The Heart of Penelope

by Marie Belloc Lowndes

II

During the last year, crowded as it had been to himself with events of great moment, Wantley had yet thought much of Penelope's mother. The knowledge of what she had done, though hidden away in the most secret recess of his mind and memory had yet inspired him, as time went on, with an increasing feeling of fear and repulsion.

His recollection of all that had happened at Monk's Eype remained so vivid that sometimes he would seem to go again through some of the worst moments of the dreadful day, which, as he remembered it, had begun with his strange interview with Lady Wantley.

For many weeks—ay, and even months—he had lived in acute apprehension of what each hour might bring forth; and even when the passage of time had gradually brought a sense of security, when great happiness and, for the first time in his life, daily work of a real and strenuous nature had come together to fill his thoughts and chase forth morbid terror of an untoward revelation, he had heard with actual relief that Lady Wantley was very ill, and likely to die.

Very unwillingly he had brought Cecily with him to Marston Lydiate. But he had found it impossible to give any adequate reason why she should be left to spend a lonely Christmas in London; further, she had expressed, with more strength than was usual with her, a desire to accompany him, and he had been surprised at the warm affection with which she had spoken of Penelope's mother.

He was quite determined that his own first meeting with Lady Wantley should take place alone; and so at last, when he felt the moment he dreaded could no longer be postponed, Cecily had to submit to being placed on a sofa, and left, wondering, perplexed, even a little hurt, while Wantley, guided by Mrs. Moss, went to face an ordeal which his wife actually envied him.

So little really intimate had been the Hall with the Rectory in the days of Wantley's childhood and boyhood, that there were many rooms of the vast eighteenth-century mansion which now belonged to him into which he had never been led as child and boy. And it was with a certain surprise that he became aware, when standing on its threshold, that Lady Wantley's bedroom was situated over the round Cedar Drawing-room, and so was of exactly the same proportions, though the general impression produced by the colouring and furnishing was amazingly other.

Long before they became the fashion, Lady Wantley had realized the beauty and the value of white backgrounds, and no touch of colour, save that provided by the fine old furniture, marred the delicate purity and severity of an apartment where, even as a young woman, she had spent much of her time when at Marston Lydiate.

In this moment of profound emotion and of fear, Wantley's mind and eyes yet took delight in the restful whiteness which from the very threshold seemed to envelop him.

The small bed, shrouded tent-wise with white curtains, concealed from him, but only for an instant, the sole occupant of the circular room; for suddenly he saw, sitting in a large armchair placed close to the fire, a strange shrunken figure, wrapped and swathed in black from head to foot. Even the white coif which had always formed part of Lady Wantley's costume since her widowhood had been put aside for a scarf of black silk, so arranged as to hide the upper part of the broad forehead, while accentuating the attenuation of the hollow cheeks, the sunken eyes, and the still delicately modelled nose and chin.

As he gazed, horror-struck, at the sinister-looking figure, by whose side, heaped up in confusion on a small table, lay numberless packets of letters, some yellow with the passage of time, others evidently written very lately, Wantley's repugnance became merged in great concern and pity.

'If your lordship will excuse me, I don't think I'll go up close to her,' Mrs. Moss whispered. 'Her ladyship don't seem to care to see me ever now,' and she slipped away, shutting the door softly behind her, and so leaving him alone with this strange and, it seemed to him, almost unreal presence.

Slowly he went up and stood before her, and as he murmured words of greeting, and regret that he found her so ailing, he took hold of the thin, fleshless right hand, to feel startled surprise at the strength of its burning grasp.

Looking down into the wan face, meeting the still penetrating grey eyes, Wantley saw with relief that, at this moment at any rate, she had full possession of her mind; for the despair he saw there was a sane despair, and one that told of sentient endurance.

'I see you have come alone,' she said at last in a low, clear, collected tone. 'You have not brought your wife? But I could not have expected you to do otherwise, knowing what you know.'

'Cecily is here. Of course she came with me,' he answered quickly. 'She is now lying down, the long journey tired her, and I felt sure you would like her to rest before seeing you.'

'Does she know?' asked Lady Wantley slowly, searchingly.

'Oh no!' he said, in almost a whisper, and glancing apprehensively round the room as he did so, but only to be made aware that they were indeed alone.

Then, very deliberately, the young man drew up a chair close to hers. 'Has not the time now come when you should try and forget? Surely you should try and put the past out of your mind, if only for Penelope's sake?'

'Ah,' she said very plaintively, 'but I cannot forget! I am not allowed to do so. When I lie down I say, "When shall I arise and the night be gone?" And I am full of tossings to and fro unto the dawning of the day.'

'Yet you felt justified in your action—above all, you did save Penelope,' he urged in a low tone.

But Lady Wantley turned on him a look of anguish and perplexity.

'Surely,' he added earnestly, 'surely you do not allow yourself to doubt that Penelope was saved—and saved, I am convinced, from what would have been a frightful fate, by your action?'

'I do not know,' she said feebly. 'Part of my punishment has been the doubt, the awful doubt, as to whether we were justified in our fears. If I gave my soul for hers, I am more than content to be marked with the mark of the Beast. For, Ludovic, they that dwell in mine house and my maids count me for a stranger; I am an alien in their sight.'

Her words, their hopelessness, moved him to great pity. 'Why did you not ask us to come before?' he asked. 'We would have done so willingly, and then you would not have felt so sadly lonely.'

Lady Wantley looked at him fixedly. 'If they, my father and my husband, have forsaken me,' she said slowly,'I am not fit for other company. In my great distress, in my extreme abasement, only my mother has remained faithful; she alone has had the courage to descend with me into the Pit. My kinsfolk have failed and my familiar friends have forgotten me. You know—you remember, Ludovic, that he—my husband, I mean—never left me. For nearly fifty years we were together, inseparable—forty years in the flesh, ten years in the spirit; where he went I followed; where I chose to go he accompanied me, and guarded me from trouble. But now,' she said—and, oh! so woefully—'I have not felt his presence, or heard his voice, for upwards of a year.'

Wantley got up: he turned away, and, walking to the great bay-window, looked out on the darkening, snow-bound landscape.

This stretching out, this appeal of her soul, as it were, to his, moved him as might have done the intolerable sight of some poor creature enduring the extremity of physical torment.

Again he came to her, again took her thin, burning hand in his, and then, murmuring something of his wife, abruptly left her.