Part 96 (2/2)
”Oh, what a thing it is to be a woman!” she moaned.
”Aye, la.s.sie, aye, there's mair than one of us has felt that,” said Mrs.
Callender.
Glory did not speak again as long as they knelt by the window, holding each other's hands, but the tears that had sprung to her eyes at the thought of her helplessness dried up of themselves, and in their place came the light of a great resolution. She knew that her hour had struck at last--that this was the beginning of the end.
The theatres were emptying and carriages were rolling away from them as she drove home by way of the Strand. She saw her name on omnibuses and her picture on boardings, and felt a sharp pang. But she was in a state of feverish excitement and the pain was gone in a moment.
Another letter from Drake was waiting for her at the Inn:
”I feel, my dear Glory, that you are entirely justified in your silence, but to show you how deep is my regret, I am about to put it in my power to atone, as far as I can, for the conduct which has quite properly troubled and hurt you. You will put me under an eternal obligation to you if you will consent to become my wife. We should be friends as well as lovers, Glory, and in an age distinguished for brilliant and beautiful women, it would be the crown of my honour that my wife was above all a woman of genius. Nothing should disturb the development of your gifts, and if any social claims conflicted with them, they, and not you, would suffer. For the rest I can bring you nothing, dear, but--thanks to the good father who was born before me--such advantages as belong to wealth. But so far as these go there is no pleasure you need deny yourself, and if your sympathies are set on any good work for humanity there is no opportunity you may not command. With this I can only offer you the love and devotion of my whole heart and soul, which now wait in fear and pain for your reply.”
Glory read this letter with a certain quivering of the eyelids, but she put it away without a qualm. Nevertheless, the letter was hard to reply to, and she made many attempts without satisfying herself in the end.
There was a note of falsehood in all of them, and she felt troubled and ashamed:
”When I remember how good you have been to me from the first, I could cry to think of the answer I must give you. But I can't help it--oh, I can't, I can't! Don't think me ungrateful, and don't suppose I am angry or in any way hurt or offended, but to do what you desire is impossible--quite, quite impossible. Oh, if you only knew what it is to deny myself the future you offer me, to turn my back on the gladness with which life has come to me, to strip all these roses from my hair, you would believe it must be a far, far higher call than to worldly rank and greatness that I am listening to at last. And it is. A woman may trifle with her heart, while the one she loves is well and happy or great and prosperous, but when he is down and the cruel world is trampling on him, there can be no paltering with it any longer---Yes, I must go to _him_ if I go to anybody. Besides, you can do without me and he can not. You have all the world, and he has nothing but me. If you were a woman you would understand all this, but you are loyal and brave and true, and when I look at your letter and remember how often you have spoken up for a fallen man my heart quivers and my eyes grow dim, and I know what it means to be an English gentleman.”
After writing this letter she went up to her bedroom and busied herself about for an hour, making up parcels of her clothing and jewellery, and labelling them with envelopes bearing names. The plainer costumes she addressed to Aunt Anna, a fur-lined coat to Aunt Rachel, an opera cloak to Rosa, and a quant.i.ty of underclothing to Liza. All her jewels, and nearly all the silver trinkets from the dressing-table, were made up in a parcel by themselves and addressed back to the giver--Sir Francis Drake.
The clock of St. Clement's Danes was chiming midnight when this was done, and she stood a moment and asked herself, ”Is there anything else?” Then there was a slippered foot on the stair, and somebody knocked.
”It's only me, miss, and can I do anythink for ye?”
Glory opened the door and found Liza there, half dressed and looking as if she had been crying.
”Nothing, Liza, nothing, thank you! But why aren't you in bed?”
”I can't sleep a blessed wink to-night somehow, miss,” said Liza. And then, looking into the room, ”But are ye goin' away somewhere. Miss Gloria?”
”Yes, perhaps.”
”Thort ye was--I could hear ye downstairs.”
”Not far, though--just a little journey--go back to bed now.
Good-night.”
”Good-night, miss,” and Liza went down with lingering footsteps.
Half an hour or so afterward Glory heard Rosa come in from the office and pa.s.s up to her bedroom on the floor above. ”Dear, unselfish soul!”
she thought, and then she sat down to write another letter:
”Darling Rosa: I am going to leave you, but there is no help for it--I must. Don't you remember I used to say if I should ever find a man who was willing to sacrifice all the world for me I would leave everything and follow him? I have found him, dear, and he has not only sacrificed all the world for my sake, but trampled on Heaven itself. I can't go to him now--would to Heaven I could!--but neither can I go on living this present life any longer. So I am turning my back on it all, exactly as I said I would--the world, so sweet and so cruel; art, so beautiful and so difficult, and even 'the clapping of hands in a theatre.' You will say I am a donkey, and so I may be, but it must be a descendant of Balaam's old friend, who knew the way she ought to go.
”Forgive me that I am going without saying good-bye. It is enough to have to resist the battering of one's own doubts without encountering your dear solicitations. And forgive me that I am not telling you where I am going and what is to become of me. You will be questioned and examined, and I feel as much frightened of being overtaken by my old existence as the poor simpleton who took it into his head that he was a grain of barley, and as often as he saw a c.o.c.k or a hen he ran for his life. Thank you, dearest, for allowing me to share your sweet rooms with you, for the bright hours we have spent in them, and all the merry jaunts we have had together. There will be fewer creature comforts where I am going to, and my feet will not be so quick to do evil, which will at least be a saving of shoe-leather.
<script>