Robert Orange
together, and kept her earnest glance full upon his.
"I believe," she continued, "that if it were in man, or woman, to
command the heart, you would have her entire affection. I believe she is
unhappy. During the last week she has had many ups and downs. She has
passed with astonishing rapidity from the lowest despair to the height
of joy. She has tried to distract her mind by incessant occupation. But
you know her manner--it is transparent near the surface, difficult to
sound in its depths."
"Yes, she has a childlike openness--up to a certain point."
"I can only tell you, therefore, what I think, judging as a woman, by
outward signs. I seem to detect a sort of self-doubt--as though she
feared making some error. She has become of late strangely intense and
vivid--she is fascinated by books, and drawn to music, as she never was
before. Perhaps she sees that you give her a priceless, beautiful
friendship which must indeed be flattering. Yet--yet in marriage
friendship is not enough. So she is acquiring a stock of interests which
are impersonal."
Loyalty to Agnes forbade any reference to David Rennes. She had no
intention of giving the least hint of her own private conviction on the
subject. She desired merely that Reckage should learn how the engagement
might be broken off without giving unimaginable grief to the young lady.
The move under this aspect was skilful and successful. Reckage received
her words as a subtle appeal to his honour and kindness.
He said at once--
"I am glad you have told me this. I could bear my own mistakes. I could
not bear hers. Let me look at the step which I have taken! The choice is
for life. Agnes is inflexibly conscientious and self-denying. Several
years of attachment have tried us both. She knows my faults; I know
where her"--he paused for a moment--"her qualities might clash with
mine. We spoke of this together; we considered every circumstance that
could, by any remote chance, weigh against our common happiness."
Pensee shook her head.
"Of course, that was right," she said doubtfully.
"It is no easy matter to get a promise from Agnes," he went on; "but
when once given it is inviolate. This throws a grisly responsibility
upon me. I must risk everything, if I am to do anything. You have
expressed a dread which I have been endeavouring to stifle. I am making
her wretched."
"I don't say that _you_ are making her wretched; I say she seems
disturbed and unsettled when she ought to be full of the brightest
hopes."
"Quite so. I fear the unsettlement is exceedingly great. A neutrality on
your part is all I could in reason expect; but your counsel in such a
grave matter----"
Pensee summoned all her energy, and breathed a little prayer for the
well-being of the two women whose lives were at stake.
"I saw Agnes this morning," she said, speaking at a rapid pace; "she
came up for some shopping, and she returned home directly after tea."
"She ought to have told me that she was in town," he exclaimed.
"My dear Beauclerk, you know her sweetness! She said, 'I don't wish to
take up his time; an engagement ought not to be a servitude.' That is
the reason why she did not tell you."
"She ought to have told me," he repeated. "Such extreme delicacy was
most uncalled for. It wasn't even friendly. When we were old friends,
and nothing more, she would have told me."
"Yes, when you were friends."
"I think she gave me a nasty rap in so acting; I do, indeed. One would
infer that I had failed in some ordinary attentiveness. It is a distinct
reprimand."
"You are quite wrong. She meant it in the noblest way."
"Then it is a desperately near thing between noble conduct and a
downright snub. I can't help lashing out about it."
In Pensee's own private perception this outburst of temper was no bad
sign. It convinced her, at least, of the sincerity of his feelings
towards Agnes and his genuine desire to behave well at every point in
their relationship.
"Don't you understand," she said, "that Agnes _dares_ not love you. This
being the case, I cannot see that she could go on in what might be
called a natural way. Will you bear with me, and, if I am indiscreet,
forgive me? She wants all the sympathy and support she can get. She is
suffering very much from want of courage. She trusts, perhaps, in her
friends' prayers. It seems as though something very momentous were going
on, but that she has nothing to do but to wait for it. I think there
may be a way out still; God may overrule people's hearts."
She had never intended to say so much, and she trembled with an
excitement which she could not subdue.
"I must admit," said Reckage, "that for some time I have had a
conviction, weaker or stronger, but, on the whole, constantly growing,
that Agnes and I are unsuited to each other. I am too much accustomed to
this idea to feel pain at it."
"O, it makes my heart ache--I mean so much painfulness for every one
concerned!"
"This conviction must, sooner or later, lead me to action. The world is
indulgent to the impetuous, because they appear strong; and it is most
severe to those who hesitate, because hesitation is taken for a sign of
weakness. Lookers-on have no patience with moral combats--and least of
all in affairs of this kind. But no opinion will force me to do what I
do not think right. If our engagement is a mistake, I don't intend to
'lump it,' as they say. We must mend the evil. And, thank God, it is not
too late. The merciful part is that in relieving my own mind I shall
also greatly relieve hers. It is clear she doesn't love me. This last
act proves the fact conclusively."
Pensee did not agree with this, but she remained silent, fearing lest a
rash word should spoil her good work.
"For a long, long time," he continued, "my constant question has been,
'Can this last? is it a delusion?' But I do not shut my eyes now. I knew
they were all wrong at home when they made out that she was in love with
me, and expected me to propose. We are both the victims of an
impertinent, if well-meant, interference--what Robert calls 'the
jabbering of the damned.' Poor Robert, we are forgetting him. I am
ashamed to talk so much about myself."
"In his case, I see no help but resignation to the will of God," said
Pensee.
"But that resignation is an awful thing," said Reckage. "It is a shade
better than the atheism of despair; yet only a shade better."
By degrees Pensee was learning why Robert had such a strong, tenacious
attachment to this man. He was always faithful to his mood. All he did
and all he said represented accurately all he thought and all he felt.
Some live a dual life--he lived but one; and, with his faults,
peculiarities, and egoism, there was never the least dissimulation. It
was true that, if occasion required, he could hold his tongue; but he
abhorred tact and hated doctrines of expediency--everything, in fact,
which put any restraint upon the "development of his inclinations."
The train was now approaching Dover. He decided to put his own troubles
aside, and, out of mere decency, concentrate his thoughts on the severe
trial in store for Orange.
"This business about Parflete," said he, "is a great blow. One becomes
indifferent to what is said of, or done to, one's self; but that all
this uncommon, saddening, sickening trouble should come upon Robert is
too bad. It seems a kind of hacking and hacking, bit by bit."
"You are certainly very fond of him," said Pensee.
"Yes, I am. He's so dependable."
Pensee engaged a private cabin for the crossing, and she retired there
with her maid. Too tired and over-strung to sleep, she lay down, closed
her eyes, and lived again through the many fatiguing, agitating moments
of that day. Her affection for Orange had been so steeped in
hopelessness from the hour, months before, when he told her of his love
for Brigit, that the wedding of these two had been a relief rather than
a final anguish. The agonising possibilities which had sometimes darted
into her mind would never again surprise her: the questions which she
had always striven to prohibit were no longer even in existence. He had
taken the unredeemable step: he was married. Jealousy had no part in her
suffering. Robert had never given her the smallest right to feel
slighted, or neglected, or abandoned. Some women are jealous by
temperament, but the greater number are jealous only when their trust is
insulted or their dignity brought down to the humiliating struggle for a
lost empire. Empire over Orange she had never possessed or claimed: she
could feel no bitterness, therefore, at the thought of the small place
she occupied in his destiny. The sorrow which cut and severed her heart
was loneliness. She felt that, after the wedding, she could hardly do
anything or take interest in anything. It seemed as if the waters were
gathered in heaps on either side; things, she thought, could not be
better, or worse. God was with her still, and her children--her dear
children--were with her still, but she could not disguise the greatness
of the loss. Her single wish, as far as she dared have a wish, had been
to benefit Robert and to win his confidence. She had seen his mind
working in various directions, and although she was not, in the faintest
sense, his fit companion intellectually, she had a knowledge and
experience of life which made her friendship valuable--a gift worth
offering to any man. She had been able to advise him. Brigit now had
even this privilege also. "I shall seem an intruder," thought Pensee,
again and again.
It was altogether a terrible crisis. How she should struggle through all
the parts of it, or what she should be when it was over, she could not
trust herself to say. The world seemed too heavy a burden to be fought
against. Yet with what thoughts and aspirations and earnest prayers she
had stood by Brigit's side at the altar rails. She had been given a
supernatural strength for the marriage ceremony. She was by nature and
before all things, from first to last, unalterably a good friend, and at
that moment of intensest difficulty the sight of Robert's happiness had
made her oblivious to every other consideration. Glad tears had risen to
her eyes. She had been swayed by one feeling--a deep, sincere
thankfulness that his love-story, which had promised sorrow only from
the very beginning, was ending, unexpectedly, so well. She might have
feared that he was changing one form of unhappiness for another, but she
knew his impatient spirit, and, knowing it, she could not imagine that
any earthly pain could try him so sorely as a lifelong separation from
the one woman he loved--loved to the pitch of madness.
And then--in one moment--the strange tidings came which drove her from
the stupor of resignation to fevers of anxiety more consuming than any
she had ever felt before. A great flame, successive flames, of terror
swept over her, as she feigned placid sleep in the little cabin, at the
thought of the news poor Reckage would have to break on the morrow. How
would Robert bear it? That he would act a noble and true part she could
not doubt. But at a certain degree of suffering, the strongest man can
think of nothing except himself, and she felt already, in anticipation,
the dumb torture she would have to endure in looking on, helpless and
unnoticed, at an agony which she could neither share nor relieve. The
fear of losing him had been dreadful, but it was even more dreadful to
know that although she might have, after all, a certain right now to
offer him sympathy, she could never make him happy, that she could never
hope to learn the secret regrets, griefs, and torments, the unspoken
broodings which would surely enough prey upon his spirit. She pictured
herself sitting at his side, or walking with him, for hours--he absorbed