His daring had been the audacity of ignorance, they said. If he had known the extent of the peril in such unconsidered wanderings, with so small a party, with such inadequate preparation, he would have been a madman to set his life upon such chances. Had he answered them truthfully he would have told them that he was a madman when he turned his face towards the desert; mad with the agony of a life that was blighted; mad with the bitter memories of lost happiness.
Of these wedded lovers, parted in the noontide of their love, one carried his wounded heart to the wilderness, and sought for tranquillity of spirit in a life of movement and peril; the other, the weaker vessel, had no such large resources. The life of adventure, the ever-changing horizon, were not for her. She could only creep to some quiet haven and sit alone and brood upon her grief.
She went first to Avranches; then late in the autumn she took a fancy to the solitude of Mont St. Michel, the quaint monastic citadel, the fortress on the rock; and here, when the last of the tourists had gone, and the equinoctial gales were roaring round the Gothic towers, she took up her abode in an apartment specially prepared for her by the cheery patronne of the Inn at the Gate, an apartment upon the ramparts, with windows looking wide over the sea towards Coutances and Jersey.
Benson, who had a constitution of iron, complained bitterly of this windswept rock, yet had to own later that her health had never been better. Eve stopped here late into the winter, sketching a little, reading a great deal, wandering on the sands in all weathers, and sometimes wishing that her footsteps would take her unawares to that portion of the bay, where, as in the Kelpie’s flow, sorrow might find a grave.
An imprudent ramble in the marshy fields between Pontorson and the Mount, which left her belated in the mists of a November evening, resulted in congestion of the lungs. She had contrived to lose herself among those salt meadows as completely as ever her husband had lost himself in Mashonaland, and it was eleven o’clock when she and her whimpering attendant tottered along the causeway leading to the gates of the fortress, footsore and weary, their shoes worn out in that long tramp over coarse grass and sandy hillocks.
Benson telegraphed to Miss Marchant at Fernhurst, and Sophy appeared on the scene as quickly as boat and rail, and a wretched fly from Avranches, with harness eked out by bits of rope, could bring her. Sophy was brokenhearted at this cruel turn which her sister’s bright fortunes had taken, and agonized with remorseful retrospection. It was she, perhaps, whose imprudent tongue had parted husband and wife, had destroyed that happy home. Sophy hated herself for the folly of that revelation. Why could she not have let well alone? Why could she not have left undisturbed that happy state of things by which she herself had profited so richly? Looking back upon her conduct of that fatal week, she saw that it was her own disappointment which had soured her, and her own selfish vexation which had made her so angry with Vansittart.
It was a long time before Eve was well enough for serious talk of any kind. She rallied slowly, and during the monotonous days of her convalescence she was treated as a child, who must only hear of pleasant things; but when she was well again, quite well—save for that little hacking cough which seemed to have become an element of her being—Sophy ventured to approach the subject of her domestic sorrows.
“I have been utterly miserable since the day I left Charles Street,” said Sophy, seated beside Eve’s easy-chair, and resting her forehead on the cushioned arm as she talked, so that her face was invisible. “I have hated myself for speaking of your husband as I did—only upon hearsay. After all, Mr. Sefton might have misinterpreted Jack’s conduct. It might all have been a mistake.”
“It was a mistake, Sophy.”
“Oh, I am so glad. You found out at once that Mr. Sefton was wrong.”
“Yes.”
“Thank God! But then”—looking up at her sister in blank astonishment—“if that is so, why are you parted, Jack and you?”
“That is our secret, Sophy.”
“But why, but why? I can’t understand. There could be only one reason for your leaving him when you loved him so dearly. Nothing but the knowledge of his infidelity would justify—”
“Stop, Sophy,” said Eve, peremptorily. “There is nothing gained by speculating about other people’s business. My husband and I have our own reason for taking different roads. We have never quarrelled; we have never ceased to care for each other. I shall love him with all my heart, and mind, and strength, till my last breath.”
“I guess your reason,” answered Sophy, nodding sagaciously. “He is an Atheist, and you, who have always been a good Church-woman, could not go on living with an unbeliever. You are like poor Catherine in Robert Elsmere.”
“Oh, Sophy, do you think I should forsake him because he was without hope or comfort from God? Why do you tease me with foolish guesses? I tell you again the reason of our parting is our secret. A secret that will go down with me to the grave.”
Sophy’s eager imagination ran riot in the world of mystery. Politics, Freemasonry, Hypnotism, Theosophy, Nihilism, hereditary madness, epilepsy, hydrophobia, a family ghost, a family fatality! That lively mind of hers touched each possibility, rejected each, and flew off to the next; and lastly, with a sigh of relief,
