He was gone! She had been obeyed. The wrench was over; and now she had to face life calmly and deliberately without him. She had sacrificed all that was nearest and dearest to her on this earth to the shadow of the dead. She had made her choice between the dead and the living. Could she have chosen otherwise?
That was the question she asked herself when she had locked the door of her room and was alone with her misery, walking to and fro among the familiar surroundings which had been the background of a happy union. How could she have chosen otherwise?
“He killed him!” she repeated to herself with dogged insistency. “He killed my brother. What should I be if I could stay with him—call him husband, love him and obey him for the rest of my life—the man who killed my brother? Was it murder or not murder, he killed him. It was death. Oh, to think of my poor Harold—to think that he entered that fatal place in all the strength of his manhood; a young man, with a long life before him, perhaps; with all the chances of fortune and happiness which length of years can bring; and there in a moment he was breathing his last breath, stabbed to the heart!”
Memory recalled that fondly loved brother in the flush of his active boyhood—a cricket field shining in the sunlight, the white tents, the village crowd, and that tall, muscular form, the sunburnt face, blue eyes, and auburn hair, the type of English boyhood at its best. One scene after another of her childhood passed before her as in a panorama, and Harold was the central figure in every picture. So strong, so brave, so intelligent, so kind to her always, even when at war with others; loving her to the last, even when an outcast from his home.
How cruelly Fate had used him—an unkind father—a forced exile—an early and a violent death!
For more than an hour—for an eternity of suffering—she paced her room—or knelt beside the bed, not praying, nor yet crying—only thinking, thinking of the life that had been and that was over forever—her childish life in Yorkshire while her brother was still the cherished son, the honoured heir—the later season of disgrace and parting—her life with the husband of her love.
“And Peggy,” she thought, with a new agony of unavailing love, “oh, how good he was to my poor Peggy; but if she had known that the hand which smoothed her pillow was the hand that killed her brother—if she had known! Does she know now, I wonder, and know what I suffer, and pity me, from the far distance, in the land where there are no tears?”
She refused admittance to her maid at the usual hour of dressing. She told Benson that she had a headache, and would not go down to dinner. Later in the evening she wandered about the house, looking at the rooms in which she had been so happy—remembering the days of her courtship, when those rooms were still new to her, and when they realized all she had ever imagined of luxury and refinement. She went about bidding the rooms goodbye, looking at them for the last time, as she believed, for she meant to depart on her journey early next morning.
To depart whither?
On thinking out the question of her future she rejected the notion of that return to the old home of which she had spoken to Vansittart.
She could not go to her sisters at Fernhurst, the refuge which she would instinctively have chosen, content to hide herself in the humble home of her girlhood, to live the old unluxurious life, to sit by the cottage hearth, and read the tattered old books, and try to think herself a girl again, a girl who had never seen the face of Jack Vansittart.
Fernhurst would not do. It was too near Lady Hartley; it was not remote enough from Merewood. She had to find some abiding place which should be unknown to all the world except the servant who went with her. She did not feel herself equal to travelling without a servant. The ways of wealth had spoiled her for the ways of penury. She was no longer the same young woman who used to head an early expedition from Haslemere to Waterloo, travelling third class, among soldiers and workmen, to be first in the scramble for bargains at a sale of drapery. She felt herself powerless, in her bruised and broken state, to face the confusion of a crowded railway station, the bewilderment of foreign travel, with its stringent demands upon the traveller’s calmness and intelligence.
She found her good Benson waiting for her in her boudoir dressing-room with a tea-tray, and a meal of cold chicken, fruit and jelly, set out temptingly to beguile her into eating.
“You have had nothing since lunch, ma’am.”
“I can’t eat anything—yes,” as Benson looked distressed, “some bread and butter. You can leave that and the tea—but take away all the rest, please. And then give me Bradshaw—and I want you to pack before you go to bed. It is not very late, is it?”—looking hopelessly at the watch on her chatelaine, but unable to see the quaint old figures with those tired eyes.
“Past eleven, ma’am; but I can pack tonight, if you like. Are we to leave early tomorrow?”
Eve turned the leaves of Bradshaw before she answered, and pored over a page for a few minutes.
“The Continental train leaves Charing Cross at eight,” she said.
“Then I must certainly pack tonight, ma’am. Shall I take many dresses—evening gowns—tea-gowns? Shall you be going out much in the evenings?”
“I shan’t be going out at all. Take my plainest walking gowns, and, yes, a tea-gown or two; one black evening gown will do. Take plenty of things. I
