Part 39 (2/2)

He spoke so quietly that Jane's heart sank within her. Some display of agitation would have been rea.s.suring. This was the man who, bowing his dark head towards the crucifixion window, said: ”I accept the cross.”

This was the man, whose footsteps never once faltered as he strode down the aisle, and left her. This was the man, who had had the strength, ever since, to treat that episode between her and himself, as completely closed; no word of entreaty; no sign of remembrance; no hint of reproach. And this was the man to whom she had signed herself: ”Your wife.”

In her whole life, Jane had never known fear. She knew it now.

As she silently rose and left him, she stole one look at his face. He was sitting perfectly still; the letter in his hand. He had not turned his head toward her as he took it. His profile might have been a beautiful carving in white ivory. There was not the faintest tinge of colour in his face; just that ivory pallor, against the ebony lines of his straight brows, and smooth dark hair.

Jane softly left the room, closing the door behind her.

Then followed the longest fifteen minutes she had ever known. She realised what a tremendous conflict was in progress in that quiet room.

Garth was arriving at his decision without having heard any of her arguments. By the strange fatality of his own insistence, he had heard only two words of her letter, and those the crucial words; the two words to which the whole letter carefully led up. They must have revealed to him instantly, what the character of the letter would be; and what was the att.i.tude of mind towards himself, of the woman who wrote them.

Jane paced the dining-room in desperation, remembering the hours of thought which had gone to the compiling of sentences, cautiously preparing his mind to the revelation of the signature.

Suddenly, in the midst of her mental perturbation, there came to her the remembrance of a conversation between Nurse Rosemary and Garth over the pictures. The former had said: ”Is she a wife?” And Garth had answered: ”Yes.” Jane had instantly understood what that answer revealed and implied. Because Garth had so felt her his during those wonderful moments on the terrace at Shenstone, that he could look up into her face and say, ”My wife”--not as an interrogation, but as an absolute statement of fact,--he still held her this, as indissolubly as if priest, and book, and ring, had gone to the wedding of their union.

To him, the union of souls came before all else; and if that had taken place, all that might follow was but the outward indors.e.m.e.nt of an accomplished fact. Owing to her fear, mistrust, and deception, nothing had followed. Their lives had been sundered; they had gone different ways. He regarded himself as being no more to her than any other man of her acquaintance. During these years he had believed, that her part in that evening's wedding of souls had existed in his imagination, only; and had no binding effect upon her. But his remained. Because those words were true to him then, he had said them; and, because he had said them, he would consider her his wife, through life,--and after. It was the intuitive understanding of this, which had emboldened Jane so to sign her letter. But how would he reconcile that signature with the view of her conduct which he had all along taken, without ever having the slightest conception that there could be any other?

Then Jane remembered, with comfort, the irresistible appeal made by Truth to the soul of the artist; truth of line; truth of colour; truth of values; and, in the realm of sound, truth of tone, of harmony, of rendering, of conception. And when Nurse Rosemary had said of his painting of ”The Wife”: ”It is a triumph of art”; Garth had replied: ”It is a triumph of truth.” And Jane's own verdict on the look he had seen and depicted was: ”It is true--yes, it is true!” Will he not realise now the truth of that signature; and, if he realises it, will he not be glad in his loneliness, that his wife should come to him; unless the confessions and admissions of the letter cause him to put her away as wholly unworthy?

Suddenly Jane understood the immense advantage of the fact that he would hear every word of the rest of her letter, knowing the conclusion, which she herself could not possibly have put first. She saw a Higher Hand in this arrangement; and said, as she watched the minutes slowly pa.s.s: ”He hath broken down the middle wall of part.i.tion between us”; and a sense of calm a.s.surance descended, and garrisoned her soul with peace.

The quarter of an hour was over.

Jane crossed the hall with firm, though noiseless, step; stood a moment on the threshold relegating herself completely to the background; then opened the door; and Nurse Rosemary re-entered the library.

CHAPTER x.x.xIV

”LOVE NEVER FAILETH”

Garth was standing at the open window, when Nurse Rosemary re-entered the library; and he did not turn, immediately.

She looked anxiously for the letter, and saw it laid ready on her side of the table. It bore signs of having been much crumpled; looking almost as a letter might appear which had been crushed into a ball, flung into the waste-paper basket, and afterwards retrieved. It had, however, been carefully smoothed out; and lay ready to her hand.

When Garth turned from the window and pa.s.sed to his chair, his face bore the signs of a great struggle. He looked as one who, sightless, has yet been making frantic efforts to see. The ivory pallor was gone.

His face was flushed; and his thick hair, which grew in beautiful curves low upon his forehead and temples, and was usually carefully brushed back in short-cropped neatness, was now ruffled and disordered.

But his voice was completely under control, as he turned towards his secretary.

”My dear Miss Gray,” he said, ”we have a difficult task before us. I have received a letter, which it is essential I should hear. I am obliged to ask you to read it to me, because there is absolutely no one else to whom I can prefer such a request. I cannot but know that it will be a difficult and painful task for you, feeling yourself an intermediary between two wounded and sundered hearts. May I make it easier, my dear little girl, by a.s.suring you that I know of no one in this world from whose lips I could listen to the contents of that letter with less pain; and, failing my own, there are no eyes beneath which I could less grudgingly let it pa.s.s, there is no mind I could so unquestioningly trust, to judge kindly, both of myself and of the writer; and to forget faithfully, all which was not intended to come within the knowledge of a third person.”

”Thank you, Mr. Dalmain,” said Nurse Rosemary.

Garth leaned back in his chair, s.h.i.+elding his face with his hand.

”Now, if you please,” he said. And, very clearly and quietly, Nurse Rosemary began to read.

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