Chapter Thirty One.

The greatest situations in life are invariably incomplete, inexorably limited by the very stress of feeling that should make them effective and convincing, as, for instance, it does on the stage, where effect is duly studied and considered irrespective of the sensitiveness of the human mind that shrinks from making a display of its deeper emotions.

Because of the intensity of their feeling and the natural reserve that prompted them to its concealment, the meeting between husband and wife was commonplace in the extreme. For years they had been apart, nursing resentment one against the other. Each had failed the other in the great essentials of married life. Both had made mistakes, and both had been unrelenting. But death makes an extraordinary difference in human affairs, even when it is merely the overshadowing of death’s wings, which, hovering for a while, pass on, the time being not yet fulfilled.

The fear, the almost certainty that death would claim her husband had melted for ever the hardness in Zoë Lawless’ heart. She was prepared, had been prepared from the moment she determined to leave Cape Town in search of him, to forgive every injury that she had suffered at his hands,—to accept him as he was for her love’s sake, unconditionally, as he had once told her was the only way possible to complete reconciliation. He had less to forgive; but he also had come to regard life differently since he had stood on the borderland of the Great Eternal,—to realise its limitations and insufficiencies, the pettiness of ill-feeling, the seriousness of the huge human blunder that is called unkindness. The overshadowing of death’s wings had softened him, had given him pause to think.

When the door opened in response to his querulously uttered invitation, and Zoë entered with her flowers in her hand, he looked towards her with a quick, sharp glance of inquiry. Behind the look was a certain fierce shyness, a diffidence which he strove to conceal. She approached the bed, placed the bloemetjes on the coverlet close to his hand and sat down in the chair she had occupied on the only other occasion that she had been permitted inside the room.

“I am so glad you are better,” she said.

He removed his gaze from her face and played with the flowers.

“You’ve been long enough in coming to see me,” he returned ungraciously.

“The doctor was afraid I might excite you,” she explained.

“Rot!” he ejaculated.

He pulled the flowers about and did not look at her.

“It’s been a near thing with me,” he went on, “I’ve had a closer look at death than I’m likely to get again, and come through... It didn’t seem to matter, somehow.” He still played with the flowers. “It would have squared things, perhaps, if I’d made you a widow.”

She leant towards him, and spoke in a low voice, reproachfully.

“You know it wouldn’t have squared things. It would have deprived both of us of the chance to make amends.”

“Still making a matter of conscience of it?” he said cynically.

She put her hand quickly on his, and so stayed the restless fingers in their destructive task.

“Hugh! That isn’t kind.”

“No,” he agreed. “But you see, it’s easy for you to do the right thing under given circumstances.”

“Oh! my dear!” she said. And then: “Easy! If you knew what it cost me to reconcile myself to the thought of sharing in nursing you with that woman... I was prepared to do that. Oh yes! I know the rights of that story now, but I didn’t when I left Cape Town.”

Lawless flushed darkly.

“I don’t deserve that you should come near me, Zoë... I behaved to you like a cad.”

“You didn’t behave well,” she returned. “I wonder why you acted as you did. When Colonel Grey told me the story, I felt that you must hate me to let me think that... It made me bitter. Afterwards, when death came so very close, such matters appeared less important, trivial even... I ceased to think of them.”

“It makes a difference,” he said.

His hand twisted under hers until the palm came uppermost; his fingers closed upon her fingers, gripping them tightly. A little thrill of happiness ran through her. It was many a long year since his hand had gripped hers like that. He turned his face suddenly and looked at her.

“You are cold,” he complained, but his eyes smiled with a look of complete satisfaction. “You punish me by staying out of my room altogether until I become violent, commit an assault on a very harmless person, and practically send for you. And now you are here—you permit me to hold your hand.”

She laughed and flushed warmly.

“I’m leaving it all to you,” she said softly. “I want to leave it to you... You ought to understand.”

“When I was sick,” he said whimsically, “I suffered from delusions. The most amazing as well as the pleasantest of these fancies was that one day you came and sat beside my bed where you are sitting now, only, inexplicably, your arms were about me, and your face was close to mine upon the pillow. I was out of my body then. I think I should have slipped away altogether but for those restraining arms. I’ve lain often and tried to will the vision back, but it never reappeared.”

He turned in the bed and lifted himself slightly on his elbow.

“You are far more elusive than that fancy of mine,” he grumbled.

He gripped the hand he held tighter, and pulled her towards him.

“I thought you weren’t conscious,” she said, stooping lower. “I didn’t guess you knew...”

“Zoë! my dear! my dear!” he cried, his face close to hers. “All these years without you! ... How have I borne it? I have been a wanderer on the face of the earth,—a rudderless ship that has drifted with the current, that has had no helm to answer to, no one on the look-out. I wonder that I didn’t go aground a dozen times. I should have got aground if there had not been the flame of my love for you alight in my heart to show me the danger places when I came to them. You have been my guiding star throughout the years. I never thought that we should meet, much less come together again; but I’ve always borne your goodness, your purity, in mind as things that counted, that kept a man from breaking himself on the reckless impulses of his own selfishness. I’ve been a limited, carnal-minded cad. But whatever brief passion has possessed me, I have never loved anyone but you. Zoë, I hate myself when I think of the past. I want to get away and hide myself—from you.”

“Don’t think of it,” she said soothingly. “We’ve done with all that.”

He looked at her wonderingly.

“What made you follow me out here?” he asked. “What brought you to this place, believing what you believed of me? ... It puzzles me to understand.”

She put out her other hand and laid it upon his shoulder and pushed him gently but firmly back upon the pillow.

“Why trouble about understanding?” she asked. “I don’t understand myself. It was just love drew me.” She spoke lower. “Whatever you have done, whatever you have been, I have never ceased to love you.”

He turned his face aside weakly. There were tears in his eyes. He endeavoured unsuccessfully to hide them from her. She put her arms about him, and gathered the shrunken, suffering figure to her bosom. Then she laid her head beside his on the pillow and drew his face close to hers...