Well, After All--

by Frank Frankfort Moore

It stole between the spaces of the blinds, the grey dawn of the winter's day—-the cheerless dawn that drew nigh without the herald of a bird's song—a dawn that was more cheerless than night.

She rose and went to the window, looking out over the valley that she knew so well. She saw in the far distance the splendid woods of Branksome Abbey, Sir Percival Hope's home, and somehow she felt comforted by letting her eyes rest upon the grey side of the Abbey wall which was visible above the trees. She had a feeling that Sir Percival might be trusted to bring happiness into her life. From the first day on which he had come to Brackenshire she had trusted him. She had gone to him in her emergencies—first when she had wished to have Lizzie Dangan taken care of, and afterwards when she had wanted that large sum of money which had saved the Westwoods' bank. He had shown himself upon both those occasions to be worthy of her trust, and then—then—

She wondered if he had known how great was her temptation to throw herself into his arms upon that morning when he had stood before her to tell her in his own fashion that he loved her. Such a temptation had indeed been hers, and though during the weeks that passed between the arrival of the telegram that told her of Claude's safety and his return, she had often reproached herself for having had that temptation even for a moment, yet now the thought that she had had it brought her comfort. She thought of Claude Westwood by the side of Sir Percival, and she knew which of them was the true man.

Noble, honourable, self-sacrificing, Sir Percival had never once spoken to her of his love since that morning, though he had seen how she had been treated by the man to whom she had been faithful with a constancy passing all the constancy of women. So far from speaking to her of his love for her, he had done his best to comfort her when he had seen that Claude on his return treated her with indifference, giving himself up to the savage thoughts that possessed him—the savage thirst for blood that he had acquired among the savages.

She remembered how Sir Percival had told her that Claude was not himself—that he had not recovered from the shock which he had received on learning of the death of the brother whom he loved so well, and that so soon as he recovered she would find that he had been as constant to her as she had been to him.

It was to this effect Sir Percival had spoken, and she, alas! had felt comforted in the hope that she would be able to win him back to her. That had been her thought for weeks; but now.... Well, now her thought was:

“Why did I not yield to that temptation to throw myself into his arms and trust my future with him on that day when he confessed his love to me?”

It was a passionate regret that took possession of her for a moment as she let fall the curtain through which she had been looking over the still grey landscape, with a touch of mist clinging here and there to the sides of the valley, and giving a semblance of foliage to the low alders that bordered the meadows.

“Why—why—why?” was the question that was ringing round her while her maid was brushing her hair. She had ceased to think of her constancy as a virtue. She was beginning to yield to the impression that only grief could follow those who elected to be constant, when every impulse of Nature was in the direction of inconstancy. One does not mourn for ever over the dead; when a woman has been inconstant in her love for a man, the man is chagrined for a while, but he soon consoles himself by loving another woman.

Yes, she felt that Claude Westwood had spoken quite truthfully and reasonably when he said that in affairs of the heart Nature had decreed that there shall be an automatic Statute of Limitations. He had spoken from experience, and to that theory—it sounded cynical to her at first, but now her experience had found that it was true—she was ready to give her cordial assent. To such a point had she been brought by the bitterness of her experience of the previous month, she actually believed that she wished she had failed in her constancy to the man whom she had promised to love.