Clyne stared at the flame of the nearest candle. But he saw, not the flame, but Henrietta; as he had seen her the morning he turned his back on her, and left her standing alone on the road above the lake. Her slender figure under the falling autumn leaves rose before him; and he knew that he would never forgive himself. By some twist of the mind her fate seemed the direct outcome of that moment, of that desertion, of that cruel, that heartless abandonment. The after-events, save so far as they proved her more sinned against than sinning, vanished. He had been her sole dependence, her one protector, the only being to whom she could turn. And he had abandoned her heartlessly; and this—this unknown and dreadful fate—was the result. Her face rose before him, now smiling and defiant, now pale and drawn; and the piled-up glory of her hair. And he remembered—too late, alas, too late—that she had been of his blood and his kin; and that he had first neglected her, and later when his mistake bred its natural result in her act of folly, he had deserted and punished her.
Remorse is the very shirt of Nessus. It is of all mental pains the worst. It seizes upon the whole mind; it shuts out every prospect. It cries into the ear with every slow tick of the clock, the truth that that which had once been so easy can never be done now! That reparation, that kind word, that act of care, of thoughtfulness, of pardon—never, never now! And once so easy! So easy!
For he knew now that he had loved the girl; and that he had thrown away that which might have been the happiness of his life. He knew now that only pride had blinded him, giving the name of pity to that which was love—or so near to love that it was impossible to say where one ended and the other began. He thought of her courage and her pride; and then of the womanliness that, responding to the first touch of gentleness on his side, had wept for his child. And how he had wronged her from the first days of slighting courtship! how he had misunderstood her, and then mistrusted and maligned her—he, the only one to whom she could turn for help, or whom she could trust in a land of strangers—until it had come to this! It had come to this.
Oh, his poor girl! His poor girl!
A groan, bitter and irrepressible, broke from him. The man stood stripped of the trappings of prejudice; he saw himself as he was, and the girl as she was, a creature of youth and spirit and impulse. And he was ashamed to the depths of his soul.
At last, “What time did she go out?” he muttered.
The chaplain roused himself with a shiver and told him.
“Then she has been missing five hours?” There was a sudden hardening in his tone. “You have done something, I suppose? Tell me, man, that you have done something!”
The chaplain told him what was being done. And the mere statement gave comfort. Hearing that Mrs. Gilson had been the last to speak to her, Clyne said he would see the landlady. And the two went out of the room.
In the passage a figure rose before them and fled with a kind of bleating cry. It was Modest Ann, who had been sitting in the dark with her apron over her head. She was gone before they were sure who it was. And they thought nothing of the incident, if they noticed it.