Miss Clavier’s face was faintly flushed all over now, but she regarded her companion steadily. “I don’t quite know why I did it—but it wasn’t altogether to make Tony smart,” she said. “It was, at least, a little because I seemed to feel you were too good for him. Oh, I know I have done a good deal of harm—and it’s a change to do the other thing now and then. I don’t want Tony. Any one can have him and welcome—they’ll get a very poor bargain, and I wouldn’t like you to think I meant to pluck him—though that would have been easy.”
“No,” said Nettie, “I did not think that of you. What did you mean to do with him?”
“I don’t know. To amuse myself by watching him wriggle, I think. It was nice to feel I could frighten him horribly. If you had been like the rest, and he had only shown me a little kindness, I fancy I would have let him go. But he couldn’t do the right thing if it would cost him a trifle—he hasn’t it in him; and he made me believe you meant to marry him.”
“No,” said Nettie, with a faint ring in her voice. “The man I’m going to marry is worth—several hundred Tony Pallisers. Still, I’m glad you told me, and you’ll tell me the rest of the story.”
Miss Clavier sat still for at least a minute, and then obeying an impulse told her tale. Her voice was also a little strained as she said, “Clavier was bad—bad all through—and he left me before he died in Melbourne; but though my father never knew it I was married to him all the time. I found the—‘Madame’—a disadvantage.”
Then there was silence until a burst of applause greeted the conclusion of the song; and while the two sat in the shadows Nettie Harding laid her hand sympathetically on her companion’s arm.
[XX — FOUND GUILTY]
TWO or three weeks had passed since the concert on the Low Wood lawn, and Thérèse Clavier had gone back into the obscurity she came from, when Nettie Harding once more stood beside the effigy in Northrop church. It was then late in the afternoon, and the little ancient building was growing shadowy. Hester Earle and Violet Wayne were moving about the aisle with bundles of wheat-ears and streamers of ivy, for the harvest thanksgiving was shortly to be celebrated, while the vicar stood waiting their directions on the chancel steps with a great handful of crimson gladioli.
Nettie, however, noticed none of them. She was lost in reflection, and her eyes were fixed on the grim stone face. She had gazed at it often with a vague sense of comprehension and a feeling that the contemplation of it brought within her grasp the spirit of the chivalrous past. Loyalty, she felt, was the predominative motive in the sculptured face, though it bore the stamp of stress and weariness; and she stood very still struggling with a half-formed resolution as she gazed at it.
Hester’s voice rose softly from the aisle, and there was a patter of feet and swish of draperies, but it was low, as though the girl who made it felt the silence of the place. The door beside the organ was open wide, and Nettie could hear a faint rustle of moving leaves, and the sighing of a little warm wind about the church, while, lifting her head, she caught a brief glimpse of the dusky beech woods and sunlit valley. It was all very still, impressively quiet, and she felt the peace of it; but it was not peace, but something born of strife and yet akin to it her fancy strained after, and once more she seemed to hear the strident crackle of riflery and the shouts of the Sin Verguenza. The green English valley faded, and she saw in place of it the white walls of the Cuban town rise against the dusky indigo. Then once more she could dimly realize the calm that came of a high purpose, and was beyond and greater than the peace of prosperity. She had seen it beneath the stress and weariness in the faces of the marble knight and a living man.