Another result of this episode was that his arguments were constantly recurring to her mind. Surely there was great force in the suggestion he had brought forward in his masterly clear-headed way? Were there not bound to be exceptions to every rule? Was not Hugh Macneillie’s notion of obedience even to an unjust law, because it was the law of the land, an overstrained nicety? It might be a counsel of perfection, but surely it could not be the actual duty of each citizen? Hugh had such an element of austerity about his life; kind and genial and tolerant as he was with regard to others his own notions of right and wrong were so rigid. He was certainly old-fashioned, not up to date, not able to accommodate himself to fin de siècle conditions.
“I will not let him wreck his life!” she thought, pacing with agitated steps up and down her room. “My heart is breaking for want of him, and he is ill and alone. What do I care for the tongues of narrow-minded, conventional people who know nothing of our real story? ‘Let them rave!’ He is mine and I am his. All the unfair unequal laws in the world can’t alter that.”
Just then she happened to notice a letter upon the mantel-piece which by some oversight she had left unopened.
“What is this?” she exclaimed glancing through it. “An invitation from Mrs. Hereford to lunch on Sunday, to meet Ralph Denmead and his wife? Yes, I will go, from them I may at any rate learn how Hugh is.”
Her stay at Monkton Verney had led to her becoming a friend of the Herefords; she had an unbounded respect for them both, and at their house in Grosvenor Square she invariably enjoyed herself. Charlie too, liked nothing better than to go there with her, and there was something in the atmosphere of the household which was curiously refreshing and invigorating. They were busy people but they never bored others with their work, and always seemed to have time for merriment, and for keen appreciation of the interests of their friends.
On this Sunday however she was more taken up with the Denmeads than with her host and hostess. There was something in the mere happiness of the young husband and wife that appealed to her, and she had a long talk with them and heard all that she craved to know. Macneillie, they judged by his letters, was still far from well, and even the visit to his own country had failed to do him much good. He was to go on the following day to Stratford and for the sake of quiet would stay just outside the town at a curious old-fashioned house called The Swan’s Nest. He would remain there probably until the Birthday week when they were to rejoin him for the performances at the Memorial Theatre.
Then Evereld had much to say about the Manager’s kindness to them, of Dick’s devotion to him, and all the many little details which her womanly instinct taught her would be to Christine what bread is to the starving. It was all told naturally and simply and as a matter of course, there was never any uncomfortable consciousness that they knew all about her past and could guess how bitter was her present. It was only when thinking it over afterwards that Christine felt sure that the Denmeads knew the whole truth, and she loved them for their tact and consideration.
But all through the night that followed she was haunted by the thought of Hugh Macneillie ill and alone, unable even to find comfort in his mother’s society,—beyond the cure even of his native land.
It is during wakeful nights that burdens usually grow unbearable. And Christine had now reached the point when every consideration but the one prevailing idea is crowded out of the mind.
“I cannot let him suffer any more,” she thought. “At all costs this intolerable state of things must and shall be ended. I am free all this week, free till Easter Monday. To-morrow I will go down to Leamington with Charlie and the servants, and the next day I will see him.”