CHAPTER VIII.
This was how she took it, as the young priest had taken it, as an atonement, as a duty. Instead of the despair they had expected, she was excited and inspired as people are who die for a great cause. She did not and would not take into account all that made Oliver’s strange sacrifice a thing without justice, without dignity—a mere hideous postscript to a mere vulgar sin, repented of indeed, but not made less vulgar and hideous even by repentance. Fortunately for Grace, nothing of this entered her mind. He had made atonement, he had righted a wrong at the cost of his own happiness. To be sure, it was at the cost of hers also, but in her exaltation she never thought of that. What she did mourn over was that he should not have told her; that he had suffered bitterly and cruelly, and had been driven to the uttermost despair rather than tell her; that he should have thought her incapable of the same sacrifice as he was making, less noble than himself. This hurt her in passing, but she had not time to think more of it. In the meantime he must be comforted, reassured, cared for. He must know that she understood him, that she—yes, she who was the victim, who had to bear the penalty—approved. She was inspired with strength and courage to do this. She was no victim—she was a martyr, sharing his martyrdom for the sake of what was right.
I need scarcely say that the Fords no more understood her than if she had been speaking a foreign language. They gazed at her with horror and bewilderment. They asked each other, had she not loved him after all? That a woman who loved him could have so accepted this revelation was to them incredible. Mr. Ford was almost angry with her in the disappointment with which he saw this extraordinary and un-looked-for effect. He said stiffly, that he was very glad that she could take it so philosophically—more than poor Oliver had done—but that as for comforting or helping him that was impossible. For Oliver had disappeared, and, so far as was known, might be heard of no more. How he had got out of his chambers, his anxious brother-in-law did not know; he supposed it must have been at the moment when, receiving no answer to his summons, he had gone to seek for help to break open the door. On his return the door had been found open, the rooms empty, the letter on the table, the pistol lying on the floor; but of Oliver no sign; and that was all that anyone knew.
It was evident, at least, that nothing could be done till next day. And Grace withdrew from the troubled pair, who did not understand her any more than they knew how to deal with the horrible crisis altogether. She went slowly, steadily to her own room, not trembling and sick at heart as when she had come. The suspense was over—now she knew everything. Her heart was in so strange an exaltation, that for the moment she seemed to feel no pain. It seemed to her as if Oliver and she were martyrs about to come out upon some scaffold hand in hand, and for the righting of wrong and the redeeming of the lost to die. Such a crisis has an intoxication peculiar to itself. She did not sleep all night, but lay down and thought over everything. The worst was that he had not told her. If he had but trusted in her, it was she who should have stood by him all along, and taken his part and justified him before the world.
She met Mrs. Ford in the morning as she left her room, putting a stop to all those attempts to make an invalid of her, and treat her as if she were ill, which is the common expedient of the lookers-on in cases of grief or mental suffering. Her face was pale but not without colour, very clear, like a sky after rain; the eyes limpid and large, as if they had increased in size somehow during the night.
‘When you have had your breakfast,’ she said, with a smile,—‘I have ordered it for you—then there are several things I wish you to do—for me—’
‘Grace!’ Mrs. Ford was astonished by her look, and felt herself taken by surprise. ‘You—you don’t mean—shopping?’ she asked, almost mysteriously, confounded by her friend’s calm.
Grace gave her a reproachful look. ‘I have ordered a carriage, too,’ she said, taking no notice of the suggestion. ‘Tell me when you are ready.’
Mrs. Ford, looking with guilty countenance at her watch, went quickly to the table at which her husband was seated, eating a hurried, but not at all an insufficient, breakfast.
‘I don’t know what she means,’ Mr. Ford said. ‘She has ordered a feast. There’s half a dozen things. No, no more; don’t bring any more. Trix, I’m going off to the Temple, of course, at once, and if I can find out anything or get any trace of where he has gone, I’ll telegraph. Mind what I told you last night. You must try and get her sent home.’