CHAPTER XVIII
The months passed. The decree nisi was pronounced, in due course made absolute. It was a period for Irene of entire calm and repose. The strong soul braces itself to stand the storm of great events; in the dull after-time it yields to the beseech-ings of the exhausted flesh. Day after day Irene read and thought and rested, scarcely desirous of other pursuits. Her outlook over men and things was narrowed within the horizon of an invalid or a prisoner. The waves of life beat unheeded against the fortress of her seclusion. Her servant Jane—who had begged to be taken into her service when the Sunnington establishment was broken up, on Gerard’s going abroad—the Cahusacs, and Hugh were the population of her universe. During these months of reaction and physical and moral apathy, she desired no more from life than immunity from its stress. An ample income, her own heritage, kept her assured against material cares, and the need of work for its own sake was stifled by the much greater need of self-reconstruction. And even after the healing of torn fibres, she loved the soothing calm of her lethargy.
Then, suddenly, a slight shock from the outer world gave a necessary stimulus. Hugh came to her one afternoon, in great excitement, brandishing an evening paper.
“The mystery is cleared at last! They have found the murderers. As I said all along—a common, sordid burglary!”
The discovery of some burglar’s tools buried in the wood behind The Lindens, coupled with the fact that, at the time of the murder, two well-known ticket-of-leave men had failed to report themselves, had put the police on the track. The miscreants were captured.
Irene revived, devoured greedily, during the succeeding weeks, the newspaper reports of the case. The wretches confessed during their trial; were eventually hanged. In spite of her own public disproof of Hugh’s guilt, she had never been able to free herself from the horrible feeling that he still walked before the eyes of the world under the black shadow of suspicion. This was eternally dispelled.
“Did you never think it possible,” said Hugh one day, “that I might have done it—in a fit of anger?”
“You would have given yourself up and faced the consequences like a man,” replied Irene.
When he mused, a while later, on the saying, a queer feeling of pity wove itself into his thoughts of her. If she only could see mortality in those upon whom she bestowed her affection or her friendship!