‘God knows!’
‘If you should call, never do so between four and six; those are Eustace’s hours. I am generally in during the evening, unless I go to the theatre. Good night!’
And with the ghost of a smile she extended her hand. He took it vacantly, and held it limply for a moment. Then he dropped it with another sigh, and went to the door, which he opened. Turning on the threshold, he saw her standing in the centre of the room, pale, beautiful, and baleful. She smiled again, flashing her eyes and showing her white teeth. With a shudder that went through all his frame, he passed out into the silent street.
It was now very late, and the Park lay still and sleeping under the dim light of the moon. From time to time a carriage passed by, but the pavement was quite deserted. Full of what he had seen, with the eyes of his soul turned inward to the horrible reflection, he wandered slowly along, his footfalls sounding hollow and ominous on the footpath, as he went.
Instinctively, but almost unreflectingly, he took the direction of his hotel; passed out of the park and into Harley Street, thence across Cavendish Square to Regent Circus.
It seemed now to him as if his fate was sealed. God, in indignation at his revolt, meant to deal him full measure. Attacked on one side by the thunders of the Church, and tormented on the other by the ghost of his own youthful folly, where was he to find firm foothold for his feet? His one comfort in the strenuousness of his intellectual strife had been the sympathy and devotion of a woman who was now surely lost to him for ever; a woman who, compared to this frightful apparition of a dead past, was a very spirit of heaven. Yes, he loved an angel—an angel who would have redeemed him; and lo! in the very hour of his hope, his life was to be possessed by an incarnate devil.
His thoughts travelled back to the past.
He thought of the time when he had first known Mary Goodwin. He was a youth at Oxford, and she was the daughter of a small tradesman. She was very pretty and modest-looking in those days; though she knew the world well, and the worst side of it, she seemed to know it very little. His boy’s heart went out to her beauty, and he became entangled in an amour which he thought a seduction; she played her part prettily, with no lack of tears, so that, although he already knew that his first wild fancy was not love, he married her.
Afterwards his eyes were opened. The tender looking, mild-spoken, black-eyed little beauty showed that she had been only acting a part. As their marriage was a secret one, and they could not live together, she resided in the town, and was left a good deal to herself. Once or twice whispers came to his ears that he did not like, and he remonstrated with her; she answered violently, in such terms as opened his eyes still wider to her character. She was exorbitant in her demands for money, and she dressed gorgeously, in execrable taste. When his supplies fell short, as was inevitable, she was still well provided; and he accepted her statement that the supplementary sums came from her father. Once, coming upon her one evening unexpectedly, he found her hysterical and much the worse for liquor: empty champagne bottles and glasses were lying on the table, and the room was full of the scent of tobacco smoke. He discovered that two men of his own college had been calling upon her. A scene ensued, which was only one of many. I have no intention, however, of going into all the wretched details of what is a very common story; but it is sufficient to say that Bradley discovered himself tied miserably to a creature without honour, without education, without virtue, sometimes without decency. Nevertheless he did not cast her out or expose her, but during the Vacation took her with him to London, trying hard to reclaim her. It was while they were stopping there that she relieved him of all further suspense by walking off one day with all his ready cash, and joining an officer whose acquaintance she had made by accident in the open street. Bradley searched for her everywhere without success. It was not for many weeks afterwards that he received a line from her, addressed from Gibraltar, telling him that she was en route for India, and that she had no wish either to see him or to hear from him again.
So she disappeared from his life, and when the report of her death reached him he was touched, but secretly relieved. Few even of his own personal friends knew much of this chapter of his experience: he had been wise enough to keep his actual marriage to the woman as dark as possible. So he entered the Church a free man, and purer than most men in having only one unfortunate record, throughout which he had acted honourably, on his conscience.