So she would have it, being obviously disturbed at the idea of the interview. Was he coming to her as Nathan came to David--to denounce her sin? He was no doubt wrong about her intentions for the future, but he was fatally right in his opinion about what she had done in the past. He had a _locus standi_, too, or so he would conceive--a professional right to tell her the truth.

"I'm spoiled. I haven't had half enough of the disagreeables," she said with a woeful smile.

There was truth in that--so far as external things went, visible and palpable pains and penalties. She had not paid full toll. Luck had been with her and had afforded her a case--not a good one, but good enough to give her courage a handle. Her other advantages--her attractiveness, her position, her wealth, she had used with dexterity and without scruple to protect her from punishment. She had cajoled and she had bribed--both successfully; only the irreconcilables remained unreconciled. To no small extent she had jockeyed outraged morality--in externals. Many people did it even more successfully--by not being even half found out, and therefore not put on their defense at all. But for one who had been at least half found out, against whom circ.u.mstantial evidence was terribly strong although direct proof might be lacking, she had come off very cheaply. n.o.body about her told her so; we spoiled her. She was afraid that Alison, in manner, very likely even in words, would tell her now, face to face. Being taken to task was terribly against the grain with her. Only Jenny might punish Jenny--and the blows must fall in secret.

Alison came to my house first a quarter of an hour before the time of his appointment with Jenny. He was grave and silent; in the spirit, though naturally not in the flesh, he wore full canonicals; the consciousness of his office was about him. I had grown--and I may as well confess it--into an intellectual hostility to all this, a skepticism which prompted rebellion. But he was doing what he disliked very much in obedience to his view of duty. It is churlish to show disrespect to a man acting in that way, simply because one may consider his view incorrect or exaggerated. I had once charged him with wanting to burn people; let me not fall into the temptation of wanting to burn him--or where stood my boasted liberality of thought?

"I'm not sorry that you're to be with us, Austin," he said, as we walked up to the Priory. "Interfere if I show any signs of growing hot."

"If she tells you the truth, you won't grow hot. But if you grow hot, she won't tell you the truth," I answered.

"I don't go in my own strength," he reminded me with gentle gravity.

On the terrace, by the door, Margaret lay on a long wicker chair. She sprang up when we came near, blushing in her artless fashion at the encounter. Alison's stern-set face flashed out into a tender delighted smile. "G.o.d bless the pretty child!" he murmured as he went forward and shook hands with her. She had her little pet dog with her, and they talked a minute or two about it. He was country-bred and had dog-lore; she listened with an interest almost reverential. "Now!" he said with a sigh, as he left her to go into the house. He had welcomed that little interlude of brightness.

Jenny received him with stately dignity; if Nathan came to David, still let him remember that David was a King! She rose for a moment from the high-backed elbow-chair in which she sat; she did not offer her hand but, with a slight inclination of her head, indicated a chair. Then, seated again, she awaited his opening with the stillness of a forced composure. She might be afraid; she would show no fear. She faced him full where he sat, and challenged the light that fell on her face from the big window. I stood leaning against the mantelpiece, a few paces from her on her left.

"In coming to you, Miss Driver," he said, "I'm doing an unconventional thing. The circ.u.mstances seem to me to call for it; it's the only thing left to do, and nothing will be gained unless I face it and do it plainly. I want to tell you something about a household which you have no opportunity of seeing--something about Fillingford Manor. I go there, you know; you don't."

"No--not now," said Jenny.

"I say nothing about Lady Sarah. She is not, perhaps, very wise or very generous. Yet even for her allowances are to be made."

"I make such allowance as consists in absolute indifference, Mr.

Alison."

"That's beyond your right--but no matter. In that house there is a father who loves his son and who respects himself. The father is miserable and humiliated. Do you recognize any responsibility in yourself for that?"

"Lord Fillingford once wanted to marry me--for my money, I think."

"I think you do him less than justice. Never mind that. I answer by asking you why he doesn't want to marry you now--even with your money."

"A very palpable hit!" said Jenny with a slight smile. "But did you come here only to say things like that? I know you think you have a right to say them--but what's the good?"

"The good is if they make you think--and I have a right to say them, though I fear your bitterness made me put them too harshly. If so, I beg your pardon. In whatever way I put them, the facts are there. Father and son are strangers in heart already; very soon they will be enemies if you persist in what you are doing."

"What am I doing?" asked Jenny, smiling again.

"Evil," he replied uncompromisingly. "Wanton evil if you don't mean to marry this young man--deliberate evil if you do."

"Why deliberate evil if I do?"

"You have no right to marry the son of that man. It would create a position unnatural, cruel, hideous."

"Alison, Alison!" I murmured. I thought that he was now "growing hot."

But he took no notice of me--nor did Jenny.

"An inevitable and perpetual quarrel between father and son, a perpetual humiliation for a man who trusted you--and was wrong in doing it! Dare you do that--with what there is lying between you and Lord Fillingford?"

"What is there?"

"At least deceit, broken faith, trust betrayed, honor threatened. Is there no more?"

Jenny looked at him now with somber thoughtfulness.

"We're not children," he went on. "If there is no more, what was easier than to say so, to lay scandal to rest, to give an account of yourself?

Wasn't that easy?"

"Lying is generally pretty easy," said Jenny.

He raised his hands in the air and let them fall in a despairing gesture. "You yourself have said it!"

"Yes, I have said it, Mr. Alison. You've always believed it. Now you know it. We're face to face."

"Then face to face I say to you that you're no fit wife for that young man."

"No fit companion either, perhaps?"

"I'll say no more than I need say. A sinner who repents is a fit companion for the angels, and joyfully welcomed. Haven't you read it? I am on your duty, not to G.o.d--I pray Him that He may teach you that--but to the honorable man whom you deceived and humiliated. You charge him with having wanted to marry you for your money. Take it on that basis, if you will. What did you want to marry him for? Was it love? No; his t.i.tle, his position. Was the exchange unfair? The bargain was fair, if not very pretty. Even to that bargain you were grossly false. If I'm wrong in my facts, say so: but if my facts are right, in very decency let his house--let his son--alone."

"Your facts are right," she said. "I was false to the bargain. Have you said all you have to say, Mr. Alison?"

"I have done--save to say that what I have said to you I have said to n.o.body else. I am no chatterer. What I've said to-day I've said in virtue of my office. What you have admitted to me I treat as told me in the confessional."

She bowed her head slightly, accepting his pledge. "I know that," she said. Then she turned to me, smiling sadly. "I'm afraid we must tell him our plans, Austin--in strict confidence?" She did not wait for an answer, but went on to him immediately: "I'll speak to you on the terms on which you have already heard me--as though I were in the confessional."

"What you are pleased to say is safe--but it's your deeds I want, not your words."

"My words will make my deeds plain to you," she answered, and then sat silent for a while, resting her cheek on her hand, looking very steadily in his face. At last she spoke in a low even voice:

"I don't admit your authority; and yet, as Austin knows, I shrank from this meeting. You claim the right to lay your hands on my very soul, to tear it out and look at it. I don't like that. I resent it. And what good does it do? We remain too far apart. I shall make to you no apology for what I have done; I don't desire to defend myself. The thing is very different to me, and you wouldn't even try to see the difference. Yet it is not less a great thing to me--as great as to you, though different.

Yes, a great thing and a decisive one. I may look at it wrongly--I don't look at it lightly."

"I'm glad to be able to think that--at least," he remarked.

"I like you, and I want to work with you in the future. That's why I've listened to you, and why I now tell you what's in my mind--why I have come face to face with you. There was no obligation on me; my soul's my own, not yours, nor the world's. But I have chosen to do it. You came here, Mr. Alison, to tell me that I was not a fit wife for Lord Fillingford's son?"

He a.s.sented with a nod and a gentle motion of his hand.

"I agree with you there--with all you've said about that--but I go much farther. I don't think myself a fit wife for any man's son."

He looked up at her with a quick jerk of his head.

"I could go to no man as his wife without telling my story. And if I told it, what would he say? He might say, 'Go away!' Probably most men would, though there are some I know who, I think, would not. Or he might say, 'That's all over--forget all that. Be happy with me.' If he said that, what should I answer? I should have to say, 'It's not all over; it's not a wretched thing in the past that I've bitterly repented of and may now hope to be allowed to forget and to be forgiven for. It's not over and never will be. For me it's decisive; it will always be there.

And it will always be there for you, too, and you will hate it.'" She spoke the last words with a strong intensity. "'Always something to be ashamed of, something to hide, something breeding a secret unconquerable grudge!' That's handicapping marriage very heavily--even though my husband were not son to Lord Fillingford! Do you know that it was only with the bitterest fear that I agreed to marry Leonard himself? Should I easily marry another man now?"

"Don't ask her to marry you--it only worries her." The words of Leonard Octon's letter came back; I could imagine the grimly humorous smile with which he penned that bit of advice to me.