Part 54 (1/2)

”What was it he said, that I had no heart? Ah! what would I not give to be able to prove his words true?”

She bursts into tears, and sobs long and bitterly.

”Tears are idle,” says Sartoris, sadly. ”Have you yet to learn that?

Take comfort from the thought that all things have an end.”

CHAPTER x.x.x.

”Oh that the things which have been were not now In memory's resurrection! But the past Bears in her arms the present and the future.”--BAILEY.

Of course it is quite impossible to hide from Clarissa Peyton that everything is going wrong at Sartoris. Georgie's pale unsmiling face (so different from that of old), and Dorian's evident determination to absent himself from all society, tell their own tale.

She has, of course, heard of the uncomfortable gossip that has connected Ruth Annersley's mysterious disappearance with Dorian, but--stanch friend as she is--has laughed to scorn all such insinuations: that Georgie can believe them, puzzles her more than she cares to confess. For a long time she has fought against the thought that Dorian's wife can think aught bad of Dorian; but time undeceives her.

To-day, Georgie, who is now always feverishly restless, tells herself she will go up to Gowran and see Clarissa. To her alone she clings,--not outwardly, in any marked fas.h.i.+on, but in her inmost soul,--as to one who at her worst extremity will support and comfort her.

The day is warm and full of color. Round her ”flow the winds from woods and fields with gladness laden:” the air is full of life. The browning gra.s.s rustles beneath her feet. The leaves fall slowly one by one, as though loath to leave their early home; the wind, cruel, like all love, wooes them only to their doom.

”The waves, along the forest borne,” beat on her face and head, and half cool the despairing thoughts that now always lie hidden deep down within her breast.

Coming to Gowran and seeing Clarissa in the drawing room window, she beckons to her, and Clarissa, rising hastily, opens the hall door for her, herself, and leads her by the hand into another cosier room, where they may talk without interruption.

It so happens that Georgie is in one of her worst moods; and something Clarissa says very innocently brings on a burst of pa.s.sion that compels Clarissa to understand (in spite of all her efforts to think herself in the wrong) that the dissensions at Sartoris have a great deal to do with Ruth Annersley.

”It is impossible,” she says, over and over again, walking up and down the room in an agitated manner. ”I could almost as soon believe Horace guilty of this thing!”

Georgie makes no reply. Inwardly she has conceived a great distaste to the handsome Horace, and considers him a very inferior person, and quite unfit to mate with her pretty Clarissa.

”In your heart,” says Miss Peyton, stopping before her, ”I don't believe you think Dorian guilty of this thing.”

”Yes I do,” says Mrs. Brans...o...b.., with dogged calmness. ”I don't ask you to agree with me. I only tell you what I myself honestly believe.”

She has given up fighting against her fate by this time.

”There is some terrible mistake somewhere,” says Clarissa, in a very distressed voice, feeling it wiser not to argue the point further.

”Time will surely clear it up sooner or later, but it is very severe on Dorian while it lasts. I have known the dear fellow all my life, and cannot now begin to think evil of him. I have always felt more like a sister to him than anything else, and I cannot believe him guilty of this thing.”

”_I_ am his wife, and I _can_,” says Mrs. Brans...o...b.., icily.

”If you loved him as you ought, you could not.” This is the one rebuke she cannot refrain from.

Georgie laughs unpleasantly, and then, all in a little moment, she varies the performance by bursting into a pa.s.sionate and most unlooked-for flood of tears.

”Don't talk to me of love!” she cries, miserably. ”It is useless. I don't believe in it. It is a delusion, a mere mockery, a worn-out superst.i.tion. You will tell me that Dorian loved me; and yet in the very early days before our marriage, when his so-called love must have been at its height, he insulted me beyond all forgiveness.”

”You are making yourself wretched about nothing,” says Clarissa, kneeling beside her, and gently drawing her head down on her shoulder.

”Don't, darling,--don't cry like that. I know, I feel, all will come right in the end. Indeed, unless Dorian were to come to me and say, 'I have done this hateful thing,' I should not believe it.”