The Heart of Penelope

by Marie Belloc Lowndes

Whatever change the days have wrought,

I find not yet one lonely thought

That cries against my wish for thee.'

I

There are moments in the life of almost every human being when the sands seem to be running out, when even the most careless, the least scrupulous, feels a pang at the thought of all that has been left undone, and, even more, of all that must be left unfinished and incomplete. If the knowledge comes in the shape of a positive warning that death is at hand, and will have to be faced in three months, in six months, in a year, then the wise man sets his house in order as best he can, and leaves the rest to God, or to that ordered chance in which so many now believe as a substitute for Divine Providence. But when, as perhaps more often happens in this strange, complicated world, a human being has deliberately so set the hour-glass of his life that the sands run out far more quickly than they were ever meant to do, and when the last grain will bring, not death, but some astounding change in life, dividing the what has been from the what will be more painfully than would death itself; then the sense of responsibility, maybe the simple fear of what may befall, is apt to make even the strongest nature quake.

Penelope had come to such a moment. She had so set her hour-glass that now the sands were running out with what appeared to be relentless haste, while the time left to her was beginning to seem so short, and the things to be done in that same short time so many. She did not waver, or rather she was not aware that, had it been possible, she would perhaps have wavered. Instead, she was only conscious of a desire to hasten on—to see everything cleared out of her way. One matter which had never before troubled her now gave her much anxious thought—she longed to retain, as far as might be possible, the good opinion of the few people who really loved her.

And so it was with a mind deeply troubled that she stood waiting for Winfrith, not in the studio, where every time she entered it everything reminded her more and more of the life she was leaving, but in the high, narrow room which corresponded on the ground-floor to Mrs. Mote's bedroom above, and where still remained traces of the time when it had been the study of Penelope's father—in a very real sense a workroom, for there a great worker had spent many solitary hours.

On the ugly, substantial writing-table, so placed that the writer commanded the whole of the wonderful view of the terraced gardens, the irregular cliff-line, and the broad seas spread out below, Mrs. Robinson had placed a number of documents tied up with red tape, also two small black despatch-boxes, each stamped with the initials M. W. R. These preparations for what she intended should be a short business interview gave her courage. As she waited, nervously conscious that Winfrith was now, what he so rarely was, a few minutes late, she turned and walked up and down the narrow room, longing for the door to open and let him in, longing even more for the moment when it should open and let him out.

At last the man she waited for came in smiling. One of those instincts which tell only a half-truth made him aware that the news he brought would greatly gratify her. 'Sir George Downing has won all along the line,' he said boyishly, while shaking hands. 'We are going to send him the man he wants. He ought to be very much obliged to you.' He added, with the touch of condescension which—from him to her—always teased and yet always touched Penelope, 'The great man owes you far more than he knows. How odd that he should have met you, and so have come across me! He is even more worth meeting than I had expected,' he concluded hesitatingly. 'I wonder why there is still so strong a prejudice against him.'

'Give a dog a bad name,' she said indifferently, and then turned the key in the lock of the door. Penelope had inherited from her methodical father an impatience of interruption. 'Sit down here at the table,' she commanded, 'and now let us put aside Sir George Downing and his affairs, for just now I am more interested in my own. Do you remember the exact terms of the deed—I know you have seen it—in which were arranged all the money matters connected with the Settlement?'