.
“Lord Wessemer was tired, I fancy, and he had some letters to write. He has gone into the library. Am I interrupting you?”
She took up her pen again.
“If you will excuse me, I will finish this note,” she said. “It is an invitation I ought to have answered a week ago!”
He bowed, and took up a magazine which lay on the table by his side. But he did not read. Over its pages he looked steadily at the bent head of the woman opposite him. How smooth was her forehead, and how cold and clearly cut her features! Everything about her savoured of an exclusiveness, personal as well as aristocratic. Would he ever be able to break down the barrier, he wondered; to see the light break across her face, and see the depths of her calm blue eyes stirred with passion? A sudden chill went to his heart. Was it possible for him, or any other man, to do it? Was she really as cold and passionless as she seemed; as pure and, alas! as unattainable as that glorious white snow on the Sierra tops when smitten by the morning sunlight? He sighed, and just at that moment she laid down her pen.
“May I trouble you to ring the bell?” she asked.
He sprang up, and she collected her letters into a little heap. The servant who came brought them coffee in tiny, slender cups. Bryan took some, and sipped it thoughtfully.
“You did not tell me that you were going to London soon!” he said, after a brief pause.
She looked at him with a faint smile—a smile which irritated him vaguely.
“Why should I? Every one goes to London for the season. I thought you knew that!”
“I am glad that every one goes,” he remarked, “because I am going.”
“Indeed! When did you decide that?”
“This evening. It was Lord Wessemer’s suggestion. I have spoken to him about you.”
“What?”
Her high, delicate eyebrows were contracted into a distinct frown. She was looking as nearly angry as she permitted herself to be.
“I have spoken to Lord Wessemer! I told him that I wanted you to marry me! How could I come here, and eat his dinner, and not tell him?
“I hope you added that I refused you!”
“I did. I also told him that one of your reasons for refusing me was the improbability of gaining his consent.”
“What did he say to that?”
“He gave it to me!”
She looked at him, literally dumbfounded. Once again she felt a thrill almost of fear at the dogged persistence of this man, and his silent contempt of all difficulties. There was something mysterious about his success, in his rapid transition from vagabondage to the gentleman he undoubtedly was, in his vast wealth, and in this last crowning piece of successful audacity, the cool demanding of her hand from that most aristocratic and unsympathetic of men, the Earl Wessemer!
“He gave you his consent!” she repeated slowly.
“Yes! He gave it to me! He did not make any objection at all.”
“But did he ask you nothing—forgive me!—as to your family?”
Bryan shook his head.
“He knows that I have no family,” he answered. “He knows that so far as the world is concerned, I have to make my own name. But in these days there is much that can be done by a man who has ambition and money. I am very rich indeed, and I am very ambitious. As for the rest, Lord Wessemer has offered me his friendship and his influence.”
“You have surprised me very much indeed!” Lady Helen said, looking into the fire. “I had imagined that Lord Wessemer’s prejudices would have prevented his even listening to you!”
“If only I could hope that yours would vanish as speedily,” Bryan said, his deep bass voice a little tremulous, and his eyes very soft and bright, “I should feel myself very happy. Lady Helen, tell me what you would have me do to win you, and I will do it. Would you like me to go into Parliament? I could find a seat in the autumn, and with you to work for, I promise that I would make a name that you would not be ashamed of. Lord Wessemer tells me that the doors of society will not be closed upon me; that his influence is quite enough to enable me to mix with the people whom you would wish to live amongst. My whole life should be an offering to you; and I would make you happy, Lady Helen. I would indeed!”
She looked at him, not unkindly, but gravely. She was indeed a little moved, more moved than she had ever been before by a man’s pleading. But even then she felt that this new feeling, sweet in a sense though it was, was scarcely a thing to trust to. It might die away as swiftly as it had come; as yet she had no confidence in it. In any case, it had no strength to undermine all the preconceived ideas of her life. She wanted to be fair—to be fair to herself as well as to him; and she thought for some time before she answered.
“I am afraid that you are going to be disappointed in me, Mr. Bryan,” she said slowly. “I do really admire the wonderful way in which you have stepped out of your old self, and if, as you say, my influence has had anything to do with it, I am very glad. But you ask from me what I am not able to give. You want me to care for you in a certain way, and I do not! It is best to be candid, is it not?”
“It is best,” Bryan answered. “But, Lady Helen, I do not expect too much. As yet I am almost a stranger to you. I am content to wait. I have never dared to hope to win you easily. All I ask is, that you will take some time to consider.”
“That I will grant,” she answered. “It is only fair. I warn you that I am naturally not at all of a sympathetic or affectionate disposition. I have never expected to care for any one in the way you desire. I still feel that it is not likely. But if you wish it, I will give you my answer, say in six months’ time.”
She had risen, and was standing by his side, a fair, stately figure in her creamy-white gown, with its soft folds of lace rising one above the other like the waves of the sea, and emitting at every rustle a faint sweet perfume of dried lavender, which became mingled with the odour of the roses at her bosom. One small slipper was stealing out from beneath a cloud of white lace draperies, and resting upon the fender; her elbow was upon the broad mantelpiece, and her head was reclining slightly upon her hand. They stood together for several moments without any further speech. Then suddenly he took a quick step towards her, and held out his arms. A swift uncontrollable desire had come to him. He must take her into his arms, and clasp her there. One kiss on those firm, proud lips, and she would be his—his for ever! A passion leaped into his face; his hot breath fell even upon her cheek. She, too, was agitated. The rich colour had flooded her cheeks. She was, in a sense, fascinated by the strength of his passion, and the desire in his glowing eyes. If he had carried out his purpose at that moment; if he had risked everything and taken her boldly into his arms, he might have broken down for ever that barrier of icy exclusiveness which custom and disposition had built up around her. If he had dared, she would have been very near yielding. It was the golden opportunity of his life, and while he hesitated it passed away.
In that intense silence they both distinctly heard the sound of quick footsteps crossing the outer room. The tension between them passed away in a moment. Bryan turned his head, and gave a great start. Raymond Bettesford, pale and splashed with mud, was standing in the aperture.
“Bryan, she is ill—dying!” he faltered. “There is a horse—”
With a low, deep cry Bryan sprang past him. He stopped for neither hat nor coat, but in his thin evening clothes he sprang on to the horse which Raymond had ridden up. There were a few moments of wild riding through the darkness, with the bleak wind rushing past him, a leap from the park into the lane, and he was there, through the lit hall and up the narrow staircase to where a door stood open, and a woman lay upon a bed, with a smile upon her lips which was the smile of death. He knew it in a moment; he knew that there was no hope. The doctor and the little servant-maid stood away from the bedside as he entered, a strange, wild figure, with his wind-tossed hair and mud-bespattered clothes. He fell on his knees before her, and his arms drew her into his embrace. But he could not speak.
“My boy!” she murmured. “My poor, dear boy!”
She closed her eyes again. He whispered to her, but she did not hear. White and still she lay in his arms through the long, weary hours of the night. And Bryan never moved.
She opened her eyes at last. The night was gone.
Through a chink in the blind an odd little ray of white sunlight had found its way on to the bed. She lay looking at it for a moment, as though bewildered. Then her arms suddenly tightened around Bryan. There was a bright light in her face. She understood.
“My boy!” she cried faintly. “Thank God! Thank God! The morning has come!”
* * * * *
An hour later he wandered out into the sunlit garden, and came back with a handful of fresh, wet violets. As he passed up to her room with them, he heard the sound of a man’s deep, subdued sobbing. The library door was open, and he glanced mechanically in. It was Lord Wessemer!
He called out to him softly, and beckoned. Together the two men stole upstairs, and into the chamber of death.
They stood over her, and Bryan, pointing to the pillow, gave the wet, fragrant violets into Lord Wessemer’s hands. He laid them down softly. The two men stood side by side.
“Bryan—do you think—that she forgave me?” he asked.
“Ay! I know she did!” Bryan answered.
Lord Wessemer held out his hand hesitatingly.
“Will you?” he asked.
Bryan ground his teeth.
“She was an angel!” he said simply. “I am not!”
“At last, Bryan! I can see the buggy and the waggon. Look!”
She passed the glasses to her husband, and he held them to his eyes long and steadily. Then he put them down. “Yes, he is there,” he said.
They stood hand in hand waiting, and the soft west wind came from over the hills and fanned their faces. They were upon the piazza of a dainty little chalet built out upon a ledge of the mountains, and almost overhanging the great Redstone Park valley. Above them towered the snowcapped mountains, and all around, the lower hills lifted their pine-topped heads to the blue sky. At their feet was a wonderful panorama of valley and broad virgin country stretching away in a great plain to the misty horizon. Bryan was wearing a suit of white flannels, and he took off his cap to let the breeze sweep through his hair.
“This is the loveliest spot in the world!” he exclaimed. Myra laughed.
“And you have never found it dull? You, a man of fashion!”
“Never!” he answered gladly. “We have been very happy here, dear!”
She looked up at him with a soft gleam in her eyes, and a wonderful smile on her lips.
“It is like Paradise, Bryan!” she said. “But I think that we should have been happy anywhere!”
Nearer and nearer drew the little chain of vehicles, making their laborious way up the mountain. Through the glasses they could now see distinctly the figure of their approaching guest.
“Bryan, I have something to ask you!” his wife said slowly. “It is a great thing. I want to ask it you before Lord Wessemer gets here!”
“You’ll have to be quick, then!” he answered, smiling. “They’re at the bend now coming round the head of the gorge. How well he looks!”
“It is about that thing which he desires so much—that you will bear his name, and call yourself his son.”
He shut the glasses up with a snap.
“I cannot do that, Myra!” he said quietly. “I can forgive him, and I can even love him. But—”
She laid her hand upon his arm.
“One moment, Bryan!” she pleaded. “I am going to raise the curtain, just a corner of it, behind which all is blank for us. You remember—that night. You never quite understood why Lord Wessemer was with me, did you?”
“No, I never did!” he answered.
“I want to tell you! He came to me because, from a man’s careless talk at his club, he knew that in my despair I was giving myself over, body and soul, to death. I was mad that night, Bryan, and I had promised—to have supper with Sir George Conyers. Lord Wessemer came to me, and in a few gentle words he made me feel quite a different woman. He came of his own accord, and he saved me! That is why I am angry when I hear any one call him cynical, or blasi, or selfish! That is why I shall always love him next to you, Bryan!”
He stooped and kissed her, heedless of the ascending cavalcade.
“I am glad that you have told me this, Myra,” he said. “It shall be as he wishes! Come!”
They met on the lawn amongst the flowering azaleas, and under the shadow of the pine-trees, through which were little flower-framed peeps of the valley below.
“I am a reformed cynic,” Lord Wessemer laughed, as he held out his hands to them. “I shall sneer at Arcadia no more! It is here!”
Later, as they sat on the piazza, and watched the fireflies dart through the sweet-scented twilight, he spoke wistfully of that great desire which had brought him from England, a suppliant. And Bryan held out his hand through the gathering gloom.
“It shall be as you wish, father!” he said quietly. “Myra wishes it!”
Lord Wessemer bent forward, and through the darkness their eyes suddenly met—Myra’s and his. They understood.
THE END
The afternoon sun was streaming through the latticed window of an old-fashioned West of England farmhouse, throwing strange gleams of light into the quaint old corners, and across the red-tiled floor.
Leaning back in a chintz-covered old easy-chair drawn out from the corner was Bryan. His cap and stick were upon the table, and his hair was rough and wind-tossed. He had just come in from a long walk.
A little gray-haired woman—the picture of neat old age—came across the floor to him from the other end of the room. She stopped when she saw the dark cloud upon his face, and the weary look in his eyes.
“You’re over-tired, sir!” she said reproachfully.
“You’ll have some tea, won’t you?”
Bryan looked up suddenly. He had been deep in thought.
“Ay, Mrs. Holmes, I will!” he answered. “Some tea, and something to eat. I’m starved!”
“Why, surely, sir, and that you shall!” she exclaimed.
“Jane! Jane!”
She bustled away in search of her little domestic. Just as she turned her back, a shadow darkened the window for a moment, and immediately afterwards there was a sharp tapping at the door. Bryan looked round.
“Open the door, Mrs. Holmes!” he said. “Some one knocking!”
“It’ll be the baker!” she remarked, hurrying back and raising the latch. “Sakes alive! it’s my Lady!” she exclaimed, in an altogether different key. “Do walk in, my Lady Helen! You’ll take a chair! Deary me, I’m right glad to see you looking so fine and well! Deary me!”
A tall, slim girl dressed in a plain riding-habit, and holding her whip and skirts in her left hand, stepped lightly in.
“I’ll take something more than a chair, Mrs. Holmes!” she said, with a little laugh. “I want a cup of your very best tea, and some bread and butter! I’m positively starved! John was to have met me at Welby Gorse with my sandwich-case, but I missed him somehow, and I’ve had nothing all day! Oh!”
She had suddenly seen Bryan. He rose up from his seat in the chimney-corner, and stood upright, so that his head nearly touched the old beam which crossed the ceiling. Her eyes rested at first upon him carelessly—then with a faint expression of surprise. She stood quite still, tapping her skirts with her whip, and with a slight frown upon her clear white forehead. As for him, a deep flush had stolen through the bronze sunburn of his cheeks, mounting even to his brow. There was a new look in his face, and a new fire in his eyes.
Mrs. Holmes hastened to explain his presence.
“It’s a gentleman lodging with me for a few days, my Lady!” she said apologetically. “I’ll see for the tea! You’ll take a chair?”
She bustled away into the back regions. Bryan mechanically wheeled out his chair, and placed it for her.
“So you have come back again!” she remarked, with a little smile. “Why, I thought that you had gone to the Cape, or Australia, or somewhere, to make your fortune! You have soon tired of wandering!”
“I’m very tired of it!” he answered. “I am glad to be back in England again!”
She took his chair, and laid her whip upon the table by the side of his stick. He remained standing before her. From the kitchen behind came the pleasant rattle of cups and saucers, and the hissing of a kettle. Neither of them spoke for several moments. A faint ray of winter sunlight was glancing upon the oak table, and upon her fair hair, resolutely brushed back, but waving a little round the temples. She leaned back and watched him, smoothing out her gloves thoughtfully.
“Well, tell me all about it!” she said at length. “Where have you been?”
“In California and San Francisco, most of the time!” he answered. “Digging for gold, amongst other things!”
“Were you successful?” she asked.
“In a measure! I was there on a different sort of search, too. I had a rough time of it altogether!”
She looked at him critically.
“Ah! a search for a name and a fortune, wasn’t it? I remember your telling me something about it, don’t I? Well, did you find them?”
“I think so!” he answered slowly. “One of them, at any rate!”
A peculiar gravity in his tone attracted her. She raised her eyes to his face again, and looked at him with a quiet, supercilious interest.
“Really, how interesting! Might one inquire which?”
“No; you mayn’t!” he answered roughly. “Don’t make me mad, Lady Helen! When you look at me like that, I don’t feel quite myself. What have I done that you should despise me so?”
She shrugged her shoulders, and leaned back in the chair, half-closing her eyes.
“Dear me!” she said softly. “I did hope that you had forgotten those terrible heroics of yours!”
His chest heaved, and there was a strange bright light in his eyes.
“Forgotten! I have forgotten nothing—nothing, curse it!” he muttered under his breath. “I have been a rank utter fool from the day I flung myself upon your horses; and you deigned to thank me with a smile. God! how the memory of that day has clung to me! I thought of it at night, on the steamer, when the deep silence and the loneliness of the sea brought it all back, and even the rushing winds seemed to speak to me with your voice! And in the darkness, when I sat and smoked my pipe outside my hut on the banks of the Blue River, there was something about the scent of the shrubs there which reminded me of the perfume of your clothes. Once I was as near death as a man can come—so near that my eyes were closed, and the death burr was in my ears; I was thinking of you then! I couldn’t keep you out of my thoughts! I never can! God knows I try! Oh, you make me wish that I could hate you when I see you looking as you do now, as calm, and proud, and disdainful as though the breaking of a man’s heart were nothing to you!”
“The breaking of some men’s hearts, if they really possess such a thing, would be a great deal to me in some cases,” she said, looking at him steadfastly. “But you must really excuse me if I wonder sometimes whether you quite realize to whom you are talking!”
He laughed hoarsely. “Ay, I know! You are Lady Helen Wessemer, niece and ward of the Earl of Wessemer, and I am—well, nobody! That’s so! I know it well enough, but there are times when I can only remember that I am a man, and you are a woman.”
“You are certainly the boldest man I ever met!” she said, with a slight flush in her cheeks. “I can see that you are excited, and scarcely accountable for what you are saying, or I should take care not to see you or speak to you again! I don’t want to do that, if only you would control yourself, and be reasonable. It would be so much better! Now, listen! Four or five years ago, you saved my life—saved it bravely, too! What were you then? Try and recall yourself! You were the terror of the whole village. A notorious poacher, a frequenter of public-houses, ill-dressed and ill-mannered, and associated only with the worst characters about the place! Why Lord Wessemer passed over all your misdeeds, and persistently refused to have you punished, I cannot imagine; but it was so! You were a completely lawless creature; you earned no money; you never worked; you slept out of doors—in short, you were half a wild animal!”
“Exactly!”
She leaned forward to the fire, and held her fingers to the blaze for a few moments. Then she continued, keeping her eyes steadily fixed upon him.
“Well, after my accident and your bravery, I naturally felt some anxiety to serve you; and I gave you what you most needed—good advice. It pleased you to follow it! What I suggested, you did. You commenced to lead a decent life, and, to my surprise, I found that you were very fairly educated. In a very few months you were vastly improved. You had a very fair amount of money for your position, and Lord Wessemer would have let you have any of his farms rent-free. It was then that your gratitude to me commenced to take—an objectionable form. You followed me about, you glared at me if you saw me at any time with the men who were the natural companions of my position—in short, you behaved like a thorough idiot. You began to talk wildly, too, of some possible good fortune which might happen to you, and, in short, you wearied me horribly. At last you went away, and don’t feel hurt if I say it was a great relief. You see you have forced me to be very frank! I want to continue to be your friend, but if I do, you must remember this: that I am Lady Helen Wessemer, and you are—yourself. You understand! Don’t, please, look so tragical! Is Mrs. Holmes ever going to bring that tea, I wonder!”
“One moment!”
He was standing over her, stern and pale. She half rose, but sat down again. There was a certain strength in the man—in his resolute face and set brows—which it was hard to resist.
“Suppose for one moment, that I was a gentleman, and rich—richer even than you! What then?”
“Nothing!”
“You mean—”
“I mean that you would be to me then—what you are now!” she interrupted. “Don’t you understand? You have no real education, no culture! You and I dwell in different worlds! You force me to tell you this! I am sorry to hurt you, but nothing in this world could make—what you suggest possible!”
He clenched his fists tightly together, and drew himself up so that his head touched the roof. His face was white and desperate, and his eyes glowed like pieces of live coal. She shrank back in her chair, and looked at him—afraid.
“It’s—not true!” he said, in a tone quite low, but vibrating with passion. “Lady Helen, the time will come when you shall take back your words. Look at me! I’m a strong man. I’m one of those who gets what he wants! I want you—you and your love! And I shall have you! I swear it before God—on my soul!”
She shrank away from him, for once speechless. He caught his cap and stick from the table, and strode across the stone floor. The door opened and shut. He was gone!
“He is mad!” she told herself. “He must be out of his senses!”
Bryan left the farmyard by the gate in the ordinary way, but once in the fields, he strode along regardless of footpaths or stiles, with the set, white face of a man suddenly bereft of his senses. As a matter of fact, he was utterly without knowledge of where he was going to, but he kept his face resolutely turned towards the setting sun, and in about half an hour he had reached a slight elevation of the country from which a lonely tract of moorland rolled away to the horizon. Here he paused, and stood with tightly clenched hands, gazing away at the far-distant line where the winter’s sun seemed sinking into the bosom of the earth. For a moment his face worked spasmodically. Then he commenced to mutter to himself, his voice deep and low, scarcely rising above a whisper.
“Curse her! How she scorns me—me, the vagabond poacher, the country yokel! No education, no—what was that word she used?—no culture! My God! how beautiful she is—so fair and stately and proud! She is like a princess. There is not another woman in the world like her! When she looks at me, I am on fire! When she scoffs at me, I go mad! Lord! what a fool I am! What a d—d fool!”
He was standing near a rude gray stone wall. He stepped forward and leaned upon it, gazing steadfastly at the long line of yellow light where the sun had gone down. A damp, gray twilight was commencing to fall, and the landscape faded away almost before his eyes. But he did not move; he was thinking. Presently he began to mutter to himself again. He was the only living creature in the midst of a great solitude, and it was a relief to let his fiery, disjointed thoughts escape him.
“A boor! I was always a boor to her! She was always an aristocrat, even before she put on the silks and satins of young ladyhood. God! how beautiful she is! Curse her beauty! Curse her pride! How her bitter words send the hot blood racing through my veins to my heart! Oh, my God! if it were possible—if it were only possible to hold her in my arms but for a little while—and die! Ay, it would be worth dying for!”
The light of his great desire gleamed out of his eyes, lit up his bronzed face, and even showed itself in that sudden yearning movement, and outstretching of his hands towards the gray rolling mists amongst which, in fancy, he had seen for a moment, the face of this fair, proud girl. Perhaps at that moment, more than at any previous time in his life, he tasted alike the bitterest and the sweetest depths of his passion. It had come to him on the threshold of manhood, had become an indissoluble part of his sensations, a part of the man himself. He was the boor who loved a princess. It seemed to him that he could no more destroy that love than he could destroy himself. They were one and the same, one flesh and one blood, one body and one soul!