'And I wear no mourning, you see. All that kind of thing is ignoble. I am robbed of a priceless companionship, but I don't care to go about inviting people's pity. If only I could forget those months of suffering! Some day I shall, perhaps, and think of her only as she lived.'
'Were you alone with her all the time?'
'No. Our cousin Janet was often with us.' Christian spoke with averted face. 'You don't know, of course, that she has gone in for medical work--practises at Kingsmill. The accident was at a village called Lowton, ten miles or more from Kingsmill. Janet came over very often.'
Godwin mused on this development of the girl whom he remembered so well. He could not direct his thoughts; a languor had crept over him.
'Do you recollect, Peak,' said Christian, presently, 'the talk we had in the fields by Twybridge, when we first met?'
The old friendliness was reappearing in his manner, He was yielding to the impulse to be communicative, confidential, which had always characterised him.
'I remember,' Godwin murmured.
'If only my words then had had any weight with you! And if only I had acted upon my own advice! Just for those few weeks I was sane; I understood something of life; I saw my true way before me. You and I have both gone after ruinous ideals, instead of taking the solid good held out to us. Of course, I know your story in outline. I don't ask you to talk about it. You are independent now, and I hope you can use your freedom.--Well, and I too am free.'
The last words were in a lower tone. Godwin glanced at the speaker, whose sadness was not banished, but illumined with a ray of calm hope.
'Have you ever thought of me and my infatuation?' Christian asked.
'Yes.'
'I have outlived that mawkish folly. I used to drink too much; the two things went well together. It would shame me to tell you all about it. But, happily, I have been able to go back about thirteen years--recover my old sane self--and with it what I then threw away.'
'I understand.'
'Do you? Marcella knew of it, just before her death, and it made her glad. But the waste of years, the best part of a lifetime! It's incredible to me as I look back. Janet called on us one day in London. Heaven be thanked that she was forgiving enough to do so! What would have become of me now?'
'How are you going to live, then?' Godwin asked, absently.
'How? My income is sufficient'----
'No, no; I mean, where and how will you live in your married life?'
'That's still uncertain. Janet mustn't go on with professional work. In any case, I don't think she could for long; her strength isn't equal to it. But I shouldn't wonder if we settle in Kingsmill. To you it would seem intolerable? But why should we live in London? At Kingsmill Janet has a large circle of friends; in London we know scarcely half-a-dozen people--of the kind it would give us any pleasure to live with. We shall have no lack of intellectual society; Janet knows some of the Whitelaw professors. The atmosphere of Kingsmill isn't illiberal, you know; we shan't be fought shy of because we object to pass Sundays in a state of coma. But the years that I have lost! The irrecoverable years!'
'There's nothing so idle as regretting the past,' said Godwin, with some impatience. 'Why groan over what couldn't be otherwise? The probability is, Janet and you are far better suited to each other now than you ever would have been if you had married long ago.'
'You think that?' exclaimed the other, eagerly. 'I have tried to see it in that light. If I didn't feel so despicable!'
'She, I take it, doesn't think you so,' Godwin muttered.
'But how can she understand? I have tried to tell her everything, but she refused to listen. Perhaps Marcella told her all she cared to know.'
'No doubt.'
Each brooded for a while over his own affairs, then Christian reverted to the subject which concerned them both.
'Let us speak frankly. You will take this gift of Marcella's as it was meant?'
How _was_ it meant? Critic and analyst as ever, Godwin could not be content to see in it the simple benefaction of a woman who died loving him. Was it not rather the last subtle device of jealousy? Marcella knew that the legacy would be a temptation he could scarcely resist--and knew at the same time that, if he accepted it, he practically renounced his hope of marrying Sidwell Warricombe. Doubtless she had learned as much as she needed to know of Sidwell's position. Refusing this bequest, he was as far as ever from the possibility of asking Sidwell to marry him. Profiting by it, he stood for ever indebted to Marcella, must needs be grateful to her, and some day, assuredly, would reveal the truth to whatever woman became his wife. Conflict of reasonings and emotions made it difficult to answer Moxey's question.
'I must take time to think of it,' he said, at length.
'Well, I suppose that is right. But--well, I know so little of your circumstances'----
'Is that strictly true?' Peak asked.
'Yes. I have only the vaguest idea of what you have been doing since you left us. Of course I have tried to find out.'
Godwin smiled, rather gloomily.
'We won't talk of it. I suppose you stay in St. Helen's for the night?'
'There's a train at 10.20. I had better go by it.'
'Then let us forget everything but your own cheerful outlook. At ten, I'll walk with you to the station.'
Reluctantly at first, but before long with a quiet abandonment to the joy that would not be suppressed, Christian talked of his future wife. In Janet he found every perfection. Her mind was something more than the companion of his own. Already she had begun to inspire him with a hopeful activity, and to foster the elements of true manliness which he was conscious of possessing, though they had never yet had free play. With a sense of luxurious safety, he submitted to her influence, knowing none the less that it was in his power to complete her imperfect life. Studiously he avoided the word 'ideal'; from such vaporous illusions he had turned to the world's actualities; his language dealt with concretes, with homely satisfactions, with prospects near enough to be soberly examined.
A hurry to catch the train facilitated parting. Godwin promised to write in a few days.
He took a roundabout way back to his lodgings. The rain was over, the sky had become placid. He was conscious of an effect from Christian's conversation which half counteracted the mood he would otherwise have indulged,--the joy of liberty and of an outlook wholly new. Sidwell might perchance be to him all that Janet was to Christian. Was it not the luring of 'ideals' that prompted him to turn away from his long hope?
There must be no more untruthfulness. Sidwell must have all the facts laid before her, and make her choice.
Without a clear understanding of what he was going to write, he sat down at eleven o'clock, and began, 'Dear Miss Warricombe'. Why not 'Dear Sidwell'? He took another sheet of paper.
'Dear Sidwell,--To-night I can remember only your last word to me when we parted. I cannot address you coldly, as though half a stranger. Thus long I have kept silence about everything but the outward events of my life; now, in telling you of something that has happened, I must speak as I think.
'Early this evening I was surprised by a visit from Christian Moxey--a name you know. He came to tell me that his sister (she of whom I once spoke to you) was dead, and had bequeathed to me a large sum of money. He said that it represented an income of eight hundred pounds.
'I knew nothing of Miss Moxey's illness, and the news of her will came to me as a surprise. In word or deed, I never sought more than her simple friendship--and even _that_ I