The last two members of the retiring procession have now passed through the door of the Hall, and away go also the majority of those who have been dining. A few of the ‘Ancients’ or senior barristers are left behind, to finish their wine and their chat; but by twelve o’clock the Hall itself and its purlieus are once more deserted and silent.
BY MEAD AND STREAM.
BY CHARLES GIBBON.
CHAPTER XLV.—HIGH PRESSURE.
Madge reached home in the darkness, and opened the outer door so quietly that she got up to her own room without being observed by any of the inmates. Hat and cloak were off in a minute, and flung carelessly anywhere—thus marking how completely her mind was distracted from ordinary affairs; for, as a rule, she was careful in putting things away.
Then!—she did not fling herself on the bed, and give way to an overwhelming sense of despair, in the manner of heroines of romance. She sat down; clasped hands lying on her lap, and stared into the darkness of the room, which was luminous to her hot, dry eyes, and wondered what it was all about.
Her engagement with Philip was broken off, and he wished it to be so! Now, how could that be? Was it not all some disagreeable fantastic dream, from which she would presently awaken, and find him by her side? They would laugh at the folly of it all, and be sorry that such ideas could occur to them even in dreams. And that horrible, silent drive to the station; the silent clasp of hands as the train started; no word spoken by either since, in her pain and confusion, she had said ‘Good-bye,’ and he had echoed it—all that was a nightmare. She would shake it off, rouse up, and see the bright day dawning.
But she could not shake it off so easily. He had said that she was to consider herself free from all bond to him. He wished it—there was the sting—and they had parted. It was a different kind of parting from the one she had prepared herself to pass through with composure. Was it a distorted shadow of her mother’s fate that had fallen upon her?
At this she started, and bravely struggled with the nightmare which had weighed upon her from the moment the fatal word ‘Good-bye’ had escaped her lips. They were not parted—absurd to think that possible. She took blame to herself; she had been hasty, and had not made sufficient allowance for his worried state. Perhaps she had been quickened to anger by his apparent want of faith because she would not reveal what she had promised to be silent about for his sake. She, too, felt distracted at the moment; and want of faith in those we love is the cruelest blow to the distracted mind.
Ay, she should have been more forbearing—much more forbearing, considering how worried he was. And she could see that haggard face now with the great dazed eyes of a man who is looking straight at Ruin, feeling its fingers round his throat choking him.... Poor Philip. She had been unkind to him; but it should be all put right in the morning. She would tell Aunt Hessy and Uncle Dick, and they would force him away from that dreadful work which was killing him, and——