CHAPTER XXXVI
He called soon after six that evening, coming straight from the station to the house. Miss Palliser was in the library, but his face as he entered bore such unmistakable signs of emotion that Kitty in the kindness of her heart withdrew.
He was alone there, as he had been on that evening of his first coming. He looked round at the place he had loved so well, and knew that he was looking at it now for the last time. At his feet the long shadow from the bust of Sophocles lay dusk upon the dull crimson; the level light from the west streamed over the bookshelves, lying softly on brown Russia leather and milk-white vellum, lighting up the delicate gold of the tooling, glowing in the blood-red splashes of the lettering pieces; it fell slant-wise on the black chimney piece, chiselling afresh the Harden motto: Invictus. There was nothing meretricious, nothing flagrantly modern there, as in that place of books he had just left; its bloom was the bloom of time, the beauty of a world already passing away. Yet how he had loved it; how he had given himself up to it; how it had soothed him with its suggestion of immortal things. And now, for this last time, he felt himself surrounded by intelligences, influences; above the voices of his anguish and his shame he heard the stately generations calling; they approved; they upheld him in his resolution.
He turned and saw Lucia standing beside him. She had come in unheard, as on that evening which seemed now so long ago.
She held out her hand. Not to have shaken hands with the poor fellow, would, she felt, have been to condemn him without a hearing.
He did not see the offered hand, nor yet the chair it signed to him to take. As if he knew that he was on his trial, he stood rigidly before her. His eyes alone approached her, looking to hers to see if they condemned him.
Lucia's eyes were strictly non-committal. They, too, seemed to stand still, to wait, wide and expectant, for his defence. Her attitude was so far judicial that she was not going to help him by a leading question. She merely relieved the torture of his visible bodily constraint by inviting him to sit down. He dropped into a chair that stood obliquely by the window, and screwed himself round in it so as to face her.
"I saw my father this morning," he began. "I went up by the early train."
"I know."
"Then you know by this time that I was a day too late."
"Mr. Pilkington sent me your father's letter."
"What did you think of it?"
The question, so cool, so sudden, so direct, was not what she felt she had a right to expect from him.
"Well—what did you think of it yourself?"
She looked at him and saw that she had said a cruel thing.
"Can't you imagine what I think of it?"
This again was too sudden; it took her at a disadvantage, compelling her instantly to commit herself to a theory of innocence or complicity.
"If you can't," said he, "of course there's no more to be said." He said it very simply, as if he were not in the least offended, and she looked at him again.
No. There was no wounded dignity about him, there was the tragic irremediable misery of a man condemned unheard. And could that be her doing—Lucia's? She who used to be so kind and just? Never in all her life had she condemned anybody unheard.
But she had to choose between this man who a month ago was an utter stranger to her, and Horace who was of her own blood, her own class, her own life. Did she really want Mr. Rickman to be tainted that Horace might be clean? And she knew he trusted her; he had made his appeal to the spirit that had once divined him. He might well say, "could she not imagine what he thought of it?"
"Yes," she said gently, "I think I can. If you had not told me what the library was worth, of course I should have thought your father very generous in giving as much for it as he has done."
"I did tell you I was anxious he—we—should not buy it; because I knew we couldn't give you a proper price."
"Yes, you told me. And I wanted you to buy it, because I thought you would do your best for me."
"I know. I know. If it wasn't for that—but that's the horrible part of it."
"Why? You did your best, did you not?"
"Yes. I really thought it would be all right if I went up and saw him. I felt certain he would see it as I did—"
"Well?"
He answered with painful hesitation. "Well—he didn't see it. My father hasn't very much imagination—he couldn't realize the thing in the same way, because he wasn't in it as I was. He'd seen nobody but Pilkington, you see."
Something in her face told him that this line of defence was distasteful to her, that he had no right to make a personal matter of an abstract question of justice. It was through those personalities that he had always erred.
"I don't see what that has to do with it," she said.
"He—he thought it was only a question of a bargain between Pilkington and him."
"What you mean is that he wouldn't admit that I came into it at all?"
She saw that she was putting him to the torture. He could not defend himself without exposing his father; but she meant that he should defend himself, that he should if possible stand clear.
"Yes. He hadn't seen you. He wouldn't go back on his bargain, and I couldn't make him. God knows I tried hard enough!
"Did you think you could do anything by trying?"
"I thought I could do a good deal. I had a hold on him, you see. I happen to be extremely useful to him in this branch of his business. I was trained for it; in fact, I'm hopelessly mixed up with it. Well, he can't do very much without me, and I told him that if he didn't give up the library I should give him up. It wasn't a nice thing to have to say to your father—"
"And you said it?" Her face expressed both admiration and a certain horror.
"Yes. I told him he must choose between me and his bargain."
"That must have been hard."
"He didn't seem to find it so. Anyhow, he hasn't chosen me."
"I meant hard for you to have to say it."
"I assure you it came uncommonly easy at the moment."
"Don't—don't."
"I'm not going to defend him simply because he happens to be my father. I don't even defend myself."
"You? You didn't know."
"I knew quite enough. I knew he might cheat you without meaning to. I didn't think he'd do it so soon or so infamously, but, to tell the truth, I went up to town on purpose to prevent it."
"I know—I know that was what you went for." She seemed to be answering some incessant voice that accused him, and he perceived that the precipitancy of his action suggested a very different interpretation. His position was odious enough in all conscience, but as yet it had not occurred to him that he could be suspected of complicity in the actual fraud.
"Why didn't I do something to prevent it before?"
"But—didn't you?"
"I did everything I could. I wrote to my father—if that's anything; the result, as you see, was a cheque for the two hundred that should have been three thousand."
"Did it never occur to you to write to anybody else, to Mr. Jewdwine, for instance?"
She brought out the question shrinkingly, as if urged against her will by some intolerable compulsion, and he judged that this time they had touched what was, for her, a vital point.
"Of course it occurred to me. Haven't you heard from him?"
"I have. But hardly in time for him to do anything."
He reflected. Jewdwine had written; therefore his intentions had been good. But he had delayed considerably in writing; evidently, then, he had been embarrassed. He had not mentioned that he had heard from him; and why shouldn't he have mentioned it? Oh, well—after all, why should he? At the back of his mind there had crawled a wriggling, worm-like suspicion of Jewdwine. He saw it wriggling and stamped on it instantly.
There were signs of acute anxiety on Miss Harden's face. It was as if she implored him to say something consoling about Jewdwine, something that would make him pure in her troubled sight. A light dawned on him.
"Did you write to him?" she asked.
He saw what she wanted him to say, and he said it. "Yes, I wrote. But I suppose I did it too late, like everything else I've done."
He had told the truth, but not the whole truth, which would have been damaging to Jewdwine. To deny altogether that he had written would have been a clumsy and unnecessary falsehood, easily detected. Something more masterly was required of him, and he achieved it without an instant's hesitation, and with his eyes open to the consequences. He knew that he was deliberately suppressing the one detail that proved his own innocence. But as their eyes met he saw that she knew it, too; that she divined him through the web that wrapped him round.
"Well," she said, "if you wrote to Mr. Jewdwine, you did indeed do your best."
The answer, on her part, was no less masterly in its way. He could not help admiring its significant ambiguity. It was both an act of justice, an assurance of her belief in him, and a superb intimation of her trust in Horace Jewdwine. And it was not only superb, it was almost humble in that which it further confessed and implied—her gratitude to him for having made that act of justice consistent with loyalty to her cousin. How clever of her to pack so many meanings into one little phrase!
"I did it too late," he said, emphasizing the point which served for Jewdwine's vindication.
"Never mind that. You did it."
"Miss Harden, is it possible that you still believe in me?" The question was wrung from him; for her belief in him remained incredible.
"Why should it not be possible?"
"Any man of business would tell you that appearances are against me."
"Well, I don't believe in appearances; and I do believe in you. You are not a man of business, you see."
"Thank goodness, I'm not, now."
"You never were, I think."
"No. And yet, I'm so horribly mixed up with this business, that I can never think of myself as an honest man again."
She seemed to be considering whether this outburst was genuine or only part of his sublime pretence.
"And I could never think of you as anything else. I should say, from all I have seen of you, that you are if anything too honest, too painfully sincere."
("Yes, yes," her heart cried out, "I believe in him, because he didn't tell the truth about that letter to Horace." She could have loved him for that lie.)
He was now at liberty to part with her on that understanding, leaving her to think him all that was disinterested and honourable and fine. But he could not do it. Not in the face of her almost impassioned declaration of belief. At that moment he was ready rather to fall at her feet in the torture of his shame. And as he looked at her, tears came into his eyes, those tears that cut through the flesh like knives, that are painful to bring forth and terrible to see.
"I've not been an honest man, though. I've no right to let you believe in me."
Her face was sweeter than ever with its piteous, pathetic smile struggling through the white eclipse of grief.
"What have you done?"
"It's not what I've done. It's what I didn't do. I told you that I knew the library was going to be sold. I told you that yesterday, and you naturally thought I only knew it yesterday, didn't you?"
"Well, yes, but I don't see—"
She paused, and his confession dropped into the silence with an awful weight.
"I knew—all the time."
She leaned back in her chair, the change of bodily posture emphasizing the spiritual recoil.
"All the time, and you never told me?"
"All the time and I never told you. I'd almost forgotten when you offered me that secretaryship, but I knew it when I let you engage me; I knew it before I came down. I never would have come if I'd realized what it meant, but when I did know, I stayed all the same."
"What do you think you ought to have done?"
"Of course—I ought to have gone away—since I couldn't be honest and tell you."
"And why" (she said it very gently but with no change in her attitude), "why couldn't you be honest and tell me?"
"I'm not sure that I'd any right to tell you what I hadn't any right to know. I'm only sure of one thing—as I did know, I oughtn't to have stayed. But," he reiterated sorrowfully, "I did stay."
"You stayed to help me."
"Yes; with all my dishonesty I wouldn't have done it if I hadn't made myself believe that. As it's turned out, I've helped to ruin you."
"Please—please don't. As far as I'm concerned you've nothing to reproach yourself with. Your position was a very difficult one."
"I ought never to have got into it."
"Still, you did your best."
"My best! You can't say I did what an honourable man would have done; I mean at the beginning."
"No—no. I'm afraid I can't say that."
He did not expect anything but sincerity from her, neither did he desire that her sense of honour should be less fine than his. But he longed for some word of absolution, some look even that should reinstate him in his self-esteem; and it seemed to him that there was none.
"You can't think worse of me than I think myself," he said, and turned mournfully away.
She sat suddenly upright, with one hand on the arm of her chair, as if ready to rise and cut off his retreat.
"Wait," she said. "Have you any idea what you are going to do?"
The question held him within a foot's length of her chair, where the light fell full on his face.
"I only know I'm not going back to the shop."
"You were in earnest, then? It really has come to that?"
"It couldn't very well come to anything else."
She looked up at him gravely, realizing for the first time, through her own sorrow, the precise nature and the consequences of his action. He had burnt his ships, parted with his means of livelihood, in a Quixotic endeavour to serve her interests, and redeem his own honour.
"Forgive my asking, but for the present this leaves you stranded?"
"It leaves me free."
She rose. "I know what that means. You won't mind my paying my debts at once, instead of later?"
He stared stupidly, as if her words had stunned him. She was seated at her writing table, and had begun filling in a cheque before he completely grasped the horrible significance of what she had said.
"What are you doing?" he asked.
"I'm writing thirty instead of fifteen, because that is what you ought to have asked for in the beginning. You see I am more business-like now than I was then."
He smiled.
"And do you really suppose I am going to take it?"
He meant his smile to be bitter, but somehow it was not. After all, she was so helpless and so young.
"Of course you are going to take it."
"I needn't ask what you think of me."
This time the smile was bitterness itself.
"But it's yours—what I owe you. I'm only paying it to-day instead of some other day."
"But you have not got to pay me anything. What do you think you're paying me for?"
"For your work, for the catalogue, of course."
"That infamous catalogue ought never to have been made—not by me at any rate."
"But you made it. You made it for me. I ordered it."
"You ordered it from my father. In ordinary circumstances you would have owed him fifteen pounds. But even he wouldn't take it now. I think he considers himself quite sufficiently paid."
"You are mixing up two things that are absolutely distinct."
"No. I'm only refusing to be mixed up with them."
"But you are mixed up with them."
He laughed at that shot, as a brave man laughs at a hurt.
"You needn't remind me of that. I meant—any more than I can help; though it may seem to you that I haven't very much lower to sink."
"Believe me, I don't associate you with this wretched business. I want you to forget it."
"I can't forget it. If I could, it would only be by refusing to degrade myself further in connection with it."
His words were clumsy and wild as the hasty terrified movements of a naked soul, trying to gather round it the last rags of decency and honour.
"There is no connection," she added, more gently than ever, seeing how she hurt him. "Don't you see that it lies between you and me?"
He saw that as she spoke she was curling the cheque into a convenient form for slipping into his hand in the moment of leave-taking.
"Indeed—indeed you must," she whispered.
He drew back sharply.
"Miss Harden, won't you leave me a shred of self-respect?"
"And what about mine?" said she.
It was too much even for chivalry to bear.
"That's not exactly my affair, is it?"
He hardly realised the full significance of his answer, but he deemed it apt. If, as she had been so careful to point out to him, her honour and his moved on different planes, how could her self-respect be his affair?
"It ought to be," she murmured in a tone whose sweetness should have been a salve to any wound. But he did not perceive its meaning any more than he had perceived his own, being still blinded by what seemed to him the cruelty and degradation of the final blow.
She had stripped him; then she stabbed.
To hide his shame and his hurt, he turned his face from her and left her. So strangely and so drunkenly did he go, with such a mist in his eyes, and such anguish and fury in his heart and brain, that on the threshold of the Harden library he stumbled past Miss Palliser without seeing her.
She found Lucia standing where he had left her, looking at a little roll of pale green paper that her fingers curled and uncurled.
"Lucia," she said, "what have you done to him?"
Lucia let the little roll of paper fall from her fingers to the floor.
"I don't know, Kitty. Something horrible, I think."