IV

It was night. In the dimly-lighted corridor Wantley stood holding a short colloquy with the maid who tended Lady Wantley throughout the day. 'There's nothing to do but sit by quietly,' the woman spoke wearily. 'Her ladyship never speaks all night; but she won't be left alone a minute.'

Entering the room, he hoped to find her asleep, for he still felt strangely unfamiliar with the thin, worn face and strange, distraught-looking eyes. There had always been something ample about Lady Wantley's presence, especially a great dignity of demeanour; but the long months of mental agony had betrayed her, and he wondered that those about her had not divined her fear, and asked themselves of what she was afraid.

Wantley had been terribly moved by the tragic melancholy of their first meeting, infinitely touched by her cry of welcome to his young wife; but he felt oppressed at the thought of his lonely vigil, and as he sat down by the fire with a book, he hoped most fervently that she would sleep, or remain, as he was told she always had done with the nurse whose place he was now filling, mutinously silent.

But he had scarcely read the first words of the story to whose familiar charm he trusted to make him for the moment forget, when Lady Wantley's voice came clearly across the room. 'Cecily,' he said to himself, 'has indeed worked wonders;' for the words were uttered naturally, almost as the speaker might have spoken them in the old days when all was well with her.

'I want to know'—and the words seemed to float towards him—'about you and Cecily. I cannot tell you, Ludovic, how happy it makes me to think that this dear child shares my name with me! I learnt to love her during those days—before——' Her voice faltered.

Wantley quickly laid down 'Persuasion.' He rose and went over to the bed, drew up a chair, and very tenderly and quietly took one of the thin hands lying across the counterpane in his. 'Yes, let me tell you all about ourselves,' he said quickly, forcing a light note into his voice. 'After our marriage—such a queer, quiet wedding——'

'Was Penelope there? I can't remember.'

'No, no! Penelope had already started on her travels. Just then I think she was in Japan.' He went on, speaking quickly, hardly knowing what he was saying. 'Well, Cecily had had a hard time at the Settlement—in fact, she was really quite tired out—so, to the great horror of Miss Wake, who had never heard of such a thing being done before, I took her the day we were married down to Brighton, although several people, including a brother of Miss Theresa's, offered us country-houses. In a sense we spent our honeymoon at Cecily's old convent, for we went out there almost every day. I got on splendidly with the nuns, especially with the one whom I suppose one would call the Mother Abbess. Such a woman, such a type! One of Napoleon's field-marshals in petticoats—knowing exactly what she wanted, and making the people round her do it.'

Wantley paused a moment, then went on: 'After three weeks of Brighton, this determined old lady made me take my wife to France, to Versailles. "Là vous l'aimerez bien, et vous la distrairez beaucoup!" she commanded; and of course I obeyed.'

There was a pause. 'And then you went on to Monk's Eype?' Lady Wantley raised herself on her pillows; she looked at him searchingly, but he avoided meeting her eyes. 'I felt surprised to hear of your going there,' she said, and the hand he was still holding trembled in his grasp.

'I was surprised to find myself going there'—Wantley spoke very slowly, very reluctantly—'but Cecily loves the place, and you would not have had me sell it, just after Penelope had so very generously given it over to us?'

'Oh no!' she said. And then again, 'Oh no! I did not mean that, Ludovic.'

'I have had the Beach Room taken away,' he said, almost in a whisper. 'It is entirely obliterated'; and then, trying again to speak more naturally: 'We had Philip Hammond with us part of the time; and also others of Cecily's Stratford friends, including one poor fellow who had never had more than two days' holiday in his life since he first began working! And then I want to tell you'—he was eager to get away from Monk's Eype—'about our life in town, and the sort of existence we had made for ourselves.'

Lady Wantley, for the first time, smiled. 'I know,' she said; 'people—acquaintances, and old fellow-workers of your uncle—have written to me full of joy.'

Wantley made a slight grimace. 'Well,' he observed rather shamefacedly, 'I have had to take to it all, if only in self-defence; otherwise I should never see anything of my own wife. Even as it is, I have offended a good many people, especially lately, by my determination that she shall not join any more committees or undertake any new work. Cecily is quite bewildered to find what a number of admirable folk there are in the world!'

Lady Wantley again smiled. 'But I do not suppose,' she said, 'that Cecily finds among them many like herself. I have sometimes thought of how well your uncle would have liked her.'

'Pope and all?' Wantley smiled. For the first time he allowed his eyes frankly to meet hers.

'Yes, yes!' she cried with something of her old eagerness; 'he always knew and recognized goodness when he saw it. And, Ludovic, you know what I told you to-day—of my awful loneliness, of my desolation of body and spirit?' Wantley looked at her uneasily. 'Even as I spoke to you,' she said, 'my punishment was being remitted, my solitude blessedly invaded—for he, the husband of my youth, my companion and helper, was returning, to help me across the passage.'

A feeling, not so much of astonishment, as of awe and fear came over Wantley. His eyes sought the dim grey shadows, out of which he half expected to see force itself the figure of the man he had never wholly liked, or even wholly respected, but whom he had always greatly feared.

'He came back with Cecily,' Lady Wantley added, after a long pause. 'Her purity has blotted out my iniquity.'

'And do you actually see him now? Are you aware of his presence?'

Wantley in a sense felt that on her answer would depend what he himself would see, and as he waited he felt increasingly afraid; but, 'To know that he is there is all I ask,' she said slowly; 'to be able to tell him everything is the sum of my desire, and this I can now do;' and, lying back on her high pillows, she sank into silence and sleep.