There is not a man or woman in this house, yourself included, who has not, in his secret soul, despised me for my slowness. And yet, now, because there is a question of a pistol-shot or two you fence round, and try to persuade me that my wife's good name is immaculate, that all which you have seen and wondered at for the last three weeks means nothing."

"Those open flirtations seldom do mean anything," said Jack, persuasively.

A man may belong to the hawk tribe and yet not be without certain latent instincts of compa.s.sion and good feeling.

"Perhaps not--but secret meetings do: what I saw at the Kieve to-day was conclusive. Besides, the affair is all settled--you and de Cazalet have arranged it between you. He is willing that there should be no witness but you. The whole business will rest a secret between us three; and if we get quietly down to the sands before any one is astir to see us no one else need ever know what happened there."

"If there is bloodshed the thing must be known."

"It will seem like accident?"

"True," answered Vandeleur, looking at him searchingly; "like that accident last year at the Kieve--poor Hamleigh's death. Isn't to-morrow the anniversary, by-the-by?"

"Yes--the date has come round again."

"Dates have an awkward knack of doing that. There is a cursed mechanical regularity in life which makes a man wish himself in some savage island where there is no such thing as an almanack," said Vandeleur, taking out another cigarette. "If I had been Crusoe, I should never have stuck up that post. I should have been too glad to get rid of quarter-day."

In Christabel's room at the other end of the long corridor there was only the dim light of the night-lamp, nor was there any sound, save the ticking of the clock and the crackling of the cinders in the dying fire.

Yet here there was no more sleep nor peace than in the chamber of the man who was to wager his life against the life of his fellow-man in the pure light of the dawning day. Christabel stood at her window, dressed just as she had left the drawing-room, looking out at the sky and the sea, and thinking of him who, at this hour last year, was still a part of her life--perchance a watcher then as she was watching now, gazing with vaguely questioning eyes into the illimitable panorama of the heavens, worlds beyond worlds, suns and planetary systems, scattered like grains of sand over the awful desert of infinite s.p.a.ce, innumerable, immeasurable, the infinitesimals of the astronomer, the despair of faith. Yes, a year ago and he was beneath that roof, her friend, her counsellor, if need were; for she had never trusted him so completely, never so understood and realized all the n.o.bler qualities of his nature, as in those last days, after she had set an eternal barrier between herself and him.

She stood at the open lattice, the cold night air blowing upon her fever-heated face; her whole being absorbed not in deliberate thought, but in a kind of waking trance. Strange pictures came out of the darkness, and spread themselves before her eyes. She saw her first lover lying on the broad flat rock at St. Nectan's Kieve, face downward, shot through the heart, the water stained with the life-blood slowly oozing from his breast. And then, when that picture faded into the blackness of night, she saw her husband and Oliver de Cazalet standing opposite to each other on the broad level sands at Trebarwith, the long waves rising up behind them like a low wall of translucent green, crested with silvery whiteness. So they would stand face to face a few hours hence.

From her lurking-place behind the trees and brushwood at the entrance to the Kieve she had heard the appointment made--and she knew that at seven o'clock those two were to meet, with deadliest intent. She had so planned it--a life for a life.

She had no shadow of doubt as to which of those two would fall. Three months ago on the Riffel she had seen the Baron's skill as a marksman tested--she had seen him the wonder of the crowd at those rustic sports--seen him perform feats which only a man who has reduced pistol-shooting to a science would attempt. Against this man Leonard Tregonell--good all-round sportsman as he was--could have very little chance. Leonard had always been satisfied with that moderate skilfulness which comes easily and unconsciously. He had never given time and labour to any of the arts he pursued--content to be able to hold his own among parasites and flatterers.

"A life for a life," repeated Christabel, her lips moving dumbly, her heart throbbing heavily, as if it were beating out those awful words. "A life for a life--the old law--the law of justice--G.o.d's own sentence against murder. The law could not touch this murderer--but there was one way by which that cruel deed might be punished, and I found it."

The slow silent hours wore on. Christabel left the window, shivering with cold, though cheeks, brow, and lips were burning. She walked up and down the room for a long while, till the very atmosphere of the room, nay, of the house itself, seemed unendurable. She felt as if she were being suffocated, and this sense of oppression became so strong that she was sorely tempted to shriek aloud, to call upon some one for rescue from that stifling vault. The feeling grew to such intensity that she flung on her hat and cloak, and went quickly downstairs to a lobby-door that opened into the garden, a little door which she had unbolted many a night after the servants had locked up the house, in order to steal out in the moonlight and among the dewy flowers, and across the dewy turf to those shrubbery walks which had such a mysterious look--half in light and half in shadow.

She closed the door behind her, and stood with the night wind blowing round her, looking up at the sky; clouds were drifting across the starry dome, and the moon, like a storm-beaten boat, seemed to be hurrying through them. The cold wind revived her, and she began to breathe more freely.

"I think I was going mad just now," she said to herself.

And then she thought she would go out upon the hills, and down to the churchyard in the valley. On this night, of all nights, she would visit Angus Hamleigh's grave. It was long since she had seen the spot where he lay--since her return from Switzerland she had not once entered a church. Jessie had remonstrated with her gravely and urgently--but without eliciting any explanation of this falling off in one who had been hitherto so steadfastly devout.

"I don't feel inclined to go to church, Jessie," she said, coolly; "there is no use in discussing my feelings. I don't feel fit for church; and I am not going in order to gratify your idea of what is conventional and correct."

"I am not thinking of this in its conventional aspect--I have always made light of conventionalities--but things must be in a bad way with you, Christabel, when you do not feel fit for church."

"Things are in a bad way with me," answered Christabel, with a dogged moodiness which was insurmountable. "I never said they were good."

This surrender of old pious habits had given Jessie more uneasiness than any other fact in Christabel's life. Her flirtation with the Baron must needs be meaningless frivolity, Jessie had thought; since it seemed hardly within the limits of possibility that a refined and pure-minded woman could have any real _penchant_ for that showy adventurer; but this persistent avoidance of church meant mischief.

And now, in the deep dead-of-night silence, Christabel went on her lonely pilgrimage to her first lover's grave. Oh, happy summer day when, sitting by her side outside the Maidenhead coach, all her own through life, as it seemed, he told her how, if she had the ordering of his grave, she was to bury him in that romantic churchyard, hidden in a cleft of the hill. She had not forgotten this even amidst the horror of his fate, and had told the vicar that Mr. Hamleigh's grave must be at Minster and no otherwhere. Then had come his relations, suggesting burial-places with family a.s.sociations--vaults, mausoleums, the pomp and circ.u.mstance of sepulture. But Christabel had been firm; and while the others hesitated a paper was found in the dead man's desk requesting that he might be buried at Minster.

How lonely the world seemed in this solemn pause between night and morning. Never before had Christabel been out alone at such an hour. She had travelled in the dead of the night, and had seen the vague dim night-world from the window of a railway carriage--but never until now had she walked across these solitary hills after midnight. It seemed as if for the first time in her life she were alone with the stars.

How difficult it was in her present state of mind to realize that those lights, tremulous in the deep blue vault, were worlds, and combinations of worlds--almost all of them immeasurably greater than this earth on which she trod. To her they seemed living watchers of the night--solemn, mysterious beings, looking down at her with all-understanding eyes. She had an awful feeling of their companionship as she looked up at them--a mystic sense that all her thoughts--the worst and best of them--were being read by that galaxy of eyes.

Strangely beautiful did the hills and the sky--the indefinite shapes of the trees against the edge of the horizon, the mysterious expanse of the dark sea--seem to her in the night silence. She had no fear of any human presence, but there was an awful feeling in being, as it were, for the first time in her life alone with the immensities. Those hills and gorges, so familiar in all phases of daylight, from sunrise to after set of sun, a.s.sumed t.i.tanic proportions in this depth of night, and were as strange to her as if she had never trodden this path before. What was the wind saying, as it came moaning and sobbing along the deep gorge through which the river ran?--what did the wind say as she crossed the narrow bridge which trembled under her light footfall? Surely there was some human meaning in that long minor wail, which burst suddenly into a wild unearthly shriek, and then died away in a low sobbing tone, as of sorrow and pain that grew dumb from sheer exhaustion, and not because there was any remission of pain or sorrow.

With that unearthly sound still following her, she went up the winding hill-side path, and then slowly descended to the darkness of the churchyard--so sunk and sheltered that it seemed like going down into a vault.

Just then the moon leapt from behind an inky cloud, and, in that ghostly light, Christabel saw the pale grey granite cross which had been erected in memory of Angus Hamleigh. It stood up in the midst of nameless mounds, and humble slate tablets, pale and glittering--an unmistakable sign of the spot where her first lover lay. Once only before to-night had she seen that monument. Absorbed in the pursuit of a Pagan scheme of vengeance she had not dared to come within the precincts of the church, where she had knelt and prayed through all the sinless years of her girlhood. To-night some wild impulse had brought her here--to-night, when that crime which she called retribution was on the point of achievement.

She went with stumbling footsteps through the long gra.s.s, across the low mounds, till she came to that beneath which Angus Hamleigh lay. She fell like a lifeless thing at the foot of the cross. Some loving hand had covered the mound of earth with primroses and violets, and there were low clambering roses all round the grave. The scent of sweetbriar was mixed with the smell of earth and gra.s.s. Some one had cared for that grave, although she, who so loved the dead, had never tended it.

"Oh, my love! my love!" she sobbed, with her face upon the gra.s.s and the primrose leaves, and her arms clasping the granite; "my murdered love--my first, last, only lover--before to-morrow's sun is down your death will be revenged, and my life will be over! I have lived only for that--only for that, Angus, my love, my love!" She kissed the cold wet gra.s.s more pa.s.sionately than she had ever kissed the dead face mouldering underneath it. Only to the dead--to the utterly lost and gone--is given this supreme pa.s.sion--love sublimated to despair. From the living there is always something kept back--something saved and garnered for an after-gift--some reserve in the mind or the heart of the giver; but to the dead love gives all--with a wild self-abandonment which knows not restraint or measure. The wife who, while this man yet lived, had been so rigorously true to honour and duty, now poured into the deaf dead ears a reckless avowal of love--love that had never faltered, never changed--love that had renounced the lover, and had yet gone on loving to the end.

The wind came moaning out of the valley again with that sharp human cry, as of lamentation for the dead.

"Angus!" murmured Christabel, piteously, "Angus, can you hear me?--do you know? Oh, my G.o.d! is there memory or understanding in the world where he has gone, or is it all a dead blank? Help me, my G.o.d! I have lost all the old sweet illusions of faith--I have left off praying, hoping, believing--I have only thought of my dead--thought of death and of him till all the living world grew unreal to me--and G.o.d and Heaven were only like old half-forgotten dreams. Angus!"

For a long time she lay motionless, her cold hands clasping the cold stone, her lips pressed upon the soft dewy turf, her face buried in primrose leaves--then slowly, and with an effort, she raised herself upon her knees, and knelt with her arms encircling the cross--that sacred emblem which had once meant so much for her: but which, since that long blank interval last winter, seemed to have lost all meaning.

One great overwhelming grief had made her a Pagan--thirsting for revenge--vindictive--crafty--stealthy as an American Indian on the trail of his deadly foe--subtle as Greek or Oriental to plan and to achieve a horrible retribution.

She looked at the inscription on the cross, legible in the moonlight, deeply cut in large Gothic letters upon the grey stone, filled in with dark crimson.

"VENGEANCE IS MINE: I WILL REPAY, SAITH THE LORD."

Who had put that inscription upon the cross? It was not there when the monument was first put up. Christabel remembered going with Jessie to see the grave in that dim half-blank time before she went to Switzerland. Then there was nothing but a name and a date. And now, in awful distinctness, there appeared those terrible words--G.o.d's own promise of retribution--the claim of the Almighty to be the sole avenger of human wrongs.

And she, reared by a religious woman, brought up in the love and fear of G.o.d, had ignored that sublime and awful attribute of the Supreme. She had not been content to leave her lover's death to the Great Avenger.

She had brooded on his dark fate, until out of the gloom of despair there had arisen the image of a crafty and b.l.o.o.d.y retribution. "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed." So runs the dreadful sentence of an older law. The newer, lovelier law, which began in the after-glow of Philosophy, the dawn of Christianity, bids man leave revenge to G.o.d. And she, who had once called herself a Christian, had planned and plotted, making herself the secret avenger of a criminal who had escaped the grip of the law.

"Must he lie in his grave, unavenged, until the Day of Judgment?" she asked herself. "G.o.d's vengeance is slow."

An hour later, and Christabel, pale and exhausted, her garments heavy with dew, was kneeling by her boy's bed in the faint light of the night-lamp; kneeling by him as she had knelt a year ago, but never since her return from Switzerland--praying as she had not prayed since Angus Hamleigh's death. After those long, pa.s.sionate prayers, she rose and looked at the slumberer's face--her husband's face in little--but oh!

how pure and fresh and radiant. G.o.d keep him from boyhood's sins of self-love and self-indulgence--from manhood's evil pa.s.sions, hatred and jealousy. All her life to come seemed too little to be devoted to watching and guarding this beloved from the encircling snares and dangers of life. Pure and innocent now, in this fair dawn of infancy, he nestled in her arms--he clung to her and believed in her. What business had she with any other fears, desires, or hopes--G.o.d having given her the sacred duties of maternity--the master-pa.s.sion of motherly love?

"I have been mad!" she said to herself; "I have been living in a ghastly dream: but G.o.d has awakened me--G.o.d's word has cured me."

G.o.d's word had come to her at the crisis of her life. A month ago, while her scheme of vengeance seemed still far from fulfilment, that awful sentence would hardly have struck so deeply. It was on the very verge of the abyss that those familiar words caught her; just when the natural faltering of her womanhood, upon the eve of a terrible crime, made her most sensitive to a sublime impression.

The first faint streak of day glimmered in the east, a pale cold light, livid and ghostly upon the edge of the sea yonder, white and wan upon the eastward points of rock and headland, when Jessie Bridgeman was startled from her light slumbers by a voice at her bedside. She was always an early riser, and it cost her no effect to sit up in bed, with her eyes wide open, and all her senses on the alert.

"Christabel, what is the matter? Is Leo ill?"

"No, Leo is well enough. Get up and dress yourself quickly, Jessie. I want you to come with me--on a strange errand; but it is something that must be done, and at once."

"Christabel, you are mad."

"No. I have been mad. I think you must know it--this is the awakening.