CHAPTER XXXII

“This cold, clay clod was man’s heart: Crumble it, and what comes next?—Is it God?”

MURIEL woke up to a new poverty and an extra ten thousand a year. The latter scarcely passed through her mind, but the former made her terribly lonely. Now there seemed nothing left, and the world a vast cold place void of personality.

She repeated three times over during a hurried, lonely breakfast that she had her work, and the post brought her two letters, one with Cynthia’s Paris address, the other in a handwriting that drew all the blood to her heart. She put it aside and read Cynthia’s. It told of her work and of Launcelot. The tone was softer than usual. Muriel was scarcely surprised when she read “Launcelot says his prayers every evening, and always goes to church on Sundays. So I do, too. His soul wants nourishment as well as his body, and I promised to take care of him. The other night Geoff took him to bed, and when I went up to look at them they were kneeling side by side looking out of the window. Launcelot has an idea that the Holy Grail is in one of the stars, and he is always looking for it. You have found it, Muriel, dear, and I am beginning to believe that some day I may find it too.” She did not mention Leslie Damores; evidently he had not discovered her yet. Muriel hesitated to send him Cynthia’s address; she believed it better for them both to wait.

Finally she took up the second letter. “Will you forgive me for writing to you? Gladys and I are married. We have left India for good, which means my profession dropped, you understand; but Gladys says there is no one to dress for in India. You’ll think it awful cheek on my part, but she’s very young yet, and you used to have a tremendous influence over her. I suppose you couldn’t drop in now and then and give her a hint or two? I should like to see you awfully.—JACK.”

Muriel carefully put the letter on a table, and sat with her hands on her lap gazing steadfastly into the fire. She saw three things, and she saw them plainly. One was that Jack did not love his wife, another that she, Muriel, had hardly forgiven Gladys, and thirdly that Jack would like to see her awfully. There was a dim, shadowy fourth, but this she brushed angrily away; it hinted that there was more sunlight in the room than before she had read the letter.

Finally she drifted into a compromise it would do no harm to see Gladys. She wrote telling her of her loss and inviting her to tea the following week. She was very nervous when the afternoon came, and paced restlessly up and down the long reception room in her heavy black dress vexed with her expectancy, listening to the noises in the street. The sharp jingle of a hansom passing, hesitating, stopping, brought her to a chair.

Then came the sound of an electric bell, and a minute later the door swung open and a footman announced “Captain Hurstly, miss.”

Muriel looked at him inquiringly. She did not appear in the least nervous now, for natures that tremble at a hindrance rise triumphantly to meet a calamity, and in a moment she realized that his presence was fully that.

“Gladys couldn’t come at the last minute, and I did want to see you so, Muriel,” he explained. He pleaded as he had always done, and he was just as handsome. She let these things have full weight with her before she spoke.

“Won’t you sit down, Captain Hurstly; they will bring tea in a minute. I am sorry your wife could not come.”

Jack looked at her with eloquent, grieved eyes, but she meeting them saw the coward in his soul, and her face hardened. He had not cared enough for her to remain unmarried, merely enough to desire a flirtation after marriage. She had not slept properly for three nights after she received his letter. He was the first to find the silence uncomfortable.

“I am not sorry she could not come,” he said with a tender inflection; “I wanted to see you alone. It is a long while since I have seen you, Muriel. To me it seems desperately long, and yet you have not changed at all.”

“You are mistaken, Captain Hurstly; I have changed a great deal. You also have altered considerably.” Muriel’s tone was convincing even to herself; she was beginning to believe she could after all bear it.

“It is true I have altered,” he replied. “You alone might know how terribly, but I suppose it is never wise to follow a wrong by a folly. Only one can’t help oneself when one’s world, all that one has ever cared for, tumbles about one’s ears. Oh, Muriel, how could you do it! how could you do it!” He was intensely in earnest; he could always be that at the very shortest notice. He stood in front of her looking down with the same passionate blue eyes which used to stir her heart, and yet when he met hers it did not seem as if he was looking down.

“If you have come to open a question forever closed between us, Captain Hurstly, and which your own honor and good sense should know to be doubly closed by your marriage, I must ask you to excuse me. I did not invite your wife to tea as a permission for you to insult me.”

“You are right,” he said looking at her with frank admiration; “you are always right, Muriel, without you I have forgotten how to be. Forgive me, I did not come here to upbraid you for ruining my life——”

“I should think not, indeed,” Muriel interrupted scornfully.

“But to ask you to help me about Gladys. Are you my friend enough to wish to do that—Muriel?” She flushed painfully.

“I should like to help you,” she said in a low voice.

“It’s simply that she won’t understand the danger of flirting with other men—every and any other man apparently,” he explained; “and I don’t want my wife to be a second Edith le Mentier.” There was a pause; his illustration was unfortunate.

“You give her no cause to complain of you by your attention to the—first Mrs. le Mentier?” she could not forbear to ask.

“Muriel!” he cried. The protest was too vehement to be convincing. She rose and held out her hand.

“I will do all I can for your wife, Captain Hurstly—I am afraid it will be little enough—on one condition”—he waited anxiously—“that you will not attempt to see me again.”

“You really mean it?” He spoke slowly, intensely. She never knew afterwards how she kept her hands from trembling.

“You have singularly forgotten the little you knew of me if you think I do not mean what I say, Captain Hurstly.” She turned wearily to the door. He compared her in his mind with Edith le Mentier. Muriel was telling him to go away. She had told him to come back. Gladys was only a shadow in his life, a chained shadow; he did not even think of her at this moment. He had never depended on principles or considered consequences.

“Good-bye, then, Muriel,” he said. “I suppose I must thank you for your promise, though its condition is terrible to me. You don’t know what you may be driving me to!”

“Oh, I’m not driving you,” cried Muriel desperately, the weakness of his nature dawning more fully on her; “drive yourself, Captain Hurstly—drive yourself!”

So he went, and was driven by some passion of irresponsibility from Muriel to Edith le Mentier. He found her in.

For Muriel there was just earth—weak earth—where her ideal had once made heaven for her.

It is not often we are brought into such sharp contact with our broken idols; if it were we should cease to make new ones—and that would be a loss.

Muriel stood face to face with the knowledge that she had been a fool—a girl with a dream—lie—hugged to her heart: and God help women who have to realize such dreams in the daylight of facts.

All she could find to say was that he was absolutely dead; she had not risen yet to see her deliverance. If the world had been empty before, now it was a blank. Those who die leave a sense of loss, but to know that one we loved has never lived is the greatest and most tragic emptiness of all. Muriel saw failure written over her heart. There was only one thing left: she fell on her knees and offered up her failure. So love passed away from her, but it left her on her knees.