They had come to the door; he went inside; she took his face between her hands, left one kiss on his forehead, led him back to the doorway and he heard the bolts drawn. When he recovered himself he went to the ‘Crown and Sceptre’ and tried to write a letter to her, but the words looked hateful, horrible on the paper, and they were not the words he wanted. He dared not go near the house the next morning, but as he passed it on the coach he looked at the windows. Nobody was to be seen, and that night he left England.
‘Did you hear,’ said Clara to her mother at breakfast, ‘that the lightning struck one of the elms in the avenue at Mrs Martin’s yesterday evening and splintered it to the ground?’
CHAPTER X
In a few days Madge received the following letter:—
‘Frankfort, O. M.,
Hôtel Waidenbusch.‘My dearest Madge,—I do not know how to write to you. I have begun a dozen letters but I cannot bring myself to speak of what lies before me, hiding the whole world from me. Forgiveness! how is any forgiveness possible? But Madge, my dearest Madge, remember that my love is intenser than ever. What has happened has bound you closer to me. I implore you to let me come back. I will find a thousand excuses for returning, and we will marry. We had vowed marriage to each other and why should not our vows be fulfilled? Marriage, marriage at once. You will not, you cannot, no, you cannot, you must see you cannot refuse. My father wishes to make this town his headquarters for ten days. Write by return for mercy’s sake.—Your ever devoted
‘Frank.’
The reply came only a day late.
‘My dear Frank,—Forgiveness! Who is to be forgiven? Not you. You believed you loved me, but I doubted my love, and I know now that no true love for you exists. We must part, and part forever. Whatever wrong may have been done, marriage to avoid disgrace would be a wrong to both of us infinitely greater. I owe you an expiation; your release is all I can offer, and it is insufficient. I can only plead that I was deaf and blind. By some miracle, I cannot tell how, my ears and eyes are opened, and I hear and see. It is not the first time in my life that the truth has been revealed to me suddenly, supernaturally, I may say, as if in a vision, and I know the revelation is authentic. There must be no wavering, no half-measures, and I absolutely forbid another letter from you. If one arrives I must, for the sake of my own peace and resolution, refuse to read it. You have simply to announce to your father that the engagement is at an end, and give no reasons.—Your faithful friend
‘Madge Hopgood.’
Another letter did come, but Madge was true to her word, and it was returned unopened.
For a long time Frank was almost incapable of reflection. He dwelt on an event which might happen, but which he dared not name; and if it should happen! Pictures of his father, his home his father’s friends, Fenmarket, the Hopgood household, passed before him with such wild rapidity and intermingled complexity that it seemed as if the reins had dropped out of his hands and he was being hurried away to madness.
He resisted with all his might this dreadful sweep of the imagination, tried to bring himself back into sanity and to devise schemes by which, although he was prohibited from writing to Madge, he might obtain news of her. Her injunction might not be final. There was but one hope for him, one possibility of extrication, one necessity—their marriage. It must be. He dared not think of what might be the consequences if they did not marry.