CHAPTER XV.
Two days later, in the afternoon, Aldous Raeburn found himself at thedoor of Mellor. When he entered the drawing-room, Mrs. Boyce, who hadheard his ring, was hurrying away.
"Don't go," he said, detaining her with a certain peremptoriness. "Iwant all the light on this I can get. Tell me, she has _actually_brought herself to regard this man's death as in some sort my doing--assomething which ought to separate us?"
Mrs. Boyce saw that he held an opened letter from Marcella crushed inhis hand. But she did not need the explanation. She had been expectinghim at any hour throughout the day, and in just this condition of mind.
"Marcella must explain for herself," she said, after a moment's thought."I have no right whatever to speak for her. Besides, frankly, I do notunderstand her, and when I argue with her she only makes me realise thatI have no part or lot in her--that I never had. It is just enough. Shewas brought up away from me. And I have no natural hold. I cannot helpyou, or any one else, with her."
Aldous had been very tolerant and compassionate in the past of thisstrange mother's abdication of her maternal place, and of its probablecauses. But it was not in human nature that he should be either to-day.He resumed his questioning, not without sharpness.
"One word, please. Tell me something of what has happened sinceThursday, before I see her. I have written--but till this morning I havehad not one line from her."
They were standing by the window, he with his frowning gaze, in whichagitation struggled against all his normal habits of manner andexpression, fixed upon the lawn and the avenue. She told him brieflywhat she knew of Marcella's doings since the arrival of Wharton'stelegram--of the night in the cottage, and the child's death. It wasplain that he listened with a shuddering repulsion.
"Do you know," he exclaimed, turning upon her, "that she may neverrecover this? Such a strain, such a horror! rushed upon so wantonly, soneedlessly."
"I understand. You think that I have been to blame? I do not wonder. Butit is not true--not in this particular case. And anyway your view is notmine. Life--and the iron of it--has to be faced, even by women--perhaps,most of all, by women. But let me go now. Otherwise my husband will comein. And I imagine you would rather see Marcella before you see him orany one."
That suggestion told. He instantly gathered himself together, andnervously begged that she would send Marcella to him at once. He couldthink of nothing, talk of nothing, till he had seen her. She went, andAldous was left to walk up and down the room planning what he shouldsay. After the ghastly intermingling of public interests and privatemisery in which he had lived for these many weeks there was a certainrelief in having reached the cleared space--the decisive moment--when hemight at last give himself wholly to what truly concerned him. He wouldnot lose her without a struggle. None the less he knew, and had knownever since the scene in the Court library, that the great disaster ofhis life was upon him.
The handle of the door turned. She was there.
He did not go to meet her. She had come in wrought up to faceattack--reproaches, entreaties--ready to be angry or to be humble, as heshould give her the lead. But he gave her no lead. She had to breakthrough that quivering silence as best she could.
"I wanted to explain everything to you," she said in a low voice, as shecame near to him. "I know my note last night was very hard and abrupt. Ididn't mean to be hard. But I am still so tired--and everything that onesays, and feels, hurts so."
She sank down upon a chair. This womanish appeal to his pity had notbeen at all in her programme. Nor did it immediately succeed. As helooked at her, he could only feel the wantonness of this eclipse intowhich she had plunged her youth and beauty. There was wrath, apassionate protesting wrath, under his pain.
"Marcella," he said, sitting down beside her, "did you read my letterthat I wrote you the day before--?"
"Yes."
"And after that, you could still believe that I was indifferent to yourgrief--your suffering--or to the suffering of any human being for whomyou cared? You could still think it, and feel it?"
"It was not what you have said all through," she replied, lookingsombrely away from him, her chin on her hand, "it is what you havedone."
"What have I done?" he said proudly, bending forward from his seatbeside her. "What have I ever done but claim from you that freedom youdesire so passionately for others--freedom of conscience--freedom ofjudgment? You denied me this freedom, though I asked it of you with allmy soul. And you denied me more. Through these five weeks you haverefused me the commonest right of love--the right to show you myself, toprove to you that through all this misery of differing opinion--misery,much more, oh, much more to me than to you!--I was in truth bent on thesame ends with you, bearing the same burden, groping towards the samegoal."
"No! no!" she cried, turning upon him, and catching at a word; "whatburden have you ever borne? I know you were sorry--that there was astruggle in your mind--that you pitied me--pitied _them_. But you judgedit all _from above_--you looked down--and I could not see that you hadany right. It made me mad to have such things seen from a height, when Iwas below--in the midst--_close_ to the horror and anguish of them."
"Whose fault was it," he interrupted, "that I was not with you? Did Inot offer--entreat? I could not sign a statement of fact which seemedto me an untrue statement, but what prevented me--preventedus.--However, let me take that point first. Would you,"--he spokedeliberately, "would you have had me put my name to a public statementwhich I, rightly or wrongly, believed to be false, because you asked me?You owe it to me to answer."
She could not escape the penetrating fire of his eye. The man'smildness, his quiet self-renouncing reserve, were all burnt up at lastin this white heat of an accusing passion. In return she began to forgether own resolve to bear herself gently.
"You don't remember," she cried, "that what divided us wasyour--your--incapacity to put the human pity first; to think of thesurrounding circumstances--of the debt that you and I and everybody likeus owe to a man like Hurd--to one who had been stunted and starved bylife as he had been."
Her lip began to tremble.
"Then it comes to this," he said steadily, "that if I had been a poorman, you would have allowed me my conscience--my judgment of right andwrong--in such a matter. You would have let me remember that I was acitizen, and that pity is only one side of justice! You would have letme plead that Hurd's sin was not against me, but against the community,and that in determining whether to do what you wished or no, I mustthink of the community and its good before even I thought of pleasingyou. If I had possessed no more than Hurd, all this would have beenpermitted me; but because of Maxwell Court--because of my _money_,"--sheshrank before the accent of the word--"you refused me the commonestmoral rights. _My_ scruple, _my_ feeling, were nothing to you. Yourpride was engaged as well as your pity, and I must give way. Marcella!you talk of justice--you talk of equality--is the only man who can getneither at your hands--the man whom you promised to marry!"
His voice dwelt on that last word, dwelt and broke. He leant over her inhis roused strength, and tried to take her hand. But she moved away fromhim with a cry.
"It is no use! Oh, don't--don't! It may be all true. I was vain, I daresay, and unjust, and hard. But don't you see--don't you understand--ifwe _could_ take such different views of such a case--if it could divideus so deeply--what chance would there be if we were married? I oughtnever--never--to have said 'Yes' to you--even as I was then. But _now_,"she turned to him slowly, "can't you see it for yourself? I am a changedcreature. Certain things in me are gone--_gone_--and instead there is afire--something driving, tormenting--which must burn its way out. When Ithink of what I liked so much when you asked me to marry you--beingrich, and having beautiful things, and dresses, and jewels, andservants, and power--social power--above all _that_--I feel sick andchoked. I couldn't breathe now in a house like Maxwell Court. The poorhave come to mean to me the only people who really _live_, and really_suffer_. I must live with them, work for them,
find out what I can dofor them. You must give me up--you must indeed. Oh! and you will! Youwill be glad enough, thankful enough, when--when--you know what I _am_!"
He started at the words. Where was the prophetess? He saw that she waslying white and breathless, her face hidden against the arm of thechair.
In an instant he was on his knees beside her.
"Marcella!" he could hardly command his voice, but he held herstruggling hand against his lips. "You think that suffering belongs toone class? Have you really no conception of what you will be dealing tome if you tear yourself away from me?"
She withdrew her hand, sobbing.
"Don't, don't stay near me!" she said; "there is--more--there issomething else."
Aldous rose.
"You mean," he said in an altered voice, after a pause of silence, "thatanother influence--another man--has come between us?"
She sat up, and with a strong effort drove back her weeping.
"If I could say to you only this," she began at last, with long pauses,"'I mistook myself and my part in life. I did wrong, but forgive me, andlet me go for both our sakes'--that would be--well!--that would bedifficult,--but easier than this! Haven't you understood at all?When--when Mr. Wharton came, I began to see things very soon, not in myown way, but in his way. I had never met any one like him--not any onewho showed me such possibilities in _myself_--such new ways of usingone's life, and not only one's possessions--of looking at all the greatquestions. I thought it was just friendship, but it made me critical,impatient of everything else. I was never myself from the beginning.Then,--after the ball,"--he stooped over her that he might hear her themore plainly,--"when I came home I was in my room and I heardsteps--there are ghost stories, you know, about that part of the house.I went out to see. Perhaps, in my heart of hearts--oh, I can't tell, Ican't tell!--anyway, he was there. We went into the library, and wetalked. He did not want to touch our marriage,--but he said all sorts ofmad things,--and at last--he kissed me."
The last words were only breathed. She had often pictured herselfconfessing these things to him. But the humiliation in which sheactually found herself before him was more than she had ever dreamed of,more than she could bear. All those great words of pity and mercy--allthat implication of a moral atmosphere to which he could neverattain--to end in this story! The effect of it, on herself, rather thanon him, was what she had not foreseen.
Aldous raised himself slowly.
"And when did this happen?" he asked after a moment.
"I told you--the night of the ball--of the murder," she said with ashiver; "we saw Hurd cross the avenue. I meant to have told youeverything at once."
"And you gave up that intention?" he asked her, when he had waited alittle for more, and nothing came.
She turned upon him with a flash of the old defiance.
"How could I think of my own affairs?"
"Or of mine?" he said bitterly.
She made no answer.
Aldous got up and walked to the chimney-piece. He was very pale, but hiseyes were bright and sparkling. When she looked up at him at last shesaw that her task was done. His scorn--his resentment--were they not theexpiation, the penalty she had looked forward to all along?--and withthat determination to bear them calmly? Yet, now that they were there infront of her, they stung.
"So that--for all those weeks--while you were letting me write as I did,while you were letting me conceive you and your action as I did, you hadthis on your mind? You never gave me a hint; you let me plead; you letme regard you as wrapped up in the unselfish end; you sent me thoseletters of his--those most misleading letters!--and all the time--"
"But I meant to tell you--I always meant to tell you," she criedpassionately. "I would never have gone on with a secret like that--notfor your sake--but for my own."
"Yet you did go on so long," he said steadily; "and my agony of mindduring those weeks--my feeling towards you--my--"
He broke off, wrestling with himself. As for her, she had fallen back inher chair, physically incapable of anything more.
He walked over to her side and took up his hat.
"You have done me wrong," he said, gazing down upon her. "I pray God youmay not do yourself a greater wrong in the future! Give me leave towrite to you once more, or to send my friend Edward Hallin to see you.Then I will not trouble you again."
He waited, but she could give him no answer. Her form as she lay therein this physical and moral abasement printed itself upon his heart. Yethe felt no desire whatever to snatch the last touch--the last kiss--thatwounded passion so often craves. Inwardly, and without words, he saidfarewell to her. She heard his steps across the room; the door shut; shewas alone--and free.
BOOK III.
"O Neigung, sage, wie hast du so tief Im Herzen dich verstecket?Wer hat dich, die verborgen schlief, Gewecket?"