CHAPTER XV

“Have you no assurance that, earth at end; Wrong will prove right? Who made shall mend In that higher sphere to which yearnings tend.”

“I HOPE, my dear,” said Mrs. le Mentier, “that I am not too frightfully out of place. But the fog drove me to you—it positively did. Mystery is so more-ish, and you know how dreadfully curious I am. When were you first engaged to Jack, dear?” Muriel smiled.

“I don’t know, truly,” she said, “for it feels now as if it was always.”

“Then it must have been very recent. Recent things always feel like that,” said Edith. She sank down before the fire and began to warm her hands; the rings on them gleamed and glittered with an almost malicious sparkling. “It is very brave of you to marry Jack,” she murmured, smiling—“very brave. I hardly think I should have had the pluck to if I were single again.”

Muriel looked in front of her. She was counting the minutes; every one seemed a slow, aching century separating her from the man who might be dying. It was a refined mode of torture to have to talk of him. She began to understand the feeling of a caged wild beast. As an expression it is trite, but as an emotion it possessed her as original.

“You are not very consistent, are you?” suggested Mrs. le Mentier with a little hard laugh. “We none of us are, I suppose; only it’s rather disappointing to us wicked ones when one of the saints back down. Being so deficient ourselves we expect so much more of them. It’s the shock that one feels when a really good cook fails in his favorite dish.”

“I’m afraid I’m not consistent, and I’m sure I’m not one of the saints,” said Muriel with a little strained smile. “What do you mean, Mrs. le Mentier?”

“Once on a time,” replied her companion critically, regarding her dainty hands, “there was a girl who wouldn’t marry a man—there’s nothing so very astonishing about that, you’ll say; it’s happened before and it may happen again. But she wouldn’t marry him because she found out that his record showed a stumble or two. One may consider her a little fastidious, but one respects her. The man behaved very nicely; he respected her too. But then there came another man, and human nature made her forget all about his record, which, when you come to think of it, is very natural, and not at all to be blamed. It is a pity to be too fastidious, but one can’t perhaps respect her as much.”

“Mrs. le Mentier,” said Muriel, rising to her feet, “will you kindly tell me what you mean?” Mrs. le Mentier slowly began to draw on her gloves—they fitted her to perfection—but she remained seated.

“You might ask Jack when you see him—if he is well enough to be bothered with such unimportant things—if he remembers four years ago this last July. You might ask him if he would like you to see his correspondence at that time. You might laugh with him, when he is convalescent, over these letters. I have them in this little bag here, which when I heard of your engagement seemed better in your hands than mine. You might,” said Edith, holding out her hand to Muriel, and smiling her sweetest smile, “tell Captain Hurstly that his old friends have not forgotten him. Good-bye, my dear Muriel; _bon voyage_—my best respects to your uncle—don’t trouble to come downstairs—do you know the last good remedy for _mal-de-mer_?—you never suffer from it? That’s right; a speedy return, my dear, and mind you don’t forget my little messages to Jack when you see him—good-bye!”

Muriel waited until the door was closed, then she went and looked at the letters. She knew the handwriting; she hungered for a sight of any words from him; and she looked at it now as if she was looking at it for the last time. Then she sat down where Edith le Mentier had been sitting, and tore them up one by one and threw them into the fire. Muriel had scarcely finished when Sir Arthur came into the room.

“Muriel!” he cried in a tone of justifiable displeasure, “I have told you before never to put paper into the fire. Do you know you endanger our lives by your carelessness? Letters should be put into the waste-paper basket, not made bonfires of! Have you got your trunks packed, child, and all your arrangements made? We start in another hour.”

“Uncle Arthur,” said Muriel quietly, “you will think me very strange, I know, and very wilful, but I’m not going to start to-day. I’m going back to the club to-night. I—I don’t think I am feeling very well.”

Expression for the most part is a distinctly limited faculty, and those who carry it to its bounds in the ordinary occurrence of life find nothing left to say when the occasion transcends their experience. Sir Arthur Dallerton was dumb; he made several efforts to speak—he put his hand to his heart—he stared at the ceiling—he was almost startled into a prayer—finally he gasped out:—

“You wicked girl! Send my man to me,” and closed his eyes.

Muriel escaped. He had not tried to combat her decision; he was in fact very much relieved not to have to go. He had only submitted to the mid-winter journey because it was expected of him—but he was surprised, horribly surprised. There is something very shocking to an Englishman in any sudden change: to Sir Arthur Dallerton it amounted to a crime. Muriel had surprised him, and he could not forgive her.

It was dark when Muriel drove back to the club that night, but the fog had lifted and the stars were out. There was something in the street lights and noises that awoke in her the tremendous emptiness the world can hold. It was a shadow, a delusion, a mere dim, spectral mist, the background for an infinite weary pain that made the real pivot of the universe. She almost killed herself with self-reproaches. What was she that she should blot out the glory of her lover’s world for the words of a jealous woman?—for a mistake in the past—a sin if you choose. It might be a sin. If he had sinned all the sins, if he was sin itself, it didn’t matter—she loved him—loved him—loved him! And the great steamer with its iron speed might even now be leaving the docks, and she had set her face against him like a flint, and there was no turning back. Life had placed before her the old choice of love and duty, and though passion justified of reason rose with double power to storm the fortress of her will, and last, and bitterest of all, the traitor within called to her to give way for hope’s sake, life’s sake, love’s sake, when it seemed for another’s good—to release one she would have gladly died to comfort—to gain that which in all the world she most desired for his sake, for her own, for the apparent good of them both—(Oh, how the traitor clamors at the gate, the traitor with those eyes, that voice!)—all the glowing world of hers, the infinite golden gladness of love—even with those to oppose and madden her, she shut her hands tight, and with a wordless, inexpressible prayer lifted up her soul. With most the struggle comes before decision, with many at the point itself, but with some few it is after the decision is made and when there is no turning back. So Muriel struggled now, though at the moment she had been wrapt as it were apart from all uncertainty in the cloud of renunciation.

“Muriel!” Cynthia stood before her, petrified. Had she had news it was too late? She drew her towards the fire, and Muriel sat down and looked at her wistfully as a child might.

“I think I had better tell you all about it now,” she said, “though I feel sure you will not understand.”

“You have been doing something foolish, I suppose,” said Cynthia curtly. “Well, what is it?” But she drew very tenderly the girl’s jacket off, and smoothed her hair with gentle hands.

“I have given Jack up,” said Muriel wearily, “because Edith le Mentier——” she stopped. “Oh, I can’t explain,” she murmured. “The words don’t mean anything, but—but, Cynthia, I couldn’t marry a man who had once loved, or thought he loved, that woman. I could not trust a man whom I felt was weaker than I. If I had children——” she paused again. “You see I knew a woman who married, and the man was a dear fellow; but he had been weak, and the strain was in him—and he was weak again. When I was engaged to Alec Bruce she said to me, ‘It’s not of so much importance to avoid bad men—they’re danger signals we aren’t blind to—but for God’s sake never marry a weak one.’” Muriel caught her breath with a little dry sob.

“Oh, you little idiot, you little idiot,” cried Cynthia with flashing eyes. “What’s another woman’s, any woman’s, all other women’s experience to one’s own heart? Love, and take the consequences—there’s nothing else; it’s the only thing worth while. Why should you condemn yourself and Jack to a death in life because of that wretched woman?—besides, you don’t even know if it’s true! It’s madness, Muriel—madness. He’ll marry somebody else, and turn out a mere do-nothing, and you’ll wear your life out in another five years. And it’s all useless, reasonless, cruel. And then you’ll pray for his soul, and expect me too, perhaps. But I shan’t! Can’t you see you’re driving him back to her?”

Muriel dragged herself to her feet. “You forget I believe,” she said very slowly, “in the life of the world to come.” Then covering her face with her hands she burst into tears.

Cynthia Grant wrote that night to her brother: “I don’t know whether it’s any use, Geoff, but she’s broken the whole business off between herself and Jack Hurstly. She’s desperate, but determined. It’s all for a mere nothing. I cannot understand her; but I won’t let her work herself to death if I can help it. She was a fool ever to have cared for him, and more of a fool not to have married him. It would be difficult to know which we do more harm with, we women, our hearts or our souls—‘Where a soul may be discerned.’”

But Muriel was on her knees all night praying that he might live and she might be forgiven.