So she had tested herself by the natural and acquired abilities of the greatest singer of the day. It was, perhaps, a pitiless standard, but she felt that her safety demanded its extremity. Her comparisons made her burn with shame at her own shortcomings. She wondered how Roland could have been so deceived, how he could have hoped or believed in her at all. She forgot that circumstances had quite altered Roland’s first intentions, and that in following out his secondary ones less distinctive talent was sufficient. On their marriage if he had taken her, as he proposed, to Italy; if the three last restless, miserable years had been spent in repose, in a favourable climate under fine instructors, with a happy, satisfied, hopeful affection to stimulate and support her ambition––ah, then all of Roland’s hopes might have been fulfilled. But lack of patience as much as lack of money had brought final failure. The blossom had been gathered and worn with but small éclat, and there was now no hope of fruit.
Full of such sombre thoughts, she turned up the lights and looked at herself. Gone was her radiant beauty, her splendid youth; gone also her buoyant spirit and invincible courage. That night as she sat there alone she buried for ever this hope of a life for which she was not destined. Yet it was while sitting on that very hearth together Roland and she had felt the joy of her first triumph at Willis Hall. She could remember every incident of her return home the night of her brilliant début. How Roland had praised her and loved her. Neither of them then thought the temporary success to be the 289 first downward step from their original grander ideal; the first step toward a miserable failure. Now it was clear enough. Alas! alas! Why cannot joy, as well as sorrow, open the eyes? Why are they only washed clear-seeing with tears?
When the hopeless ceremony was over and she had fully accepted the lot before her, she rose and with tear-filled eyes looked around the place of her renunciation. She felt as if her husband ought to have some consciousness of her disappointment; as if the longing in her heart should bring him to her side. Where was he? Where had he gone to? “Roland! Roland!” she whispered, and the silence beat upon her heart like the blows of a hammer. Was he present? Did he hear her? She felt until she reached the very rim of conscious feeling, and then? Alas! nothing but a mighty mystery looming beyond.
Weary and exhausted with emotion, she lay down and slept, and in the morning the courage born of a resolved mind was with her. When she had finished her business with Elizabeth, then there was her father and her mother and her real life again. She must go back and take it up just where she had thrown it down. And this humiliating duty was all that her own way had brought her. Never again would she take her destiny out of the keeping of the good God who orders all things well. On this resolution she stayed her heart, and somehow in her sleep there had come to her a conviction that the time of smiles would surely come back to her once more. For God giveth His children in their sleep, 290 and the sorrowful wake up comforted, and the weak strong, because some angel has visited them and “they knew it not.”
Elizabeth was quite prepared for her visitor. She was, indeed, anxious to get the affair settled and to dismiss Denasia from her life for ever. Her lawyer and appraiser were busy when Denasia arrived, and without ceremony each article specified in Roland’s list was examined and valued. Elizabeth offered her sister-in-law no courtesy; she barely bowed in response to her greeting, and there was a final very severe struggle as to values. Mrs. Burrell had certainly hoped to satisfy Denasia with a thousand pounds, but the official adjustment was sixteen hundred pounds, and for this sum Roland’s widow, who was irritated by her sister-in-law’s evident scorn and dislike, stubbornly stood firm.
It is probable that Elizabeth would also have turned stubborn and have suffered the articles to go to the auction-room had not her personal pride and interests demanded the sacrifice. But she had already introduced Lord Sudleigh to these family treasures, and she could not endure to go to Sudleigh Castle and take with her no heirlooms to be surety for her respectability. So that, after all, Denasia won her rights easily, because a man whom she had never seen and never even heard of pleaded her case for her. But she had no exceptional favour. It is the people whom we do not know that are often our helpers. It is the people who seem to have no possible connection with us that are often the tools used by fate for our fortune.
When the transaction was fully over and Denasia had Elizabeth’s cheque in her pocket the day was nearly over. The business agents left hurriedly and Denasia was going with them, when Elizabeth said: “Return a moment, if you please, Mrs. Tresham. I have heard nothing from you about my brother. I think it is your duty to give me some information. I am very miserable,” and she sat down and covered her face. Her sobs, hardly restrained, touched Denasia. She was sorry for the weeping woman, for she knew that if Elizabeth had loved any human creature truly and unselfishly, it was her brother Roland.
“What can I tell you?” she asked.