Lyddon, who had been more moved and agitated that day than ever in his life before, shut himself up in the old study. As he sat in the great worn leather chair all the scenes which had passed in that old room returned to him and the flight of time was like a dream in the night. He recalled Angela in her white frock climbing up on his knee and, when he would have turned away from her, thrusting the odd volume of the “Odyssey” in his face and asking him in a wailing, babyish voice: “Do, pray, Mr. Lyddon, read me something out of this nice old book.” How childishly clever it was of her to find out that the “Odyssey” was the spell through which she was to conjure him! And she was gone, perhaps never to return. Then Archie, but yesterday a lad and now a man, was gone to take his place upon the firing line. Neville was Lyddon’s first pupil at Harrowby, a handsome, gentle, silent stripling, fond of reading and fonder still of mathematics, which he mastered with a marvelous ease and precision that delighted Lyddon. And Richard, the most brilliant of them all, his character as admirable as his mind, his superiority affectionately proclaimed by Neville and laughingly denied by Richard. Never were there two brothers’ souls more closely knit together. And the pride and joy of Colonel and Mrs. Tremaine in their children, for Angela was a child to them, had always seemed to Lyddon one of the most beautiful things in existence. Into this exquisite family life had come in the twinkling of an eye a dissension and division, a separation, the most frightful that could be imagined—as much worse than death as disgrace is worse than death. To-day only had that great gaping wound been healed. It did not seem fanciful to Lyddon that Richard Tremaine, lying stark in his new-made grave under the bare branches of the weeping willows which made dappled shadows in the moonlight, should in the far-off land of spirits know of this healed wound. It seemed to Lyddon as if Richard’s life were like a broken melody, and at the thought he groaned aloud. Presently he took down a battered volume and read from it those words of Sir Walter Raleigh: “O eloquent and mighty Death! Whom none could advise, thou hast persuaded; what none have dared, thou hast done; and whom all the world hath flattered, thou hast cast out of the world and despised. Thou hast drawn together all the far scattered greatness, all the pride, cruelty, and ambition of man, and covered it all over with these two narrow words: ‘Hic jacet.’”
Everything in the room seemed to speak Richard’s name to Lyddon, to cry aloud his virtues, his gifts, his graces, and Lyddon, to escape from them, flung out of doors.
The moon shone in pale splendor over the autumn woods and the river was a sheet of silver. Lyddon, looking toward the garden, saw Adrienne’s slender black figure pacing up and down the Ladies’ Walk under the black shadows of the yew hedge. It suddenly came to him that this woman was suffering a sort of death in life—the death of love and hope. He had seen long ago how things were with Adrienne and with Isabey as plainly as he had read what was passing in Angela’s soul, for Lyddon was acute and it is impossible for people who live under the same roof to successfully practice disguises one to another. Adrienne was young, had far more of positive beauty than Angela, had grace and splendid accomplishments and wealth, which gave her leisure to think over all she had not. Her first marriage had been loveless and childless and Lyddon felt sure she would never make another. There was in her life none of those stupendous griefs, shocks, alienations, and losses which had shaken the family at Harrowby; but there was a silent, aching disappointment, an aridity which had become her portion at the time when most women know the joy of living and which would be hers through all time. In the midst of his own desolation Lyddon felt pity for Adrienne, and joining her the two walked together up and down the flagged walk. He talked to her of Richard, and she listened to him with a sympathy which was touching and consoling. But through all her words rang a note of patience without hope of joy.
“Death is not the worst of evils,” she said, with perfect sincerity. “For one who has suffered, life merely as life is nothing. If one can work and can be happy and can give happiness in return, that alone is living. We grieve, not because Richard Tremaine is dead, but because so much that he might have done remains undone.”
Lyddon, whose agitation was deep, found himself calmed and even a little comforted by Adrienne.
After an hour they saw candles gleaming through the library window and knew it was time to go within. As they turned toward the house Adrienne said suddenly:
“They must be well on their way by this time. They will grow more intimate in these few hours than in half an ordinary lifetime. The tie established between them will be very strong.”
Lyddon knew, although she spoke no name, that she referred to Isabey and Angela.
“Quite true,” he said briefly; “but the tie was strong between them long ago.” And then, realizing that, like Adrienne, he had said what he never meant to utter, he stopped aghast and spoke no more until he was assisting Adrienne up the steps. Then he added: “Luckily, both of them have remarkable self-control. It is not enough in these fateful cases merely to have a high sense of honor. Some of the wildest and most unfortunate things on earth are done by people who have honor but no discretion. Those two, however, have both honor and discretion.”
“You are right,” was Adrienne’s response.