Part 29 (1/2)
Her cheeks burned with a fire which seemed to her like the fire of shame. Her tongue seemed hung with sudden weights. She had doubted him.
The hideousness of it oppressed her like a nightmare; yet her voice did not falter.
”You remember those dying words of Rachel Kynaston?”
”I have never forgotten them,” he answered simply.
”They laid a charge upon me. I told myself that it was a sacred charge.
Listen, my love--listen, and hate me! I have been to detectives. I paid them money to hunt you down; I have done this, I who love you. No, don't draw your arms away. I have done this. It was before I knew. Oh, I have suffered! G.o.d! how I have suffered! It has been an agony to me. You will forgive me! I will not let you go unless you forgive me.”
He looked down at her in silence. His cheeks were pale and his eyes were grave. Yet there was no anger.
”I will forgive you, Helen,” he whispered--”nay, there is nothing to forgive. Only tell me this: you do not doubt me now?”
”Never again!” she cried pa.s.sionately. ”G.o.d forgive me that I have ever doubted you! It is like a horrible dream to me; but it lies far behind, and the morning has come.”
He kissed her once more and opened his arms. With a low happy laugh she shook her tumbled hair straight, and hand in hand they walked slowly away.
”You have been long gone,” she whispered reproachfully.
He sighed as he answered her. How long might not his next absence be!
”It has seemed as long to me as to you, sweetheart,” he said. ”Every moment away from you I have counted as a lost moment in my life.”
”That is very pretty,” she answered. ”And now you are here, are you going to stay?”
”Until the end,” he said solemnly. ”You know, Helen, that I am in deadly peril. The means of averting it which I went abroad to seek, I could not use.”
She thought of those letters, bought and safely burnt, and she pressed his fingers. She would tell him of them presently.
”They shall not take you from me, Bernard, now,” she said softly. ”Kiss me again, dear.”
He stooped and took her happy upturned face with its crown of wavy golden hair between his hands, looking fondly down at her. The thought of all that he might so soon lose swept in upon him with a sickening agony, and he turned away with trembling lips and dim eyes.
”G.o.d grant that they may not!” he cried pa.s.sionately. ”If it were to come now, how could I bear it to the end?”
They walked on in silence. Then she who had, or thought she had, so much more reason to be hopeful than he, dashed the tears away from her eyes, and talked hopefully. They would not dare to lay a finger upon Bernard Maddison, whatever they might have done to poor Mr. Brown. His great name would protect him from suspicion. And as he listened to her he had not the heart to tell her of the men who had followed him abroad, that he was even then doubtless under surveillance. He let her talk on, and feigned to share her hopefulness.
The time came when they pa.s.sed into the grounds of the Court, and then she thought of something else which she must say to him.
”We have a visitor, Bernard--only one; but I'm afraid you don't like him.”
Something told him who it was. He stopped short in the path.
”Not Sir Allan Beaumerville?”
She nodded.
”Yes. I'm so sorry. He invited himself; and there is something I must tell you about him.”
His first instinct was to refuse to go on, but it was gone in a moment, after one glance into Helen's troubled face.