Chance, and that genius in the water that had crowned his escape by drowning him in the eyes of the world, had combined at once, and helped him to save an unknown gentleman's life. Mother-wit and the laws of gratitude enabled him to dupe the man he had rescued, become his close friend, live upon him, draw upon him, extract with subtle cunning the last farthing of salvage, and all the while he guessed—pretty correctly—that his pursuers were arriving to learn his death and take ship back to Australia.
Thus far everything had worked out so prettily that it seemed worth while turning thoroughly honest and beginning this second life on entirely different lines from the old one. Then he fell in love and believed that his love was returned, a belief that was not fostered by his own fancy unaided; now more than ever he desired to improve on the past, and to forget all ties and obligations belonging to the past. Edward Ryan was dead; then Edward Ryan's wife was a widow; Miles the Australian was a new unit in humanity; then why should not Miles the Australian marry?
Up to this point he could look back on every step with intense satisfaction; but here his reflections took a bitter turn. To go on calmly recoiling step after step, beginning with the month of July, was impossible: he tried it; but to remember that night in the park—to remember subsequent weeks spent in scheming and plotting, in rejecting plot after plot and scheme after scheme, in slowly eating his heart out in the solitude of a London lodging, in gradually losing all taste for fresh enterprise and all nerve for carrying it out—to remember all this was to pour vitriol on the spirit. He would remember no more; he would shut the gate on memory; he would annihilate thought; he would make his mind a blank. Yet he was powerless to do any of these things.
In his helplessness he looked down on the white figure at his side. The second hymn was being sung. He had stood, and sat, and knelt or leant forward with the rest, by mere mechanical impulse. He was even holding the book which she held without knowing it. When he realised this, his hand shook so much that the hymn-book was almost jerked from his fingers. At this she looked up, and caught his eyes bent down upon her.
Now Miles was at the end of the pew, next the wall, and in shadow. Alice noticed nothing in his expression, and went on singing without pause or break. But either her face, as she raised it, came in direct line with the skirt of some saint, in the window above Miles, and the sun, or else the sun chose that moment for a farewell gleam; in any case, the girl's pale face was instantly flooded with a rich, warm, crimson glow. Miles looked down, and this warm glow caught in his heart like a tongue of live flame.
The hymn was over; they sank down side by side: she to listen to the sermon, no matter its calibre—he to his thoughts, no matter their madness.
What were his thoughts? Not reflections now. Not hesitancy, his new unaccountable failing; not nervous doubt, his new humiliating enemy. No, his thoughts were of the old kind, but worse. He was contemplating a crime. He was contemplating the worst crime of his whole career. The plain English of his thoughts was this:
'I believe that she likes me. I see that she is, in the catch phrase, 'pining.' I am told that it is for me. Very good. If that is the case she will believe what I tell her, and do what I ask her. I have some power of persuasion. I am not without invention. I shall represent to her all kinds of reasons for precipitancy and secrecy—temporary secrecy. In a word, she shall fly with me! Well, that is bad enough; but there my badness ends. I will live without crime for her sake; I will retrieve what I can of the past. Henceforth my life is of her, with her—above all, it is for her. She need never know how I have wronged her, therefore she will not be wronged.'
He looked at the face beside him; it was white as alabaster. Alice was straining her eyes towards some object that filled them with sadness and sympathy. He followed the direction of her gaze; and he saw an old, old man—a man who would soon come to church for the last time, and remain outside the walls, under the grass—who was gazing with pathetic wistfulness at the preacher, and, with wrinkled hand raised to the ear, making the most and the best of every well-worn epithet and perfunctory stock phrase. That was all. Miles brought back his glance to the white profile at his side, and found it changed in this instant of time: the long eyelashes were studded with crystal tears!
How sad she looked—how thin and ill! Would she look like this afterwards? Would tears often fill her eyes in the time to come?
Miles shut his eyes, and again exerted might and main to blot out thought. But he could not do it; and half his confidence was gone at the moment when he most needed it all. He knew it, and shuddered. A thought that had haunted him of late crossed his mind for the hundredth time: he was an altered man not only in pretence but in reality; his nerve and coolness had deserted him!
The sermon was over, and the congregation awake. Miles stood up with the rest, and took between thumb and finger his side of the little hymn book held out to him. He heartily wished it all over. In his present unfortunate state of mind another hymn was another ordeal: her voice, when she sang, put such weak thoughts into his head. Was he not a fool and a madman to think at all of a woman who unmanned him so? Nay, hush! The hymn was begun. She was singing it with her whole heart, the little head thrown backward, the little white face turned upward. She was singing; he could hear nothing else. She was singing; would she sing afterwards? She was singing from the depths of her tired soul. Would she ever sing like this again? Would he ever hear her voice again. Hush! This might be the last time!
Colonel Bristo was back on the steps, gazing under his thin, hollowed hand up the road. He looked anxious, and indignant, and determined—but old and careworn.
'What a time they are!' said Dick, pointing to the crest of the second hill, where the brown road met the silver sky. Next moment he would have recalled his words, for two figures, not three, stood out black against the sky. They were only in sight for an instant, but during that instant they were hand in hand!
The two men on the steps waited without a word for many minutes. Neither could bring himself to speak— perhaps each hoped that the other had not seen everything. Besides, one was the father of the girl, and the other—her jilted lover. More than once the father shivered, and his fingers twitched the whole time. Simultaneously they both started in surprise; for all at once Alice appeared over the brow of the nearest hill, coming swiftly towards them—alone.
'Thank God!' murmured the Colonel, forgetting Dick's presence. 'He has asked her to marry him, and she has refused. The villain!'
'Then, if you are right,' cried Dick with sudden intensity, 'a million times blacker villain he.'
'What do you mean?'
'Mean? I mean—but there is no need to tell you now.'
'You may as well tell me everything.'
'Then I mean that he is married already.'
XXVI
AT BAY
'Where is Mrs. Parish?' demanded Colonel Bristo, the moment his daughter reached the gate. In spite of a gallant effort to be calm before Alice, his voice quivered.
