Vanna stood like a statue, eyes cast down, hands clenched by her sides. No! this was not one of the scenes to which she was accustomed; this was something more. There was a note in Piers’s voice which she had not heard before—a note of determination, of finality. Within her soul she heard the knell of the end.
“Vanna, you must feel for yourself that things are impossible. We must marry. We must risk all. This farce cannot go on. We have done our best, and we have failed. Nothing that could happen could be worse than to go on through the years wasting our lives. We must take our risks, and face them together. We must marry!”
To the last day of her life Vanna never ceased to marvel at her own courage and calmness at this moment of supreme temptation. A hundred times over she had tremblingly acknowledged to herself that if Piers made a violent attack upon her determination she could not answer for the result. The temptation to consent, to gain happiness at whatever cost, would be so immense that continued resistance would be next to impossible; but at this moment there was no feeling of temptation. The steady, persistent effort of years finds its reward in these crises of life—in a strength of character, a stiffening of the mental muscles, which changes tumult into calm. Vanna ceased to tremble; she stood motionless before her lover, oblivious of his outstretched arms, her whole being projected into the thought of the future.
It was as if on a darkened night a sudden flash of light had been vouchsafed, by which the landscape was revealed, with the pitfalls yawning at her feet. A tranquil, trustful soul like Robert Gloucester might have taken on himself the burden of her life, and have come unscathed through the ordeal—calm himself, calm in his influence, a true doctor in the home; but Piers, by reason of those very qualities which endeared him to her woman’s heart, was the last man on earth to support the strain. His fear, his anxiety, though expressed in tenderest devotion, must inevitably act and react on both. At this moment the great question appealed to her woman’s heart less in its abstract than in the personal form, as affecting the happiness of the beloved. Whatever he might feel at this moment of stress and passion, it could not be for Piers Rendall’s ultimate happiness to marry a woman over whom hung the deep cloud of inherited madness. His aim accomplished, joy would be speedily eclipsed in dread. In imagination she could see his haggard looks, feel the dark eyes brooding over her with fearful care. So far he had been free. If the chains fretted too sorely he had only to drop them, and go forth. How would he bear it if there were no escape? How could she bear it for his sake?
Vanna lifted her head and looked deep into her lover’s eyes. Her voice was clear and steady:
“No, Piers! I will never marry you. Never, to the end of time. But I will not bind you. You are quite free—”
“Free!” He turned from her with a loud, harsh laugh. “Good God, how you quibble with words! I have loved you, I have given you my life—how can I be free? What have I left if you cast me off? What have you left? How can you insult me with such words? How can you be so cold, so cruel? Women have no hearts. They don’t know what it is to love—” The wild words flowed on in breathless torrent. Then suddenly came the collapse: he turned towards her, met the glance of her piteous eyes, and melted into remorse. “My poor Vanna, I am hurting you. Forgive me, darling! I am a brute, a selfish brute; I am half mad myself... Oh, this world! what a hell it can be! What have we done to be cursed and set aside? It is cruel—unjust. If we can never marry, why did we ever meet?”
Vanna shivered. “Why did we ever meet?” Was it Piers who had spoken those words?—Piers, who had declared that to love her was a higher joy than to be the husband of any other woman! Once again the knell-like bell tolled in her ears. It was almost a relief when, after a few more incoherent words, Piers suddenly turned to depart.
“I won’t stay. I am hurting you. I’ll go now, and come back when I am calm. You’ll be better alone—”
For the first time in five years he left her without a kiss or a caress, and Vanna sat, stunned and motionless, gazing on the ruins of her life. No one came near to interrupt her solitude. It was a rule that she should be uninterrupted when Piers was present, and his departure had apparently passed unnoticed by the household. A dense, overhanging shadow possessed her spirit, out of which one thought alone was clear. Piers was unhappy. She, who would have sheltered him from every ill, had brought upon him the keenest suffering of his life.