III
Cecily was still lying on the sofa where he had placed her. The fire alone lighted up the fine old luxurious room, softening the bright green of the damask curtains, bathing the low gilt couch and the figure lying on it in rosy light.
With a gesture most unusual with him, Wantley flung himself on his knees by his wife: he gathered her head and shoulders in his arms, pressed the soft hair off her forehead, and kissed her with an almost painful emotion. 'You will find her very altered,' he said hoarsely; 'I wonder if I ought to let you see her. I'm afraid you will be distressed, and I cannot let you be distressed just now!'
'Has she been too much left alone? Oh, Ludovic, I wish we had come before! Perhaps the nurse—the woman who has just left—was not kind to her.'
Cecily was starting up, but he held her back, exceedingly perplexed as to what to do and what to say. 'No,' he said at last; and then, carefully choosing his words, 'She did not speak of the nurse, and I do not suppose that any one has been outwardly disrespectful or unkind to her. But, dearest, before you go up to her, I think you should be prepared to find her in a very pitiful state. I dare say you've forgotten once speaking to me at Monk's Eype concerning her belief that she was in close communication with the dead whom she loved? Well, now she unhappily believes that her husband has forsaken her, that his spirit no longer holds communication with hers.' Wantley's voice broke. 'To hear her talk of it, of her agony and loneliness, is horribly sad; and although I do not actually believe that my uncle was, as she says, always with her, I could not help thinking of ourselves—of how I should feel, my darling, if you were to turn from me.'
'But,' said Cecily, clinging to him, 'I could never, never turn from you!'
'Ah! but so Uncle Wantley would once have said to her. You never saw him; you do not know, as I do, in what an atmosphere of devotion—it might almost be said of adoration—he always surrounded her. I don't wonder,' he added, 'that she felt it endure even after his death.'
'But why does she think he has turned from her?' asked Cecily, perplexed.
Wantley hesitated. 'She believes,' he answered reluctantly, 'that she has done something which has utterly alienated him. But we must try and keep her from the whole subject, and perhaps—indeed, I hope—she will not speak to you as freely as she did to me.'
Hand in hand they went through the great ground-floor rooms, up the broad staircase, and down vast corridors.
At the door of Lady Wantley's room he turned to Cecily. 'Promise me,' he said rather sternly, 'that if I make you a sign—if I say "Go"—you will leave us. It is not right that you should be made ill, or that you should be overdistressed.' And as he spoke there was in his voice a note new to her—a tone which said very clearly that he meant to be obeyed.
Wantley hung back as Cecily, treading softly, walked forward into the room of which the white dimness had been accentuated by two candles which had been lighted close to where Lady Wantley was sitting.
Suddenly, as the older woman stood up, uttering a curious, yearning cry of welcome which thrilled through the passive spectator, the younger woman ran forward, and took the shrunken, shrouded figure in her arms—soft arms, which were at once so maternal and so childish in contour.
Then the one standing aside felt a curious feeling come over him. Sometimes it seemed as if he shared his wife with the whole of the suffering half of the world.
Silently he watched Cecily place Lady Wantley back in her chair, and then, kneeling down by her, first kiss, and then take between her warm young palms, the other's trembling hands. He heard his wife's words: 'We are ashamed of not having come before, of having left you to be lonely here; but now we will stay as long as you will have us, and I am sure you will be better, perhaps quite well again, by the time Penelope comes home!'
'Is Ludovic here?' Lady Wantley asked suddenly. And as he came forward, 'Are there not candles,' she asked him—'candles which should be lit?'
'Yes,' he answered, looking round with some surprise. 'There are a great number of candles about your room—all unlit, of course.'
'Unlit?' she repeated; 'unlit as yet, for till now I feared the light. When I said "My bed shall comfort me, my couch shall ease my complaint," then I was scared by dreams and terrified through visions.'
'But now,' whispered Cecily earnestly, 'you will no longer be so sadly lonely; we will see that you are not left alone.'
'I am no longer lonely or alone,' said Lady Wantley mysteriously. 'That is why,' she added, looking at the young man standing before her—'that is why I must ask you, Ludovic, to go round my room and give light; for the bridegroom cometh, and must not find me in the dark.'
Wondering at her words, he obeyed, and a few moments later they left her, the centre of a circle of glimmering lights.