Chapter XXII
The time passed slowly, but in a fortnight I found myself again at Hammerton sleeping beneath the same roof as Esther Lane. I met her again on the terrace on Sunday morning, as I had expected. I could quite follow the workings of her mind. Because she was possessed of great self-respect, she had determined not to be on the terrace that morning, but because she was very much in love she was there after all. Before many moments had passed I saw that she was aware of my engagement. There was a look of suffering in her eyes as she turned them on me. She had the most wonderful way of suddenly subjecting the person to whom she was speaking to their full glance. If she could suffer because I was engaged to another woman, she had enough sentimental interest in me to excuse my going far. She was the character to appreciate the simulation of agony born of a struggle between duty and affection, and I was ready to ring up the curtain on the comedy. She was fully conscious that I loved her. Yes, I loved her quite passionately, and yet it was not altogether passion. It is one of the presumptuous platitudes of conventional moralists to describe a man’s love when it ceases to be concentrated on one individual as lust and base passion. Side by side with this contention they will declare that the highest morality is to love your neighbour as yourself, so little are they given to their own boasted virtue of consistency.
I talked to her for some time about the most ordinary matters, but I could see that she was trembling.
“I have thought of you a good deal,” I ventured.
She ignored the question, but without a show of indifference.
“I think Walter and I ought to go in.” She moved away a little awkwardly.
“I suppose I ought to go in too.” I went to breakfast, leaving the impression I had intended.
In the afternoon I saw her again, and before I was quite aware of it, I had told her I loved her beyond all women in the world, and having done so was compelled to anticipate the scene which I had been mentally preparing.
I assured her passionately that I was not the fickle person I might seem to be, that directly I saw her I knew that I had made a mistake, and that I could never be happy with anyone but her.
She was too much in love to do more than make a pretence of forbidding me to speak on the subject.
She walked straight into the carefully-hidden trap, and found herself being made love to without the question of my engagement being discussed, and once she had thrown down the barriers of reserve, with the enemy actually in her camp, it was impossible to replace them. She accused herself vehemently, however, of being unworthy of her trust. She would resign her position. She could never, she asserted, remain, and be guilty of duplicity. I beat down her poor little attempts at self-defence at once. If she threw up such a position I should never forgive myself. I would go away and never see her again. The threat appeared to terrify her. I persisted that the view of such affairs taken by most people was entirely wrong. I showed that, on the contrary, it was wrong to lie and say you do not love a person when you do, that it was quite possible to talk of our love, to cherish it, and to welcome its influences for good, without allowing it to get the upper hand. All of which the poor fluttering little morsel of sentiment drank in with greedy ears, because it was just what she wanted to believe.
The child found us dull, and cried out that he wanted to play, so I left her and returned to keep an appointment with Lord Gascoyne. Esther Lane was included in the dinner-party that evening, and I again took her in. The arrangement was not so pleasant as on the previous occasion, for there was a distinct feeling of strain between us. I surmounted it with ease; but she was without experience, and she suffered. I could see that she had been crying.
“You must not let yourself be wretched,” I said, as we stood a little apart from the others waiting for the move towards the dining-room. “It hurts me.”
“I had intended to remain in my room,” she murmured.
“Why?”
“I feel as if everyone must see that I am an impostor.”
I was about to reply lightly, but checked myself, remembering that the heroine of the comedy was an ingénue.
“If you were not so good you would not have a sense of guilt where there is no guilt.”
We went in to dinner.
I talked to her incessantly, and inasmuch as her happiness lay in being with me, she was prepared to be charmed out of her misery for however brief a period.
I was myself somewhat astonished at the hold I had secured over her so soon. I suppose in her inmost heart she was dreaming dreams in which all would come right. But even if I were safely ensconced as Earl Gascoyne I could not have made such a sacrifice as to marry her. Besides, in the sense of a mate, to take my name and reign with me, I would not have changed Edith Gascoyne for anyone in the world, not even for Sibella.
There is among modern English ballads one which has always struck me as having a claim to live because of its simplicity and the heart-throb in it. It is called ‘For ever and for ever.’ It possesses a perfect blending of music and idea, unpretentious, but full of feeling.
As before, we spent the evening at the piano, and I sang this song to her almost under my breath:
“I would, alas! it were not so
For ever and for ever.”
I could see that the tears were raining down her cheeks as she listened. She held a fan so as to conceal her face from the others in the room.
“We shall see each other again soon,” I murmured, as I said good-night.
Lord Gascoyne and I were the last to leave the smoking-room, and he parted from me at the foot of the stairs that led to the bachelors’ quarters. My bedroom was half-way down a long corridor, at the end of which there was a solid door, which gave on to the battlements. It was bolted inside, but not locked, and I had more than once used it to take an evening stroll when the inhabitants of Hammerton Castle were asleep. This evening I opened the door noiselessly and walked out on to the walls. It was a clear starlight night and bitterly cold. I did not mind this, for I had on a thick fur coat. I strolled along, thinking deeply, when suddenly I was brought to a standstill by a ray of light that fell right across my path.
I looked in the direction from whence it came, and was astonished to see Esther Lane leaning out of a window a few feet from me. The terrace at this point took an abrupt turn, and a comparatively new part of the castle had been built out at a tangent.
She had not noticed my approach, for I wore house-shoes, which made no noise.
She was looking at the stars as if their ceaseless splendour might be symbolic of an inevitable dawn of happiness somewhere. They could not have been completely reassuring, for she was weeping, and as I stood and watched, a convulsive sob broke from her. The picture of the forlorn little dependent, a frail white figure in the patch of light, with the gloomy towers and battlements of Hammerton looming round her, affected me strangely. I leant forward over the low wall and murmured her name.
“Esther!”
She started and looked round, drawing back quickly as she saw me clearly defined in the moonlight.
“You must not cry. It breaks my heart.”
At the moment I fully believed what I said.
Her eyes, full of tears, were turned upon me, and, with a strange look of fear, which haunts me to this hour, she said:
“I thought I should never see you again.”
“You were going away?”
She saw that she had betrayed her intention, and tried to excuse herself.
“It will be better.”
“Why? If you go away I shall never come here again.”
I was upon the low wall, the ground full sixty feet below me.
“Oh, go back! you will fall.”
But I had my hand on her window-sill and one foot on a ledge a short distance below it, whilst the other remained on the wall. She was helpless; to have attempted to stay me would have been to send me in all probability to certain death. She clasped her hands and held her breath. The next moment I was in the room and by her side.
“Don’t be afraid; only I must speak to you. We must understand each other.”
“Oh, go away, please.”
She hid her face in her hands, utterly shamed by the presence of a man in her room.
Poor Esther! I think she was happier. I verily believe that every woman is happier for love fulfilled. I knew that once having chosen her path she would follow it unflinchingly, and that she would be true as steel. I had discerned from the first that she was capable of martyrdom. From that day she never mentioned the word marriage. She declared ever afterwards that it was her fault, that she should have closed her window on me, that she had accepted the position of mistress, and that she could not complain.
At the same time, however, it was no easy task to persuade her to remain at Hammerton. She implored me to let her come away to London. She vowed that she would not be an encumbrance, not even an expense. She was sure that she could get work to do, sufficient to keep herself; but I was firm. I had at one time some idea of letting her live at Clapham in my deserted house, but I had always had a superstition about allowing anyone else to live in it, otherwise I should have sold it long before. Besides, I did not see what excuse she was to give Lady Gascoyne for wishing to leave her, and the latter had grown so fond of her that it was not likely she would accept her resignation without a great deal of inquiry. Esther declared that living a lie made her feel miserable, that she was unworthy of her charge, and ought to resign it.