Part 19 (1/2)

XIV

A Little Hour of Triumph

Miss Evelina sat alone in her parlour, which was now spotlessly clean.

Araminta had had her supper, her bath, and her clean linen--there was nothing more to do until morning. The hard work had proved a blessing to Miss Evelina; her thoughts had been constantly forced away from herself. She had even learned to love Araminta with the protecting love which grows out of dependence, and, at the same time, she felt herself stronger; better fitted, as it were, to cope with her own grief.

Since coming back to her old home, her thought and feeling had been endlessly and painfully confused. She sat in her low rocker with her veil thrown back, and endeavoured to a.n.a.lyse herself and her surroundings, to see, if she might, whither she was being led. She was most a.s.suredly being led, for she had not come willingly, nor remained willingly; she had been hurt here as she had not been hurt since the very first, and yet, if a dead heart can be glad of anything, she was glad she had come. Upon the far horizon of her future, she dimly saw change.

She had that particular sort of peace which comes from the knowledge that the worst is over; that nothing remains. The last drop of humiliation had been poured from her cup the day she met Anthony Dexter on the road and had been splashed with mud from his wheels as he drove by. It was inconceivable that there should be more.

Dusk came and the west gleamed faintly. The afterglow merged into the first night and at star-break, Venus blazed superbly on high, sending out rays mystically prismatic, as from some enchanted lamp. ”Our star,” Anthony Dexter had been wont to call it, as they watched for it in the scented dusk. For him, perhaps, it had been indeed the love-star, but she had followed it, with breaking heart, into the quicksands.

To shut out the sight of it, Miss Evelina closed the blinds and lighted a candle, then sat down again, to think.

There was a dull, uncertain rap at the door. Doctor Ralph, possibly--he had sometimes come in the evening,--or else Miss. .h.i.tty, with some delicacy for Araminta's breakfast.

Drawing down her veil, she went to the door and opened it, thinking, as she did so, that lives were often wrecked or altered by the opening or closing of a door.

Anthony Dexter brushed past her and strode into the parlour. Through her veil, she would scarcely have recognised him--he was so changed.

Upon the instant, there was a transformation in herself. The suffering, broken-hearted woman was strangely pushed aside--she could come again, but she must step aside now. In her place arose a veiled vengeance, emotionless, keen, watchful; furtively searching for the place to strike.

”Evelina,” began the man, without preliminary, ”I have come back. I have come to tell you that I am a coward--a s.h.i.+rk.”

Miss Evelina laughed quietly in a way that stung him. ”Yes?” she said, politely. ”I knew that. You need not have troubled to come and tell me.”

He winced. ”Don't,” he muttered. ”If you knew how I have suffered!”

”I have suffered myself,” she returned, coldly, wondering at her own composure. She marvelled that she could speak at all.

”Twenty-five years ago,” he continued in a parrot-like tone, ”I asked you to marry me, and you consented. I have never been released from my promise--I did not even ask to be. I slunk away like a cur. The honour of the spoken word still holds me. The tardy fulfilment of my promise is the only atonement I can make.”

The candle-light shone on his iron-grey hair, thinning at the temples; touched into bold relief every line of his face.

”Twenty-five years ago,” said Evelina, in a voice curiously low and distinct, ”you asked me to marry you, and I consented. You have never been released from your promise--you did not even ask to be.” The silence was vibrant; literally tense with emotion. Out of it leaped, with pa.s.sionate pride: ”I release you now!”

”No!” he cried. ”I have come to fulfil my promise--to atone, if atonement can be made!”

”Do you call your belated charity atonement? Twenty-five years ago, I saved you from death--or worse. One of us had to be burned, and it was I, instead of you. I chose it, not deliberately, but instinctively, because I loved you. When you came to the hospital, after three days----”

”I was ill,” he interrupted. ”The gas----”

”You were told,” she went on, her voice dominating his, ”that I had been so badly burned that I would be disfigured for life. That was enough for you. You never asked to see me, never tried in any way to help me, never sent by a messenger a word of thanks for your cowardly life, never even waited to be sure it was not a mistake. You simply went away.”

”There was no mistake,” he muttered, helplessly. ”I made sure.”

He turned his eyes away from her miserably. Through his mind came detached fragments of speech. _The honour of the spoken word still holds him . . . Father always does the square thing_ . . .

”I am asking you,” said Anthony Dexter, ”to be my wife. I am offering you the fulfilment of the promise I made so long ago. I am asking you to marry me, to live with me, to be a mother to my son.”