Thelma
forget the scene he had witnessed. He was overcome by sensations of
horror,--even of pity,--and he walked by his friend's side for some time
in silence.
"I wish I could get rid of this thing!" he said suddenly, looking down
at the horsewhip in his hand.
Lorimer made no answer. He understood his feeling, and realized the
situation as sufficiently grim. To be armed with a weapon meant for the
chastisement of a man whom Death had so suddenly claimed was, to say the
least of it, unpleasant. Yet the horsewhip could scarcely be thrown away
in Piccadilly--such an action might attract notice and comment.
Presently Philip spoke again.
"He was actually married all the time!"
"So it seems;" and Lorimer's face expressed something very like
contempt. "By Jove, Phil! he must have been an awful scoundrel!"
"Don't let's say any more about him--he's dead!" and Philip quickened
his steps. "And what a horrible death!"
"Horrible enough, indeed!"
Again they were both silent. Mechanically they turned down towards Pall
Mall.
"George," said Errington, with a strange awe in his tones, "it seems to
me to-day as if there were death in the air. I don't believe in
presentiments, but yet--yet I cannot help thinking--what if I should
find my Thelma--_dead_?"
Lorimer turned very pale--a cold shiver ran through him, but he
endeavored to smile.
"For God's sake, old fellow, don't think of anything so terrible! Look
here, you're hipped--no wonder! and you've got a long journey before
you. Come and have lunch. It's just two o'clock. Afterwards we'll go to
the Garrick and have a chat with Beau Lovelace--he's a first-rate fellow
for looking on the bright side of everything. Then I'll see you off this
afternoon at the Midland--what do you say?"
Errington assented to this arrangement, and tried to shake off the
depression that had settled upon him, though dark forebodings passed one
after the other like clouds across his mind. He seemed to see the
Altenguard hills stretching drearily, white with frozen snow, around the
black Fjord; he pictured Thelma, broken-hearted, fancying herself
deserted, returning through the cold and darkness to the lonely
farm-house behind the now withered pines. Then he began to think of the
shell-cave where that other Thelma lay hidden in her last deep
sleep,--the wailing words of Sigurd came freshly back to his ears, when
the poor crazed lad had likened Thelma's thoughts to his favorite
flowers, the pansies--"One by one you will gather and play with her
thoughts as though they were these blossoms; your burning hand will mar
their color--they will wither and furl up and die,--and you--what will
you care? Nothing! No man ever cares for a flower that is withered,--not
even though his own hand slew it!"
Had he been to blame? he mused, with a sorrowful weight at his heart.
Unintentionally, had he,--yes, he would put it plainly,--had he
neglected her, just a little? Had he not, with all his true and
passionate love for her, taken her beauty, her devotion, her obedience
too much for granted--too much as his right? And in these latter months,
when her health had made her weaker and more in need of his tenderness,
had he not, in a sudden desire for political fame and worldly honor,
left her too much alone, a prey to solitude and the often morbid musings
which solitude engenders?
He began to blame himself heartily for the misunderstanding that had
arisen out of his share in Neville's unhappy secret. Neville had been
weak and timid,--he had shrunk nervously from avowing that the notorious
Violet Vere was actually the woman he had so faithfully loved and
mourned,--but he, Philip, ought not to have humored him in these
fastidious scruples--he ought to have confided everything to Thelma. He
remembered now that he had once or twice been uneasy lest rumors of his
frequent visits to Miss Vere might possibly reach his wife's ears,--but,
then, as his purpose was absolutely disinterested and harmless, he did
not dwell on this idea, but dismissed it, and held his peace for
Neville's sake, contenting himself with the thought that, "If Thelma
_did_ hear anything, she would never believe a word against me."
He could not quite see where his fault had been,--though a fault there
was somewhere, as he uneasily felt--and he would no doubt have started
indignantly had a small elf whispered in his ear the word "_Conceit._"
Yet that was the name of his failing--that and no other. How many men,
otherwise noble-hearted, are seriously, though often unconsciously,
burdened with this large parcel of blown-out Nothing! Sir Philip did not
appear to be conceited--he would have repelled the accusation with
astonishment,--not knowing that in his very denial of the fault, the
fault existed. He had never been truly humbled but twice in his
life,--once as he knelt to receive his mother's dying benediction,--and
again when he first loved Thelma, and was uncertain whether his love
could be returned by so fair and pure a creature. With these two
exceptions, all his experience had tended to give him an excellent
opinion of himself,--and that he should possess one of the best and
loveliest wives in the world, seemed to him quite in keeping with the
usual course of things. The feeling that it was a sheer impossibility
for her to ever believe a word against him, rose out of this inward
self-satisfaction--this one flaw in his otherwise bright, honest, and
lovable character--a flaw of which he himself was not aware. Now, when
for the third time his fairy castle of perfect peace and pleasure seemed
shaken to its foundations,--when he again realized the uncertainty of
life or death, he felt bewildered and wretched. His chiefest pride was
centred in Thelma, and she--was gone! Again he reverted to the miserable
idea that, like a melancholy refrain, haunted him--"What if I should
find her _dead_!"
Absorbed in painful reflections, he was a very silent companion for
Lorimer during the luncheon which they took at a quiet little restaurant
well known to the _habitues_ of Pall Mall and Regent Street. Lorimer
himself had his own reasons for being equally depressed and
anxious,--for did he not love Thelma as much as even her husband
could?--nay, perhaps more, knowing his love was hopeless. Not always
does possession of the adored object strengthen the adoration,--the
rapturous dreams of an ideal passion have often been known to surpass
reality a thousandfold. So the two friends exchanged but few
words,--though they tried to converse cheerfully on indifferent
subjects, and failed in the attempt. They had nearly finished their
light repast, when a familiar voice saluted them.
"It _is_ Errington,--I thocht I couldna be mistaken! How are ye both?"
Sandy Macfarlane stood before them, unaltered, save that his scanty
beard had grown somewhat longer. They had seen nothing of him since
their trip to Norway, and they greeted him now with unaffected
heartiness, glad of the distraction his appearance afforded them.
"Where do you hail from, Mac?" asked Lorimer, as he made the new-comer
sit down at their table. "We haven't heard of you for an age."
"It _is_ a goodish bit of time," assented Macfarlane, "but better late
than never. I came up to London a week ago from Glasgie,--and my heed
has been in a whirl ever since. Eh, mon! but it's an awful place!--maybe
I'll get used to't after a wee whilie."
"Are you going to settle here, then?" inquired Errington, "I thought you
intended to be a minister somewhere in Scotland?"
Macfarlane smiled, and his eyes twinkled.
"I hae altered ma opee-nions a bit," he said. "Ye see, ma aunt in
Glasgie's deed--"
"I understand," laughed Lorimer. "You've come in for the old lady's
money?"
"Puir body!" and Sandy shook his head gravely. "A few hours before she
died she tore up her will in a screamin' fury o' Christian charity and
forethought,--meanin' to mak anither in favor o' leavin' a' her warld's
trash to the Fund for Distributin' Bible Knowledge among the
Heathen--but she never had time to fulfill her intention. She went off
like a lamb,--and there being no will, her money fell to me, as the
nearest survivin' relative--eh! the puir thing!--if her dees-imbodied
spirit is anywhere aboot, she must be in a sair plight to think I've got
it, after a' her curses!"
"How much?" asked Lorimer amused.
"Oh, just a fair seventy thousand or so," answered Macfarlane
carelessly.
"Well done, Mac!" said Errington, with a smile, endeavoring to appear
interested. "You're quite rich, then? I congratulate you!"
"Riches are a snare," observed Macfarlane, sententiously, "a snare and a
decoy to both soul and body!" He laughed and rubbed his hands,--then
added with some eagerness, "I say, how is Lady Errington?"
"She's very well," answered Sir Philip hurriedly, exchanging a quick
look with Lorimer, which the latter at once understood. "She's away on a
visit just now. I'm going to join her this afternoon."
"I'm sorry she's away," said Sandy, and he looked very disappointed;
"but I'll see her when she comes back. Will she be long absent?"
"No, not long--a few days only"--and as Errington said this an
involuntary sigh escaped him.
A few days only!--God grant it! But what--what if he should find her
_dead_?
Macfarlane noticed the sadness of his expression, but prudently forbore
to make any remark upon it. He contented himself with saying--
"Weel, ye've got a wife worth having--as I dare say ye know. I shall be
glad to pay my respects to her as soon as she returns. I've got your
address, Errington--will ye take mine?"
And he handed him a small card on which was written in pencil the number
of a house in one of the lowest streets in the East-end of London.
Philip glanced at it with some surprise.
"Is _this_ where you live?" he asked with emphatic amazement.
"Yes. It's just the cleanest tenement I could find in that neighborhood.
And the woman that keeps it is fairly respectable."
"But with your money," remonstrated Lorimer, who also looked at the
card, "I rather wonder at your choice of abode. Why, my dear fellow, do
you _know_ what sort of a place it is?"
A steadfast, earnest, _thinking_ look came into Macfarlane's deep-set,
grey eyes.
"Yes, I do know, pairfectly," he said in answer to the question. "It's a
place where there's misery, starvation, and crime of all sorts,--and
there I am in the very midst of it--just where I want to be. Ye see, I
was meant to be a meenister--one of those douce, cannie, comfortable
bodies that drone in the pulpit about predestination and original sin,
and so forth a--sort, of palaver that does no good to ony resonable
creature--an' if I had followed out this profession, I make nae doot
that, with my aunt's seventy thousand, I should be a vera comfortable,
respectable, selfish type of a man, who was decently embarked in an
apparently important but really useless career--"
"Useless?" interrupted Lorimer archly. "I say, Mac, take care! A
minister of the Lord, _useless_!"
"I'm thinkin' there are unco few meen-isters o' the Lord in this warld,"
said Macfarlane musingly. "Maist o' them meen-ister to themselves, an'
care na a wheen mair for Christ than Buddha. I tell ye, I was an altered
man after we'd been to Norway--the auld pagan set me thinkin' mony an'
mony a time--for, ma certes! he's better worthy respect than mony a
so-called Christian. And as for his daughter--the twa great blue eyes
o' that lassie made me fair ashamed o' mysel'. Why? Because I felt that
as a meen-ister o' the Established Kirk, I was bound to be a sort o'
heep-ocrite,--ony thinkin', reasonable man wi' a conscience canna be
otherwise wi' they folk,--and ye ken, Errington, there's something in
your wife's look that maks a body hesitate before tellin' a lee.