Just when he hoped he had won his love, just as he was about to speak, a telegram summoned him to a distant and obscure German village, where his brother lay dying. He went without an hour's delay, only to arrive when all was over; only to have his eyes startlingly opened. Then he understood the constraint, the prolonged absence, the silence, the shadow, of the last few years.
A hard fight followed, with much weighing of both sides; and in this fight Richard Stirling was beaten. At all hazards, he determined to ensure secrecy. He could not, would not, consent to that which might in all probability mean—the loss of Mary! Whatever might be involved in silence, Lady Mary should not know; her people should not know. He could not give her up. He could not live without her. Everything went down before this test.
No doubt the temptation was immense. He felt that he had been ill-treated, in not learning sooner how things were. But temptation is never excuse. To secure the woman whom he adored, he stooped to a course of elaborate and long-continued deceit,—a course also of definite and deliberate wrong to others.
He had his way, and he paid his price. A price, not only in money. He had been paying the price ever since, through twenty-five long years.
For the weight of this secret wrong had been always upon him. Not always to the fore. During the life of his wife he had kept it mainly out of sight; out of his own sight. He had borne himself proudly, courageously. He had looked upon it as a thing to which he was driven by circumstances beyond his own control. He had felt a kind of calm certainty that the thing had to be, that there was no escape out of the tangle.
Her death came as an awakening and crushing blow; almost, to his thinking at the time, as a direct judgment upon his past decision. Yet he had struggled back to a tentative composure, again regarding the position of affairs as inevitable, and determined that for Katherine's sake no question as to continued secrecy could exist.
But of late the burden had pressed with a strange new force; especially during the last few months, since the coming of the Morrises to the farm. He had realised, as never before, what the long concealment really meant; not only as regarded injustice to those concerned, but as viewed from a higher, a Divine, standpoint. A darkness lay upon him; a sense of guilt, of bitter unworthiness. For he had been always accounted—nay, by nature and training he was, except in this one direction—a man of stainless honour. The contrast between what others thought of him, and what he knew himself to have done, weighed heavily.
He felt now that the shadow had been always there, even when he refused to see it. He felt that it always would be there, till he should speak out, should make the truth known, should right that which was wrong.
But—how could he? He—the beloved and esteemed and honoured Squire— the foremost man in the neighbourhood—he to confess all! He—Richard Raye Stirling of Lynnthorpe!—so to lower himself in the eyes of men! He—to put these people into their rightful position before the sight of the world, his world, which meant so much to him! The thing was impossible. Wildly, madly impossible.
Nobody imagined aught of what he was going through. He had great self-control, never betraying what he felt. "He isn't quite the thing— looks worried!" one or another might remark. But none dreamt of the ceaseless inward strife, the long slow torture of spirit.