Part 47 (1/2)

Henry opened a door, and down the corridor came shouts of laughter. ”Far too much screaming there,” he said, and strode towards it. Margaret went upstairs, uncertain whether to be glad that they had met, or sorry. They had behaved as if nothing had happened, and her deepest instincts told her that this was wrong. For his own sake, some explanation was due.

And yet--what could an explanation tell her? A date, a place, a few details, which she could imagine all too clearly. Now that the first shock was over, she saw that there was every reason to premise a Mrs.

Bast. Henry's inner life had long laid open to her--his intellectual confusion, his obtuseness to personal influence, his strong but furtive pa.s.sions. Should she refuse him because his outer life corresponded?

Perhaps. Perhaps, if the dishonour had been done to her, but it was done long before her day. She struggled against the feeling. She told herself that Mrs. Wilc.o.x's wrong was her own. But she was not a barren theorist.

As she undressed, her anger, her regard for the dead, her desire for a scene, all grew weak. Henry must have it as he liked, for she loved him, and some day she would use her love to make him a better man.

Pity was at the bottom of her actions all through this crisis. Pity, if one may generalise, is at the bottom of woman. When men like us, it is for our better qualities, and however tender their liking, we dare not be unworthy of it, or they will quietly let us go. But unworthiness stimulates woman. It brings out her deeper nature, for good or for evil.

Here was the core of the question. Henry must be forgiven, and made better by love; nothing else mattered. Mrs. Wilc.o.x, that unquiet yet kindly ghost, must be left to her own wrong. To her everything was in proportion now, and she, too, would pity the man who was blundering up and down their lives. Had Mrs. Wilc.o.x known of his trespa.s.s? An interesting question, but Margaret fell asleep, tethered by affection, and lulled by the murmurs of the river that descended all the night from Wales. She felt herself at one with her future home, colouring it and coloured by it, and awoke to see, for the second time, Oniton Castle conquering the morning mists.

CHAPTER XXIX

”Henry dear--” was her greeting.

He had finished his breakfast, and was beginning the Times. His sister-in-law was packing. Margaret knelt by him and took the paper from him, feeling that it was unusually heavy and thick. Then, putting her face where it had been, she looked up in his eyes.

”Henry dear, look at me. No, I won't have you s.h.i.+rking. Look at me.

There. That's all.”

”You're referring to last evening,” he said huskily. ”I have released you from your engagement. I could find excuses, but I won't. No, I won't. A thousand times no. I'm a bad lot, and must be left at that.”

Expelled from his old fortress, Mr. Wilc.o.x was building a new one.

He could no longer appear respectable to her, so he defended himself instead in a lurid past. It was not true repentance.

”Leave it where you will, boy. It's not going to trouble us; I know what I'm talking about, and it will make no difference.”

”No difference?” he inquired. ”No difference, when you find that I am not the fellow you thought?” He was annoyed with Miss Schlegel here. He would have preferred her to be prostrated by the blow, or even to rage. Against the tide of his sin flowed the feeling that she was not altogether womanly. Her eyes gazed too straight; they had read books that are suitable for men only. And though he had dreaded a scene, and though she had determined against one, there was a scene, all the same.

It was somehow imperative.

”I am unworthy of you,” he began. ”Had I been worthy, I should not have released you from your engagement. I know what I am talking about. I can't bear to talk of such things. We had better leave it.”

She kissed his hand. He jerked it from her, and, rising to his feet, went on: ”You, with your sheltered life, and refined pursuits, and friends, and books, you and your sister, and women like you--I say, how can you guess the temptations that lie round a man?”

”It is difficult for us,” said Margaret; ”but if we are worth marrying, we do guess.”

”Cut off from decent society and family ties, what do you suppose happens to thousands of young fellows overseas? Isolated. No one near. I know by bitter experience, and yet you say it makes 'no difference.'”

”Not to me.”

He laughed bitterly. Margaret went to the sideboard and helped herself to one of the breakfast dishes. Being the last down, she turned out the spirit-lamp that kept them warm. She was tender, but grave. She knew that Henry was not so much confessing his soul as pointing out the gulf between the male soul and the female, and she did not desire to hear him on this point.

”Did Helen come?” she asked.

He shook his head.

”But that won't do at all, at all! We don't want her gossiping with Mrs.

Bast.”