"I shall not be satisfied if I may not send the rest. Miss Campion, I came to say----"

Again he stammered and broke down. Lettice, who thought that he had already delivered himself of his mental burden, was a little startled now, especially as he got up and stood by her chair at the window.

"What a lovely little garden!" he said. "Why, you are quite in the country here. What delightful roses! I--I want to say something else, Miss Campion!"

"Yes," said Lettice, faintly, and doing her best to feel indifferent.

"We have not known each other long, but it seems to me that we know each other well--at any rate that I know you well. Before I met you I had never made the acquaintance of a woman who at the same time commanded my respect, called my mind into full play, and aroused my sympathy. These last few months have been the happiest of my life, because I have been lifted above my old level, and have known for the first time what the world might yet be to me. There is something more I want to say to you.

I think you know that I have been married--that my wife is--is no more.

You may or may not have heard that miserable story, of my folly, and----"

"Oh, no!" cried Lettice, impulsively. "It is true that Mrs. Hartley told me of the great trouble which fell upon you in the loss of which you speak."

"The great trouble--yes! That is how Mrs. Hartley would put it. And the Grahams, have they told you nothing?"

"Nothing more."

A look as of relief pa.s.sed across his face, followed by a spasm of pain; and he stood gazing wearily through the window.

"Perhaps they do not know, for I have never spoken of it to anyone. But I want to speak; I want to get rid of some of the wretched burden, and an irresistible impulse has brought me here to you. I am utterly selfish; it is like taking your money, or your ma.n.u.scripts, or your flowers, or anything that you value, to come in this way and almost insist on telling you my sordid story. It is altogether unjustifiable--it is a mad presumption which I cannot account for, except by saying that a blind instinct made me think that you alone, of all the people in this world, could help me if you would!"

Lettice was deeply moved by various conflicting emotions; but there was no hesitation in the sympathy which went out to meet this strange appeal. Even her reason would probably have justified him in his unconventional behavior; but it was sympathy, and not reason, which prompted her to welcome and encourage his confidence.

"If I can help you--if it helps you to tell me anything, please speak."

"I knew I was not mistaken!" he said, with kindling eyes, as he sat down in a low chair opposite to her. "I will not be long--I will not tell you all; that would be useless, and needlessly painful. I married in haste, after a week's acquaintance, the daughter of a French refugee, who came to London in 1870, and earned a living by teaching his language to the poorest cla.s.s of pupils. Don't ask me why I married her. No doubt I thought it was for love. She was handsome, and even charming in her way, and for some months I tried to think I was happy. Then, gradually, she let me wake from my fool's paradise. I found--you will despise me for a dupe!--that I was not the first man she had pretended to love. Nay, it was to me that she pretended--the other feeling was probably far more of a reality. Before the year was out she had renewed her intimacy with my rival--a compatriot of her own. You will suppose that we parted at once when things came to this pa.s.s; but for some time I had only suspicion to go upon. I knew that she was often away from home, and that she had even been to places of amus.e.m.e.nt in this man's company; but when I spoke to her she either lulled my uneasiness or pretended to be outraged by my jealousy. Soon there was no bond of respect left between us; but as a last chance, I resolved to break up our little home in England, and go abroad. I could no longer endure my life with her. She had ceased to be a wife in any worthy sense of the word, and was now my worst enemy, an object of loathing rather than of love. Still, I remember that I had a gleam of hope when I took her on the Continent, thinking it just possible that by removing her from her old a.s.sociations, I might win her back to a sense of duty. I would have borne her frivolity; I would have endured to be bound for life to a doll or a log, if only she could have been outwardly faithful.

"Well, to make a long story short, we had not been abroad more than six weeks when this man I have told you about made his appearance on the scene. She must have written to him and asked him to come, at the very moment when she was cheating me with a show of reviving affection; and I own that the meeting of these two one day in the hotel gardens at Aix-les-Bains drove me into a fit of temporary madness. We quarrelled; I sent him a challenge, and we fought. He was not much hurt, and I escaped untouched. The man disappeared, and I have never seen him from that day to this, but I have some reason to think that he is dead."

He paused for a moment or two; and Lettice could not refrain from uttering the words, "Your wife?" in a tone of painful interest.

"My wife?" he repeated slowly. "Ah yes, my wife. Well, after a stormy scene with her, she became quiet and civil. She even seemed anxious to please me, and to set my mind at rest. But she was merely hatching her last plot against me, and I was as great a fool and dupe at this moment as I had ever been before."

And then, with averted face, he told the story of his last interview with her on the hills beyond Culoz. "I will not repeat anything she said," he went on--it was his sole reservation--"although some of her sentences are burned into my brain for ever. I suppose because they were so true."

"Oh, no!" Lettice murmured involuntarily, and looking at him with tear-dimmed eyes. She was intensely interested in his story, and Alan Walcott felt a.s.sured by her face that the sympathy he longed for was not withheld.

"My wound was soon healed," he said when the details of that terrible scene were told; "but I was not in a hurry to come back to England. When I did come back, I avoided as much as possible the few people who knew me; and I have never to this moment spoken of my deliverance, which I suppose they talk of as my loss."

"They think," said Lettice, slowly, for she was puzzled in her mind, and did not know what to say, "that you are a widower?"

"And what am I?" he cried, walking up and down the room in a restless way. "Am I not a widower? Has she not died completely out of my life? I shall never see her again--she is dead and buried, and I am free? Ah, do not look at me so doubtfully, do not take back the sympathy which you promised me! Are you going to turn me away, hungry and thirsty for kindness, because you imagine that my need is greater than you thought it five minutes ago? I will not believe you are so cruel!"

"We need not a.n.a.lyze my feelings, Mr. Walcott. I could not do that myself, until I have had time to think. But--is it right to leave other people under the conviction that your wife is actually dead, when you know that in all probability she is not?"

"I never said she was dead! I never suggested or acted a lie. May not a man keep silence about his own most sacred affairs?"

"Perhaps he may," said Lettice. "It is not for me to judge you--and at any rate, you have told me!"

She stood up and looked at him with her fearless grey eyes, whilst his own anxiously scanned her face.

"I am very, very sorry for you. If I can do anything to help you, I will. You must not doubt my sympathy, and I shall never withdraw my promise. But just now I cannot think what it would be best to do or say.

Let me have time to think."

She held out her hand, and he took it, seeing that she wanted him to go.

"Good-bye!" he said. "G.o.d bless you for being what you are. It has done me good to talk. When we meet again--unless you write and give me your commands--I promise to do whatever you may tell me."

And with that, he went away.

CHAPTER X.

THE POET SPEAKS.

As soon as her visitor was gone, Lettice fell into a deep study. She had two things especially to think about, and she began by wondering what Mrs. Hartley would say if she knew that Alan Walcott's wife was alive, and by repeating what he had said to her that morning: that a man was not bound to tell his private affairs to the world. No! she told herself, it was impossible for any man of self-respect to wear his heart on his sleeve, to a.s.sume beforehand that people would mistake his position, and to ticket himself as a deserted husband, lest forward girls should waste their wiles upon him.

The thought was odious; and yet she had suggested it to him! Had she not done more than that? Had she not implied that he had done a dishonorable thing in concealing what he was in no way bound to reveal? What would he think of her, or impute to her, for raising such a point at the very moment when he was displaying his confidence in her, and appealing for her sympathy? She blushed with shame at the idea.

He was already completely justified in her mind, for she did not go so far as to put the case which a third person might have put in her own interest. If Alan had been unfair or inconsiderate to anyone, it was surely to Lettice herself. He had spoken familiarly to her, sought her company, confessed his admiration in a more eloquent language than that of words, and asked for a return of sentiment by those subtle appeals which seem to enter the heart through none of the ordinary and ticketed senses. It is true that he had not produced in her mind the distinct impression that she was anything more to him than an agreeable talker and listener in his conversational moods; but that was due to her natural modesty rather than to his self-restraint. He had been impatient, at times, of her slowness to respond, and it was only when he saw whither this impatience was leading him that he resolved to tell her all that she ought to know. It was not his delay, however, that const.i.tuted the injustice of his conduct, but the fact of his appealing to her in any way for the response which he had no right to ask.

Lettice was just as incapable of thinking that she had been unjustly treated as she was of believing that Alan Walcott loved her. Thus she was spared the humiliation that might have fallen on her if she had understood that his visit was partly intended to guard her against the danger of giving her love before it had been asked.

Having tried and acquitted her friend, and having further made up her mind that she would write him a letter to a.s.sure him of his acquittal, she summoned herself before the court of her conscience; and this was a very different case from the one which had been so easily decided. Then the presumption was all in favor of the accused; now it was all against her. The guilt was as good as admitted beforehand, for as soon as Lettice began to examine and cross-examine herself, she became painfully aware of her transgressions.

What was this weight which oppressed her, and stifled her, and covered her with shame? It was not merely sorrow for the misfortunes of her friend. That would not have made her ashamed, for she knew well that compa.s.sion was a woman's privilege, for which she has no reason to blush. Something had befallen her this very morning which had caused her to blush, and it was the first time in all her life that Lettice's cheek had grown red for anything she had done, or thought, or said, or listened to, in respect of any man whatever. Putting her father and brother on one side, no man had had the power, for very few had had the opportunity, to quicken the pulses in her veins as they were quickened now. She had not lived to be six and twenty years old without knowing what love between a man and woman really meant, but she had never appropriated to herself the good things which she saw others enjoying.

It was not for want of being invited to the feast, for several of her father's curates had been ready to grace their frugal boards by her presence, and to crown her with the fillets of their dignity and self-esteem. The prospect held up to her by these worthy men had not allured her in any way; she had not loved their wine and oil, and thus she had remained rich, according to the promise of the seer, with the bread and salt of her own imaginings.

It would be wrong to suppose that Lettice had no strong pa.s.sions, because she had never loved, or even thought that she loved. The woman of cultivated mind is often the woman of deepest feeling; her mental strength implies her calmness, and the calm surface indicates the greatest depth. It is in the restless hearts which beat themselves against the sh.o.r.es of the vast ocean of womanhood that pa.s.sion is so quick to display itself, so vehement in its shallow force, so broken in its rapid ebb. The real strength of humanity lies deep below the surface; but a weak woman often mistakes for strength her irresistible craving for happiness and satisfaction. It is precisely for this reason that a liberal education and a full mind are even more essential to the welfare of a woman than they are to the welfare of a man. The world has left its women, with this irresistible craving in their hearts, dependent, solitary, exposed to attack, and unarmed for defence; and as a punishment it has been stung almost to death by the scorpions which its cruelty generates. But a woman who has been thoroughly educated, a woman of strong mind and gentle heart, is not dependent for happiness on the caprice of others, or on the abandonment of half the privileges of her s.e.x, but draws from an inexhaustible well to which she has constant access.

So Lettice, with the pa.s.sions of her kind, and the cravings of her s.e.x, had been as happy as the chequered circ.u.mstances of her outer life would permit; but now for the first time her peace of mind was disturbed, and she felt the heaving of the awakened sea beneath.

Why had her heart grown cold when she heard that Alan Walcott's wife was still alive? Why had her thought been so bitter when she told herself that she had no right to give the man her sympathy? Why had the light and warmth and color of life departed as soon as she knew that the woman whom he had married, however unworthy she might be, was the only one who could claim his fidelity? Alas, the answer to her questions was only too apparent. The pain which it cost her to awake from her brief summer's dream was her first admonition that she had dreamed at all. Not until she had lost the right to rejoice in his admiration and respond to his love, did she comprehend how much these things meant to her, and how far they had been allowed to go.

The anguish of a first love which cannot be cherished or requited is infinitely more grievous when a woman is approaching the age of thirty than it is at seventeen or twenty. The recoil is greater and the elasticity is less. But if Lettice suffered severely from the sudden blow which had fallen upon her, she still had the consolation of knowing that she could suffer in private, and that she had not betrayed the weakness of her heart--least of all to him who had tried to make her weak.

In the course of the evening she sat down and wrote to him--partly because he had asked her to write, and partly in order that she might say without delay what seemed necessary to be said.

"DEAR MR. WALCOTT,--After you were gone this morning I thought a great deal about all that you said to me, and as you asked me for my opinion, and I promised to give it, perhaps I had better tell you what I think at once. I cannot see that you are, or have been, under any moral compulsion to repeat the painful events of your past life, and I am sorry if I implied that I thought you were. Of course, you may yourself hold that these facts impose a certain duty upon you, or you may desire that your position should be known. In that case you will do what you think right, and no one else can properly decide for you.

"I was indeed grieved by your story. I wish it was in my power to lessen your pain; but, as it is not, I can only ask you to believe that if I could do so, I would.

"You will be hard at work, like myself (as you told me), during the next few months. Is not hard work, after all, the very best of anodynes? I have found it so in the past, and I trust you have done so too, and will continue to do so.

"Believe me, dear Mr. Walcott, yours very sincerely,