But, in the very first endeavor which Hubert Lepel made to act as if the past were done away with, he was brought face to face with it again, and made to feel as he had seldom felt before, that he had wronged not only those who were dead, but those who were living—for he had let Florence become the wife of a man, the mother of a child, whom she did not love, and he had left the girl whom his own hand had made fatherless to Florence's care. As to Westwood's child, she was in a worse case than Enid Vane, for she was not only orphaned but homeless perhaps, and lost to all that was good and pure.
He thought of this as he stood in the fir-wood, surveying the scene where the suddenly-improvised duel had taken place; and, as the memory of it grew upon him, he cast himself down on the mossy ground and sobbed aloud. He had not shed a tear for years, and such as came now were few and painful and bitter as gall; but they would not be repressed. It was strange, even to himself, that he should be so beaten down by a little thing—a child's simple words about her mother, a moment's loneliness in the wood where her father had met his death. The world would not have recognised him, the cold, subtle, polished, keen-witted flâneur, the witty man of letters, critic, traveller, playwright, novelist, all in one, in that crushed figure beneath the firs, with head bowed down, hands clutched in agony, muscular frame shaken by the violence of convulsive sobs. The convicted sinner, the penitent, had nothing in common with Hubert Lepel, as known to the world at large.
Presently he came to himself a little and sat up, with his hands clasped round his knees. Some strange thoughts visited him in those quiet moments. What if he gave up the attempt to brave life out? What if he acknowledged the truth and cleared poor Westwood's name? England would ring from end to end with horror at his baseness. What of that if, by confessing, he could lay to rest the terrors that at time took a hold of his guilty soul—terrors, not of death, nor of what comes after death—terrors of life and of the doom of baseness reserved for the soul that will be base, the gradual declension of heart and mind for the man who said, "Evil be thou my good?" He was not one who could bear as yet to think of moral death without a shiver. He had fallen, he had sinned; but, for his misery and his punishment, his soul was not yet dead. What then if he should give himself up to justice after all? It seemed to him, in that moment of solitude, that only by so doing could he regain the freedom of mind, the peace of conscience which he had now forfeited, perhaps for evermore.
He sat thinking of the possibilities of life opening out before him, and decided that he could give them up without a pang. But there were persons to be thought of beside himself. To his relatives, to the relatives of the murdered man, the discovery of the truth would be a terrible shock. There was no person—except that missing girl, of whom he dared scarcely think—who could benefit by the clearing of Andrew Westwood's name. The only gain that would accrue from his confession would be, he considered, a subjective gain to himself. Abstract justice would be done, no doubt, and Westwood's character would be cleared; but that was all. He ought to have spoken earlier if he meant to do good by speaking. Confession, he said to himself would be self-indulgence now.
Hubert Lepel was wonderfully well versed, in subtle turns of argument—in casuistry of the abstruser kind. It was long since he had looked truth full in the face or drawn a sharp boundary-line between right and wrong. Not easy to him was it to get back from the varying lights and shadows of self-deception to the radiant sunshine of truth. With bitter remorse in his heart and a strangely passionate wish to do—now at least—the right, he yet decided to bear the burden of silence until his dying day—to say no word, to do no act, that should ever revive in others' minds the memory of the Beechfield tragedy. He was not naturally callous, and he knew that concealment of the truth would be, as it had always been, an oppression, a weary weight upon him; but he had made up his mind that it must be so.
"Moralists tell us never to do evil that good may come," he murmured to himself, with head bowed upon his knees; "but surely in this case, when it is not—not altogether my own good that I seek, a little evil may be pardoned, a little wrong condoned! Heaven forgive me! If I have sinned, I think that I have suffered too!"
He lifted up his head at last, and saw the red light of sunset burning between the upright stems of the fir-trees, stealing with strange crimson tints amongst the yellowing bracken and umber drift of pine-needles, scarcely touching, however, the black shades of the foliage overhead. With a sudden shiver Hubert rose to his feet. It seemed to him that the red light looked like blood. He turned hastily to go; he had lingered too long, had excited his own emotions too keenly. He resolved that he would never visit the lonely fir-wood again. He wondered why it had stood so long. If he had been the General, he would have had the trees hewn down after the trial, and done away with every memento of the place.
When he escaped from the shadow of the wood, and saw the red sun setting behind the hills, sending long level beams over the tranquil meadows, and bathing field and grove and highway-road alike in ruddy golden light, he drew a long breath of relief. And yet he felt that he was not quite the same man that had entered the wood an hour before. The foundations of his soul had been shaken; he had made a resolve; he looked at life from a new standpoint. The half-defiant determination to make the best of the future which he had announced to his sister was purged of its defiance. He would make the best of his future—yes. But for this purpose he would injure no man or woman henceforward; he would work with less selfishness of aim—for the good of the world at large as well as for himself. Something seemed broken in him by that lonely hour in the wood—some hardness, some coldness of temper was swept away. To him perhaps Tennyson's words respecting Lancelot were applicable still—
"So groaned Sir Lancelot in remorseful pain,
Not knowing he should die a holy man."
Far enough from anything like holiness was Hubert Lepel, but a nobler life was possible to him yet.