Part 92 (2/2)

The long-strained rapture of faith and confidence was breaking down. He saw it breaking. He could deceive himself no more. She was gone, she was lost, she would lie on his breast no more.

”G.o.d help me! O, Lord, help me,” he cried in his crushed and breaking heart.

XV.

When Kate thought of her husband after she had left him, it was not with any crus.h.i.+ng sense of shame. She had injured him, but she had gained nothing by it. On the contrary, she had suffered, she had undergone separation from her child. To soften the hard blow inflicted, she had outraged the tenderest feelings of her heart. As often as she thought of Pete and the deep wrong she had done him, she remembered this sacrifice, she wept over this separation. Thus she reconciled herself to her conduct towards her husband. If she had bought happiness at the cost of Pete's sufferings, her remorse might have been deep; but she had only accepted shame and humiliation and the severance of the dearest of her ties.

When she had said in the rapture of pa.s.sionate confidence that if she possessed Philip's love there could be no humiliation and no shame, she had not yet dreamt of the creeping degradation of a life in the dark, under a false name, in a false connection: a life under the same roof with Philip, yet not by his side, unacknowledged, unrecognised, hidden and suppressed. Even at the moment of that avowal, somewhere in the secret part of her heart, where lay her love of refinement and her desire to be a lady, she had cherished the hope that Philip would find a way out of the meanness of their relation, that she would come to live openly beside him, she hardly knew how, and she did not care at what cost of scandal, for with Philip as her own she would be proud and happy.

Philip had not found that way out, yet she did not blame him. She had begun to see that the deepest shame of their relation was not hers but his. Since she had lived in Philip's house the man in him had begun to decay. She could not shut her eyes to this rapid demoralisation, and she knew well that it was the consequence of her presence. The deceptions, the subterfuges, the mean s.h.i.+fts forced upon him day by day, by every chance, every accident, were plunging him in ever-deepening degradation.

And as she realised this a new fear possessed her, more bitter than any humiliation, more crus.h.i.+ng than any shame--the fear that he would cease to love her, the terror that he would come to hate her, as he recognised the depth to which she had dragged him down.

XVI.

Back from Tynwald, Philip was standing in his room. From time to time he walked to the window, which was half open, for the air was close and heavy. A misty rain was falling from an empty sky, and the daylight was beginning to fail. The tombstones below were wet, the treed were dripping, the churchyard was desolate. In a corner under the wall lay the angular wooden lid which is laid by a gravedigger over an open grave. Presently the iron gates swung apart, and a funeral company entered. It consisted of three persons and an uncovered deal coffin. One of the three was the s.e.xton of the church, another was the curate, the third was a policeman. The s.e.xton and the policeman carried the coffin to the church-door, which the curate opened. He then went into the church, and was followed by the other two. A moment later there were three strokes of the church bell. Some minutes after that the funeral company reappeared. It made for the open grave in the corner by the wall. The cover was removed, the coffin was lowered, the policeman half lifted his helmet, and the s.e.xton put a careless hand to his cap. Then the curate opened a book and closed it again. The burial service was at an end. Half an hour longer the s.e.xton worked alone in the drenching rain, shovelling the earth back into the grave.

”Some waif,” thought Philip; ”some friendless, homeless, nameless waif.”

He went noiselessly up the stairs to the floor above, slinking through the house like a shadow. At a door above his own he knocked with a heavy hand, and a woman's voice answered him from within--

”Is any one there?”

”It is!,” he said. ”I am coming to see you.”

Then he opened the door and slipped into the room. It was a room like his own at all points, only lower in the ceiling, and containing a bed.

A woman was standing with her back to the window, as if she had just turned about from looking into the churchyard. It was Kate. She had been expecting Philip, and waiting for him, but she seemed to be overwhelmed with confusion. As he crossed the floor to go to her, he staggered, and then she raised her eyes to his face.

”You are ill,” she said. ”Sit down. Shall I ring for the brandy?”

”No,” he answered. ”We have had a hard day at Tyn-wald--some trouble--some excitement--I'm tired, that's all.”

He sat on the end of the bed, and gazed out on the veil of rain, slanting across the square church tower and the sky.

”I was at Ramsey two days ago,” he said; ”that's what I came to tell you.”

”Ah!” She linked her hands before her, and gazed out also. Then, in a trembling voice, she asked, ”Is mother well?”

”Yes; I did not see her, but--yes, she bears up bravely.”

”And--and--” the words stuck in her throat, ”and Pete?”

”Well, also--in health, at all events.”

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