“If I had been a worse man I should have accepted the place you offered in your company,” said Macneillie; “or perhaps if I had been a better man, I could entirely have effaced myself and dared to take such a perilous post. But as things were, it seemed best to go right away. Did you not understand?”
“Yes, yes,” she said in a choked voice. “I understood—and honoured you. Is it only seven years since you and I acted together? It seems to me a life-time. All that has gone between has been a sort of dreadful nightmare. And the worst of it was the feeling that I had deserved the misery, had deliberately chosen the low level and fought against you when you tried to drag me up. Oh, it is so long since I had a real friend to talk to—may I tell you all?”
“Of course,” he said, gently. “Why not?”
“After a year of it I had grown almost desperate,” she said, clenching her hands tightly, like one in pain, “and the season’s work had tired me out; it seemed no use to try any longer even to live an honest life. There was only one thing that still held me back. I knew if I sank lower still it would grieve you more than all, and the thought of the pain I had already given you was always with me. Then one Sunday afternoon I happened to be alone. Sir Roderick had gone to stay with some friends for the Ascot week, and there came to me a little girl bringing a note from Lucy Seymour—you remember how soon after you and I were engaged we had been able to help her when she was in great trouble. Well, she wrote that her husband had died abroad and that she had just returned with her child, was herself dying and wanted to see me. I went to her at once and found her in great poverty, and in terror of being turned out of her lodgings before the end. Her life, she said, had been a very happy one, thanks to you and me. Oh, if you could have heard her gratitude for the past. Every word she said seemed to draw me back from the horrible indifference that had paralysed me—she somehow stirred up all my best memories. She had heard that you were in America, or she would have appealed first to you, for the help had been chiefly your doing.”
“Did she die?” asked Macneillie.
“Yes, about ten days after that Sunday. I had promised to send her little girl to school, and to befriend her, if, later on, she went into the profession, and after that Lucy seemed actually to long for death, young as she was. I saw her every day, and the last night they sent word to the theatre that there was a sudden change for the worse. Directly my part was over, I went to her; she died very happily and peacefully, just as day was breaking. I had never seen any one die before, and on the stage death is always made somehow to seem like an end, a grand sort of finale. But Lucy’s death was not like an end at all, it was as quiet and serene as if she had been merely turning a page in a book. I can’t describe to you how it altered all my ideas. Afterwards there was her little girl to care for, and that helped me too, and though I knew everything must still be hard, I tried after that—tried my very best to please Sir Roderick, and as far as I could to make our home life more endurable. We had each of us been much to blame in marrying without any real love, and I knew that I must ‘dree my weird,’ as you used to say. Well, it is over now—over, and I can hardly yet realise things. Last night I wrote to my solicitor.”
“I hope he is a good one,” said Macneillie.
“Yes, Mr. Marriott, of Basinghall Street; but I am half afraid whether he himself is back yet from his voyage.”
“Ralph Denmead may know, he is an old friend of his. I will inquire. But in any case many months are sure to pass before all the legal forms are gone through, and in the meantime you will have to live as quietly and guardedly as possible. Have you realised that?”
“Yes,” she said, with a little shiver. “A fortnight of country-house life, in such a place as Mearn Castle, makes one realise evil more keenly than years on the stage.”