THE BOLT FALLS.
rom that sad death-bed Gladys passed out into the open air alone.
'When you are ready, Teen,' she said, 'you can go home, and tell Miss Peck I shall come to-day, sometime. I have something to do first.'
She neither spoke to nor looked at Walter, but passed out into the open square before the Cathedral, and down the old High Street, with a steady, purposeful step. The rain had ceased, but a heavy mist hung low and drearily over the city, and the wind swept across the roofs with a moaning cadence in its voice. The bitter coldness of the weather made no difference to the streets. Those depraved and melancholy men and women, the bold-looking girls and the wretched children, were constantly before the vision of Gladys as she walked, but she saw them not. For once in her life her unselfish heart was entirely concentrated upon its own concerns, and she was in a fever of conflicting emotions—a fever so high and so uncontrollable that she had to walk to keep it down. It was close upon the hour of afternoon tea at Bellairs Crescent when Gladys rang the bell.
'Is Mrs. Fordyce at home, Hardy?' she asked the servant; 'and is she alone—no visitors, I mean?'
'Quite alone, with Miss Mina, in the drawing-room, Miss Graham,' announced the maid, with a smile, but thinking at the same time that the girl looked very white and tired. 'Miss Fordyce is spending the day at Pollokshields, and will dine and sleep there, we expect.'
Gladys nodded, gave her cloak and umbrella into the maid's hand, and went up-stairs, not with her usual springing step, but slowly, as if she were very tired.
Hardy, who had a genuine affection for the young mistress of Bourhill, looked after her with some concern on her honest face.
'She doesn't look a bit like a bride,' she said to herself. 'There's something gone wrong.'
With a little exclamation of joyful surprise, Mina jumped up from her stool before the fire.
'Oh, you delightful creature, to take pity on our loneliness on such a day. Mother, do wake up; here is Gladys.'
'Oh, my dear, how are you?' said Mrs. Fordyce, waking up with a start. 'When did you come up? Were you not afraid to venture on such a day?'
'I had to come,' Gladys made reply, and she kissed them both with a perfectly grave face. 'Will you do something for me, Mrs. Fordyce?'
'Why, certainly, my dear. But what is the matter with you? You look as melancholy as an owl.'
'Will you send a servant to Gorbals Mill, to ask your nephew to come here on his way home from business? I want to see him very particularly.'
It was a very natural and simple request, but somehow Mrs. Fordyce experienced a sense of uneasiness as she heard it.
'Why, certainly. But will a telegram not do as well? It will catch him more quickly. He is often away early just now; there is so much to see about at Dowanhill.'
At Dowanhill was situated the handsome town house George Fordyce had taken for his bride, but the allusion to it had no effect on Gladys except to make her give her lips a very peculiar compression.
'How stupid of me not to think of a telegram! Will you please send it out at once?'
'From myself?'
'Yes, please.'
She brought Mrs. Fordyce her writing materials, the telegram was written, and the maid who brought in the tea took it down-stairs.
'Gladys, you look frightfully out of sorts,' said Mina quickly. 'What have you been about? Have you been long in town?'
'Since twelve. I have come from the Infirmary just now, walking all the way.'
'Walking all the way!—but from the Western, of course?'
'No, from the Royal; it seemed quite short. Oh, that tea is delicious!'
She drank the contents of the cup at one feverish draught, and held it out for more. Both mother and daughter regarded her with increased anxiety in their looks.
'My dear, it is quite time you had some one to exercise a gentle authority over you. To walk from the Royal Infirmary here! It is past speaking of. Child, what do you mean? You will be ill on our hands next, and that will be a pretty to-do. Surely you came off in post-haste this morning without your rings?' she added, with a significant glance at the girl's white hand, from which she had removed the glove.
Gladys took no notice of the remark; but Mina, observant as usual, saw a look she had never before seen creep into the girl's eyes.
'But you have never told us yet what you were doing at the Infirmary?' she said suggestively; but Gladys preserved silence for a few minutes more.
'Please not to ask any questions,' she said rather hurriedly. 'You will know everything very soon, only let me be quiet now. I know you will, for you have always been good to me.'
A great dread instantly seized upon those who heard these words, and Mrs. Fordyce became nervous and apprehensive; but she was obliged to respect such a request, and they changed the subject, trying dismally to turn the talk into a commonplace groove. But it was a strain and an effort on all three, and at last Gladys rose and began to walk up and down the room, giving an occasional glance out of the window, as if impatient for her lover's coming, but it was an impatience which made Mrs. Fordyce's heart sink, and she feared the worst.
George was no laggard lover; within the hour he rang the familiar bell. Then the nervous restlessness which had taken possession of Gladys seemed to be quietened down, and she stood quite still on the hearth-rug, and her face was calm, but deadly pale.
'Shall we go before George comes up?' asked Mrs. Fordyce, involuntarily rising; but Gladys made answer, with a shade of imperious command,—
'No, I wish you to remain. Mina can go, if she likes.'
Mina had not the opportunity. A quick, eager footstep came hurrying up-stairs, and the door was thrown open with a careless hand.
'You here, Gladys?' he exclaimed, with all the eagerness and delight he might have been expected to display, but next moment the light died out of his face, and he knew that the bolt had fallen. Even those who blamed him most must have commiserated the man upon whom fell that lightning glance of unutterable loathing and contempt.
'I have sent for you to come here, because it was here I saw you first,' she said, and her voice rang out clear and sweet as a bell. 'You know why I have sent for you?—to give you back these things, the sign of a bond which ought never to have been between us. How dared you—how dared you offer them to me, after your monstrous cruelty to that poor girl from whose death-bed I have just come?'
She threw the rings down upon the table; they rolled to the floor, sparkling as if in mockery as they went, but none offered to touch them.
Mina opened the door hurriedly, and left the room. Mrs. Fordyce turned away also, and a sob broke from her lips.
Gladys stood quite erect, the linen at her stately throat not whiter than her face, her clear eyes, brilliant with indignation, fixed mercilessly on her lover's changing face. He was, indeed, a creature to be pitied even more than despised.
'Gladys, for God's sake, don't be too hasty! Give me opportunity for explanation. I admit that I did wrong, but there are extenuating circumstances. Let me explain, I entreat you, before you thus blight my life, and your own.'
'What explanation is there to give? If it is true that you ruined that poor girl,—and do you think that a lie can be uttered on a death-bed,—what more is there to say? Gather up these baubles, and take them away.'
Her bearing was that of a queen. Well might he shrink under that matchless scorn, yet never had she appeared more beautiful, more desirable in his eyes. He made one more attempt.
'Take time, Gladys. I deny nothing; I only ask to be allowed to show you, at least, that I am a repentant man, and that I will atone for all the past by a lifetime of devotion.'
'To whom?'
'To you. I have been a wild, foolish, sinful fellow, if you like, but never wholly bad,' he said eagerly. 'And, Gladys, think of the fearful scandal this will be. We dare not break off the marriage, when it is so near.'
'I dare; I dare anything, George Fordyce. And I pray God to forgive you the awful wrong you did to that poor girl, and the insult you were base enough to offer me in asking me to be your wife—an insult, I fear, I can never forgive.'
'Aunt Isabel, will you not help me?' said he then, turning desperately to his aunt. 'Tell Gladys what you know to be true, that there are hundreds of men in this and other cities who have married girls as pure and good as Gladys, and whose life before marriage would not bear investigation, yet they make the best of husbands. Tell her that she is making a mountain out of little, and that it will be madness to break off the marriage at this late date.'
Mrs. Fordyce slowly turned towards them. The tears were streaming down her face, but she only sadly shook her head.
'I cannot, George. Gladys is right. You had better go.'
Then George Fordyce, with a malignant scowl on his face, put his heel on the bauble which had cost him a hundred guineas, crushed it into powder, and flung himself out of the room. Then Gladys, with a low, faint, shuddering cry, threw herself upon the couch, and gave way to the floodtide of her grief and humiliation and angry pain.
Mrs. Fordyce wisely allowed it to have full vent, but at last she seated herself by the couch, and laid her hand on the girl's flushed and heated head.
'Now, my dear, be calm. It is all over. You will be better soon, my poor, dear, darling child.'
Gladys sat up, and her wet eyes met those of her kind friend, who had allowed her upright and womanly heart to take the right, if the unworldly side.
'Just think how merciful it was of God to let me know in time. In a few weeks I should have been his wife, and then it would have been terrible.'
'It would,' said Mrs. Fordyce, with a sigh; 'but you would just have had to bury it, and live on, as many other women have to do, with such skeletons in the cupboard.'
'I don't suppose I should have died, but I should have lived the rest of my life apart from him. Is it true what he says, that so many are bad? I cannot believe it.'
'Nor do I. There are some, I know, who have had an unworthy past, but you must remember that all women do not look at moral questions from your exalted standpoint. There are even girls, like Julia, for instance, who admire men who are a little fast.'
'How dreadful! That must lower the morality of men. It shall never be said of me. If I cannot marry a man who entertains a high and reverent ideal of manhood and womanhood, I shall die as I am.'
'He will be difficult to find, my dear,' said Mrs. Fordyce sadly. 'This is a melancholy end to all our high hopes and ambitions. It will be a frightful blow to them at Pollokshields.'
'I am not sorry for them. They will think only of what the world will say, and will never give poor Lizzie one kindly thought. If it is a blow, they deserve it; I am not sorry for them at all.'
'And you are not in the least disconcerted at the nine days' wonder the breaking of your engagement will make?'
'Not in the least. What is it, after all? The buzzing of a few idle flies. I have no room for anything in my heart but a vast pity for the poor dead girl who was more sinned against than sinning, and a profound thankfulness to God for His unspeakable mercy to me.'
She spoke the truth; and in her own home that night, upon her knees, she poured forth her heart in fervent prayer, and mingling with her many strange feelings was a strange and unutterable sense of relief, because she was once more free.
