Beyond These Voices

by M. E. Braddon

The choice of amusements or occupations after luncheon on this Sunday afternoon was somewhat limited. Two girls and their youthful admirers played a four-handed game of croquet. A middle-aged spinster, who had been suspected of tricky play on Saturday, trudged a mile and a quarter to the little town where there was a church so old-fashioned as to provide a substantial afternoon service for adult worshippers. Most of the masculine guests wrote letters, or read Sunday papers in the billiard-room, or slumbered in basket chairs on the river lawn. Vera and Claude did nothing out of the common in strolling up the hill to the wood, where they lost themselves during the lazy two hours between the end of a leisurely luncheon and the appearance of tea-tables in the shady drawing-room. Coming back a little tired after her idle afternoon, Vera sat on a sofa in the darkest corner of the spacious room, by the side of a comfortable matron, an old friend of her aunt's, with whom she exchanged amiable truisms, and mild opinions upon books, plays and sermons—a kind of talk that demanded neither thought nor effort, while Claude sat among a distant group, bored to death, but smiling and courteous.

After tea there was the garden till dressing time. Everybody was in the garden, so it was only natural that these two should be sauntering in lanes of roses, exchanging light talk with other saunterers, and lingering a little at the crossing of the ways, where the slow drip of a fountain made a coolness in the sultry evening, or stopping at an opening in the flowery rampart, to look across the blue water towards the grey old tower, and listen to the pensive music of church bells.

These two had been alone all day, without interference or espial from chaperon Aunt, unconscious of observation, if they were observed, alone in this little world of summer verdure and sunlit water; as much alone as in a pathless wilderness. All that long summer day they had been alone, talking, talking, talking, as only lovers talk; and now, at midnight, they were still alone in the garden that was changed in the moonlight, changed from the warm glow of colour to the silvery paleness and mysterious shadow, in which the prolific clusters of the Félicité pérpétuelle looked like the ghosts of roses.

If it were sin to love, the sin had been sinned; from the hour in which he had drawn the confession of her love from the lips that he kissed for the first time.

She had tried to hold him off—tried to keep those lips unprofaned by the kiss of guilt. They were alone in the wood on the hill that fatal Sunday afternoon, safe only for the moment, since the woodland path was a favourite walk with visitors at River Mead. But he had drawn her from the footpath into the shade of great beech trees, and they were alone. He had kissed her, and she had submitted to the guilty kiss, and she knew that she was lost.

Did she love him? She whispered yes. With all her heart and soul? Yes. Could she be happy if he left her for ever? No, no, no. Could she give up all the world for him, as he would for her? The lips that he had kissed were too tremulous for speech. She hid her face upon his breast, and was dumb.

"The die is cast," he said in a low, grave voice, "and now we have only to think of our future."

"Our future?" Henceforth they were one; united by a bond as strong as if they had been married before the high altar in Westminster Abbey, with all the best people in London looking on and approving the bond. Nothing else could matter now. They belonged to each other. He was to command, and she was to obey. It was almost as if, in the moment of her confession, her personal entity had ceased. In all those hours of delicious intimacy, in fond imaginings of their future life, the thought of her husband had never come between her and her lover—and to-night, when she thought of Mario Provana, it was only to tell herself that he had long ceased to care for her, and that it would not hurt him if she were to vanish out of his life.

Provana had been gone more than fourteen days, and his cabled messages told her of delays and difficulties. The financial crisis was more serious than he had anticipated, and he would have to see it out. He had sent her several messages, but only one letter—a kind letter, such as an uncle might have written to a niece; but it seemed to her there was no love in it, not even such love as he had lavished on his daughter. There was nothing left of the love that had wrapped her round like summer sunlight, the strong man's love that had made her so proud of having been chosen by him, so tranquil in the assurance of a happiness that nothing could change.

The change had come before they had lived a year in that great, gloomy London house, when she had been less than two years a wife.