But it was hard to be always strong, to be compelled to reason and argue, and fight down self, instead of claiming her woman's privilege of being cared for and protected. There were hours when Vanna would have given all she possessed to break down and cry her heart out in Piers's arms; but it was an indulgence she dared not claim. A fuller knowledge of her lover's character had shown that his powers of endurance were less than her own. He would have been all tenderness and compa.s.sion, but she would have paid for that hour by weeks of heavy depression. So Vanna fought on, and was silent.

In one respect her circ.u.mstances were happier than her lover's; for while Piers's interest in business was of the perfunctory order of the already rich man, her own work was a continual delight. From time to time she visited a patient, but by far the greater number came to her to be housed and tended. They were a pathetic crowd; middle-aged and elderly women of gentle birth, worn out with the struggle of life, shrinking with terror from bodily illness, not because of the suffering involved, but from the fear of loss of employment and subsequent want which it involved. To be nursed, housed, and fed free of charge was a G.o.dsend indeed, and Jean's prophecy of ingrat.i.tude was rarely fulfilled.

Sometimes, indeed, Vanna felt that ingrat.i.tude would have been easier to bear than the trembling blessings called down on her head by those poor souls for whom perforce she could do so little. She grew to dread the last few days of a visit, to shrink afore-hand from the pitiful glances which the departing guest would cast around the pretty, cosy rooms, as if storing up memories to brighten barren days. Her charity had the sting of all such work, the inability to do more; but in it she found interest and occupation, and a continual object-lesson. These poor waifs and strays, who were thankful for a few weeks' haven, would think themselves rich beyond measure if they owned one half the blessings she herself possessed. Ought she not to be grateful too?

On this autumn afternoon Jean had an exciting piece of news to tell to her visitors.

"Guess who is engaged! Some one you know--know very well: an intimate friend."

"Fine or superfine?"

"Both, of course; but you know her best. A very old friend. Near here--"

"Don't tell, Jean; don't be in such a hurry. Let them guess," cried Robert, laughing; but already Vanna was gasping in incredulous tones:

"_Not_ Edith Morton!"

"Yes! Yes!" Jean clapped her hands with her old childlike abandon.

"Isn't it lovely? Aren't you pleased? She came round last night to tell me. To Mr Mortimer. She has seen a lot of him at their literary society. He is a clever man; every one speaks highly of him, and he is rich. It's all as charming as possible, and most suitable."

Mr Mortimer! Vanna knitted her brows, recalling a grave, middle-aged figure, and striving to imagine him in the new role of Edith Morton's lover. Edith had sailed for Canada shortly after Jean's marriage to pay a visit to a married sister, and had returned at the end of two years, apparently heart-whole; but Vanna knew that her life had been empty of interest, and feared lest the attraction of a home of her own and a definite place in the world might have induced her to give her promise without love.

"Mr Mortimer! He is a fine man; I like him--but for Edith? He seems so old, so settled down. I never dreamt of his getting engaged."

"Nonsense! He is forty-five and she is thirty-two. Very suitable. A woman ages more quickly than a man. He will look years younger with a wife to smarten him up; and they are as much in love as if they were twenty; beaming, both of them--the picture of happiness. The wedding is to be almost at once. He says they have waited long enough, and can't afford to waste another day. I shouldn't wonder if they rushed it through in six weeks, and took a furnished house till they had time to look round. Much the best plan."

"Much!" agreed Vanna quietly. Jean's impetuous speech often planted a dart of which she was the first to repent; but as she would ruefully confess to Robert, it was so difficult to think of Vanna and Piers as an engaged couple. They were so much more like a settled-down, married couple, living on quietly from day to day, taking life as it came, making no plans. It was only when she saw the shadow fall on the faces of the two listeners that she realised her mistake. She sprang to her feet and pulled loudly at the bell.

"We'll have the children! Lorna would never forgive me if I let you go.

Babs looks too sweet in her new frock..."

"Just for a moment. I must be taking Vanna home. It's damp, and I can't let her risk cold."

Piers spoke hastily, and rose to his feet as if in preparation for saying adieu. Jean's children were dainty little creatures, to whom he and Vanna were truly attached; but each shrank from seeing them in the presence of the other. The family group of the lovely mother, with her golden-haired babies, the proud, happy father, was so perfect, so complete, that less happy mortals looking on might well be excused a stab of envy. Vanna and Piers each knew the pang of the childless, which was doubled in intensity in the knowledge of the other's suffering.

The two little girls entered the room side by side. Their s.e.x had been a grievous disappointment to Jean, who had the overpowering desire for a son which possesses many women; but the little maids were pretty and charming enough to satisfy any parent. Lorna, dark, glowing, with her mother's wonderful eyes; the baby Joyce, a delicious fat ball crowned with a mop of yellow curls.

They were delightfully free from shyness, and greeted the two visitors with sweet, moist kisses, and "bears' hugs" from tiny white arms. Vanna took Joyce on her knee and tried bravely to talk baby-talk, and keep her eyes averted from Piers's lowering face; but at the end of ten minutes she gave up the struggle, made her farewells and followed him into the street.

It was a dark, misty evening--one of those evenings when the cold penetrates to the marrow, and the great city is at its worst and dreariest. Piers turned up the collar of his coat, so that Vanna could see little of his face; but his walk, his bearing, the forward droop of his head were painfully eloquent. During the whole of the ten minutes'

walk he did not speak a word, but Vanna knew that when they were alone in her own quiet room the floodgates would open, and trembled at the thought of yet another scene. When the door was opened she went straight to her bedroom, lingering purposely over her toilette, in the hope that Piers would have time to calm down, and remember his resolution made so ardently after each fresh outburst. Of what avail to rail against fate, when the effort could only revert on one's own head in weariness and remorse? Was it not he who had first preached the beauty of a spiritual love? This was the view on which she must lay fullest stress to-night, this the pure and lofty ideal to which she must raise his thoughts. And then Vanna--a woman through and through--stood another five minutes before the gla.s.s, carefully bestowing those little touches to her toilette which would add to her physical charm, and evoke Piers's admiration to the uttermost.

He was pacing the room from end to end. The sound of his footsteps reached her ears before the door opened, and the moment she appeared he came towards her with outstretched arms.

"Vanna! this must end. It is unsupportable. We cannot endure it any longer. Why can every one be happy except us? Edith Morton married in six weeks! Good G.o.d, and we have waited five years; may wait for ever.

To hear Jean prattling of its being so wise, so sensible, and you agreeing in a calm, even voice--it drove me wild! There are some things a man cannot stand. I have come to the end of my tether."

Vanna stood like a statue, eyes cast down, hands clenched by her sides.

No! this was not one of the scenes to which she was accustomed; this was something more. There was a note in Piers's voice which she had not heard before--a note of determination, of finality. Within her soul she heard the knell of the end.

"Vanna, you must feel for yourself that things are impossible. We must marry. We must risk all. This farce cannot go on. We have done our best, and we have failed. Nothing that could happen could be worse than to go on through the years wasting our lives. We must take our risks, and face them together. We must marry!"

To the last day of her life Vanna never ceased to marvel at her own courage and calmness at this moment of supreme temptation. A hundred times over she had tremblingly acknowledged to herself that if Piers made a violent attack upon her determination she could not answer for the result. The temptation to consent, to gain happiness at whatever cost, would be so immense that continued resistance would be next to impossible; but at this moment there was no feeling of temptation. The steady, persistent effort of years finds its reward in these crises of life--in a strength of character, a stiffening of the mental muscles, which changes tumult into calm. Vanna ceased to tremble; she stood motionless before her lover, oblivious of his outstretched arms, her whole being projected into the thought of the future.

It was as if on a darkened night a sudden flash of light had been vouchsafed, by which the landscape was revealed, with the pitfalls yawning at her feet. A tranquil, trustful soul like Robert Gloucester might have taken on himself the burden of her life, and have come unscathed through the ordeal--calm himself, calm in his influence, a true doctor in the home; but Piers, by reason of those very qualities which endeared him to her woman's heart, was the last man on earth to support the strain. His fear, his anxiety, though expressed in tenderest devotion, must inevitably act and react on both. At this moment the great question appealed to her woman's heart less in its abstract than in the personal form, as affecting the happiness of the beloved. Whatever he might feel at this moment of stress and pa.s.sion, it could not be for Piers Rendall's ultimate happiness to marry a woman over whom hung the deep cloud of inherited madness. His aim accomplished, joy would be speedily eclipsed in dread. In imagination she could see his haggard looks, feel the dark eyes brooding over her with fearful care. So far he had been free. If the chains fretted too sorely he had only to drop them, and go forth. How would he bear it if there were no escape? How could _she_ bear it for his sake?

Vanna lifted her head and looked deep into her lover's eyes. Her voice was clear and steady:

"No, Piers! I will never marry you. Never, to the end of time. But I will not bind you. You are quite free--"

"Free!" He turned from her with a loud, harsh laugh. "Good G.o.d, how you quibble with words! I have loved you, I have given you my life--how can I be free? What have I left if you cast me off? What have _you_ left? How can you insult me with such words? How can you be so cold, so cruel? Women have no hearts. They don't know what it is to love--"

The wild words flowed on in breathless torrent. Then suddenly came the collapse: he turned towards her, met the glance of her piteous eyes, and melted into remorse. "My poor Vanna, I am hurting you. Forgive me, darling! I am a brute, a selfish brute; I am half mad myself... Oh, this world! what a h.e.l.l it can be! What have we done to be cursed and set aside? It is cruel--unjust. If we can never marry, why did we ever meet?"

Vanna shivered. "_Why did we ever meet_?" Was it Piers who had spoken those words?--Piers, who had declared that to love her was a higher joy than to be the husband of any other woman! Once again the knell-like bell tolled in her ears. It was almost a relief when, after a few more incoherent words, Piers suddenly turned to depart.

"I won't stay. I am hurting you. I'll go now, and come back when I am calm. You'll be better alone--"

For the first time in five years he left her without a kiss or a caress, and Vanna sat, stunned and motionless, gazing on the ruins of her life.

No one came near to interrupt her solitude. It was a rule that she should be uninterrupted when Piers was present, and his departure had apparently pa.s.sed unnoticed by the household. A dense, overhanging shadow possessed her spirit, out of which one thought alone was clear.

Piers was unhappy. She, who would have sheltered him from every ill, had brought upon him the keenest suffering of his life.

Two hours later, when Piers himself opened the door, he found Vanna in practically the same att.i.tude in which he had left her, crouched in the corner of the sofa. The fire had died out in the grate, and the air of the little room struck bleak and chill. The face turned towards him had the delicacy of an etching, the dark brows arched above the deep-set eyes, the finely moulded cheeks white and wan. Unlike most women, Vanna's attraction was distinct from colour; she looked her best, not her worst, in minutes of mental strain. Piers closed the door, approached her hastily, and, taking her hands in his, drew her to his side. He spoke but two words, but they were prompted by the force which is the greatest diviner of the needs of the human heart, and the whole wealth of the language could not have added to their eloquence.

"_My Joy_!" he said, in that deep, full voice which Vanna had heard but once or twice before, in the great moments of their love.

They wept, and clung together, and Vanna's hungry heart found comfort once more. After all, would she have been more content if Piers had _not_ rebelled?

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE.

PARTED.

The next year pa.s.sed slowly and heavily. In the spring Jean had an illness which made it necessary for her to spend several months on the sofa--a decree which she accepted with extraordinary resignation.

Nothing could have demonstrated so powerfully the change which the last seven years had wrought in her physical condition as this willingness to be shut off from social life.

"I've been so tired," she confided in Vanna, letting her head fall back on the pillow, and closing her eyes with a long-drawn sigh, "so tired, that it's been a struggle to get through each day. It's bliss to be lazy, and to feel that one is justified. When I wake up in the morning and remember that I needn't get up for breakfast, I could whoop with joy. The doctor expected me to rebel. Goodness! I wonder how many thousand tired women would hail such a prescription--to lie in bed until eleven; dress quietly, and go down to the sofa; read amusing books; have a friend to tea; sleep again, to be fresh for the husband's return; to bed at nine; and _you must not be worried_! My dear, it's Heaven begun below! I don't say I should like it as a permanency, but as a change from general servants' work (which is plain English for a middle-cla.s.s wife and mother) it is highly refreshing. We'll have to get an extra maid, of course. I've worked like a slave to keep the house as it must be kept if I'm to have any peace in life. We have such heaps of silver and in town it needs constant cleaning, and the mending is everlasting, and the making for the children, _and_ the shopping, and helping in the nursery to set nurse free to do some washing. The laundry bills are ruinous; but you _must_ have children in white! It's a nuisance having to spend more. It always happens like that with us. Just as we say, 'the next quarter must be lighter; we shall need nothing new,' bang comes another big drain, and sends us back farther than ever. Money _is_ a trial! You don't half realise how much you are saved by having a comfortable income, Vanna. That's a _big_ blessing, and you ought to be thankful for it."

Vanna considered. No! she was not actively thankful. When at any special moment the subject was brought before her, she could indeed realise the benefit of a sufficiency of money, which enabled her to choose and carry on the work which was most congenial; but as a rule the accustomed good was calmly taken for granted, and brought no feeling of joy. She made a mental note, and pa.s.sed on to the consideration of Jean's problem.

"Couldn't you contrive to reduce work while you are laid up, dear? Lock up all the silver that is not absolutely needed, and let the children wear coloured overalls. I'd make them for you, of a pretty, becoming blue, which would save half their washing. You might shut up the drawing-room, too. You can't entertain, and you are comfier here in the den. It would be so nice if you could avoid extra help. Another servant in the house would be a trial."

But Jean only smiled with indulgent patronage.

"Oh, my dear, I can't upset everything. And I shall need some one to wait upon me, and run up and down. It would be very poor economy to save a few pounds, and be worried to death. You have no idea how difficult it is to get any rest when you are the mother of a family.

One day--I've often intended to tell you about this, and make you laugh!--you know how you have told me how lonely and sad you feel when _you_ are ill, and lie all day alone in your room, never seeing a soul except when your meals are brought up. _Well_, at the beginning of this attack I awoke one morning with a crashing headache. I struggled up, hoping it would go off after breakfast, but it grew worse. Robert brought me in here and tucked me up on the sofa, and ordered a 'quiet day.' He said it was such a comfort to think that I _could_ be quiet, and need do nothing but lie still and rest. He could not have borne to go away and leave me ill if he had not been sure of that. Dear, blind bat! He had not been gone five minutes when cook arrived for 'orders.'

There was nothing in the house except the bit of mutton, and she thought that was going bad. Would I like to look at it? She stood there gazing before her in that calm, detached way they have--it is so maddening!-- never making one single suggestion, while I wrestled with it all-- children's dinner, kitchen dinner, dining-room dinner, kitchen supper, to-morrow's breakfast... I was so worn out that I forgot all about my own lunch. So did she! After she went it took about ten minutes before the horrible throbbing in my head calmed down to what it had been before, and by that time nurse appeared to say that Joyce had some spots on her chest, and did I think it was wise for her to go out? Would I be able to keep her for an hour while she promenaded with Lorna? Lorna got so fratchety if she was in all day. I investigated the spots. I sent for the doctor, and said they were _all_ to stay in, and nurse was cross, and slammed the doors all day long. I lay down again, and sniffed smelling-salts, till cook came back to say the fishman was very sorry, but he _had_ no smelts, and what would I have instead? After that I slept for a good quarter of an hour, till a parcel arrived with tenpence to pay. I had only a sovereign in my purse, and no one had change. There was nothing for it but to get the keys and go upstairs to my bureau. After that the piano-tuner arrived. He comes once a quarter, and picks his visits with demoniacal cunning for the very _worst_ times in the whole three months. Mason hadn't the sense to send him away, and I didn't know he was there until the awful _arpeggios_ began. Then I worked myself into a fever trying to decide whether I should send him away, whether he would charge twice over if I did, whether it would be bad for the piano, whether he would be long, whether I could bear it if I covered my head. At last the strum, strum, on one note began, and I rang and told Mason to send him away at once, and _she_ was cross. Half an hour later some one sent a note with, 'bearer waits reply' on the envelope, and I had to sit up and write. The doctor came at twelve, and said Joyce was perfectly well, but I looked feverish; couldn't I lie down and rest? I could not look at lunch, which was just as well, as there was none for me, and Joyce fell off her high-chair just over my head, and I thought she was killed. She screamed for an age, and I forgot my own head, thinking of hers; but afterwards! I cried to myself with sheer pain and misery, and I thought of your 'long, solitary day' with such envy. The afternoon was the same story, and when Robert came home he was _so_ disappointed to find me worse! I didn't tell _him_ my experiences; he doesn't see the humour of them when they affect me, but I said miserably to myself, 'some day I'll tell Vanna, and we'll laugh.' Dear me, what a comfort it is to have a woman friend!"

Vanna smiled at her affectionately. It was good to hear Jean rattle away in her old racy fashion, but her skilled eye was quick to note the signs of fragility in the lovely face, which paled and flushed with such suspicious rapidity.