Part 14 (1/2)

”But they will move him to a better climate.”

”He does not want to be moved. I should not, either, in his case.”

Fay's hands fell to her sides.

”When my mother died,” said Wentworth, ”I promised her to be good to Michael. There was no need for me to promise to be good to him. I always liked him better than anyone else. I taught him to ride and to shoot. He got his gun up sharp from the first. It's easy to do things for anyone you like. But what is hard is when the time comes”--Wentworth stopped, and then went on--”when the time comes that you can't do anything more for the person you care for most.”

Silence.

The yellow b.u.t.terfly was still feebly trying to open and shut his wings.

The low sun had abandoned him to the encroaching frost, and was touching the bare overarching branches to palest gold, ”so subtly fair, so gorgeous dim”; so far beyond the reach of tiny wings.

”I don't think,” said Wentworth, ”I would stick at anything. I don't know of anything I would not do, anything I would not give up, to get him back his freedom. But it's no use, I can do nothing for him.”

”Oh! Why does not the real murderer confess?” said Fay with a sob, wringing her hands. ”How can he go on, year after year, letting an innocent man wear out his life in prison, bearing the punishment of his horrible crime?”

That mysterious murderer occupied a large place in Fay's thoughts. She hated him with a deadly hatred. He was responsible for everything. That one crooked channel of thought that persistently turned aside all blame onto an unknown offender, had at last given a certain crookedness, a sort of twist, to the whole subject in Fay's mind.

”I begged Michael again for the twentieth time to tell me anything that could act as a clue to discovering the real criminal,” said Wentworth.

”I told him I would spend my last s.h.i.+lling in bringing him to justice, but he only shook his head. I told him that some of his friends felt certain that he knew who the murderer was, and was s.h.i.+elding him. He shook his head again. He would not tell me anything the first day I went to him after he was arrested. And still, after two years in prison, he will not speak. Michael will never say anything.”

The despair in Wentworth's voice met the advancing chill of the waning afternoon. The sun had gone. The gold had faded into grey. A frosty breath was stirring the dead leaves. The b.u.t.terfly had closed his wings for the last time, and clung feebly, half reversed, to his snowdrop. A tiny trembling had laid hold upon him. He was tasting death.

Fay s.h.i.+vered involuntarily, and drew her fur cloak around her.

”I must go in,” she said.

They walked slowly to the wooden, ivied gate which separated the woods from the gardens. A thin, white moon was already up, peering at them above the gathering sea mist.

They stood a moment together by the gate, each vaguely conscious of the consolation of the other's presence in the face of the great grief which had drawn them together.

”I will come again soon, if I may,” he said diffidently, ”unless seeing me reminds you of painful things.” His voice had lowered itself involuntarily.

”I like to see you,” said Fay in a whisper, and she slipped away from him like a shadow among the shadows.

The entire dejection of her voice and manner sheared from her words any possible rea.s.surance which Wentworth might otherwise have found in them, which he suddenly felt anxious to find in them.

He pondered over them as he rode home.

How she had loved her husband! People had hinted that they had not been a happily a.s.sorted couple, but it was obvious that her grief at his loss was still overwhelming. And what courageous affection she had shown towards Michael, whom she had known from a boy; first in trying to s.h.i.+eld him when he had taken refuge in her room, and afterwards in her sorrowing compa.s.sion for his fate. And what a steadfast belief she had shown from first to last in his innocence, against overwhelming odds!

Wentworth did not know till he met Fay that such women existed. Women he was aware were an enigma. Men could not fathom them. They were fickle, mysterious creatures, on whom no sane man could rely, whom the wisest owned they could not understand, capable alternately of devotion and treachery, acting from instincts that men did not share, moved by sudden, amazing impulses that men could not follow.

But could a woman like Fay, who towered head and shoulders above the ordinary run of women, removed to a height apart from their low level of pettiness and vanity, by her simplicity and n.o.bility and capacity for devotion--_could such a woman love a second time?_

The thirst to be loved, to be the object of an exquisite tenderness, what man has not, consciously or unconsciously longed for that? What woman has not had her dream of giving that and more, full measure, running over?

To find favour in a woman's eyes a man need only do his stupid bungling best. But it is doubtful whether Wentworth had a best of any kind in him to do.