“I cannot reason with you,” said Eve, haughtily. “I loved my brother. You, his mistress, evidently cared nothing for him.”
And with this verbal stab, she departed. Who shall say whether she was more indignant with the Venetian for loving Harold Marchant too little or for loving John Vansittart too much?
Her carriage was waiting for her; the servants were asleep in the afternoon sun. She was only just able to utter the monosyllabic “Home,” in answer to the footman’s question.
How strange the streets and all their movement of everyday life seemed to her, as she drove along the interminable King’s Road, and by Sloane Street and the Park—how careless the faces of the people. Was there no other trouble in the world but her own? Was everybody else busy, and bustling, and happy? She felt as if she had been driving home from a funeral, wondering to find a world where there were no signs of sorrow. Had she not verily parted from her dead? The dead brother whom she had always pictured to herself as alive and happy in some far-off African wilderness, leading the adventurer’s reckless life, caring for no one he had left in the civilized world, but destined to come back to her hereafter with that wild spirit tamed, and his home affections reviving with mature years. He was dead, and she would see him no more on earth—killed in a tavern brawl, for the sake of a worthless woman. And the husband she adored, he, too, was dead—dead to her for ever. She had renounced him, and he was free to go his own way, and lead his own life, and find consolation and happiness where he could. Her friends of Mayfair had told her that no man laments long for the loss of any woman; that one beautiful face blots out another; that there is no image, however cherished, which does not grow faint, and fade and vanish, as a circle widens and melts away upon still water.
Even the house in Charles Street had a strange aspect when she re-entered it. Should she find him there? Would he plead with her again, in their own house, where she had been so happy with him, where all mute things reminded her of the glad life he had given her? Would he plead with her once more, and renew the struggle between love for the living and loyalty to the dead? No; she was spared that ordeal. The servant who opened the door told her that his master had been summoned hurriedly to Southampton, and had left a letter for her. She caught up the letter eagerly, hungry, in her desolation, for some sign from him, some last link between them.
“I start by the mail for Southampton,” he wrote. “Till nine I shall be within reach of a telegram at the Travellers, if you change your mind. Before to-morrow night I shall be outward bound; but till to-morrow night a wire to the Post Office at Southampton would find me. I have made no plans as yet, but you may think of me as an exile and a wanderer.”
He was gone! She had been obeyed. The wrench was over; and now she had to face life calmly and deliberately without him. She had sacrificed all that was nearest and dearest to her on this earth to the shadow of the dead. She had made her choice between the dead and the living. Could she have chosen otherwise?
That was the question she asked herself when she had locked the door of her room and was alone with her misery, walking to and fro among the familiar surroundings which had been the background of a happy union. How could she have chosen otherwise?
“He killed him!” she repeated to herself with dogged insistency. “He killed my brother. What should I be if I could stay with him—call him husband, love him and obey him for the rest of my life—the man who killed my brother? Was it murder or not murder, he killed him. It was death. Oh, to think of my poor Harold—to think that he entered that fatal place in all the strength of his manhood; a young man, with a long life before him, perhaps; with all the chances of fortune and happiness which length of years can bring; and there in a moment he was breathing his last breath, stabbed to the heart!”
Memory recalled that fondly loved brother in the flush of his active boyhood—a cricket field shining in the sunlight, the white tents, the village crowd, and that tall, muscular form, the sunburnt face, blue eyes, and auburn hair, the type of English boyhood at its best. One scene after another of her childhood passed before her as in a panorama, and Harold was the central figure in every picture. So strong, so brave, so intelligent, so kind to her always, even when at war with others; loving her to the last, even when an outcast from his home.