And when I found you at last you were all radiantly happy and healthy, the prettiest of families, and only your mother was touched with any gravity deeper than the joy of sunshine and sea. You and Mademoiselle Potin--in those days her ministrations were just beginning--were busy constructing a great sea-wall that should really and truly stop the advancing tide. Rachel Two was a little apart, making with infinite contentment an endless multitude of conical sand pies with her little tin pail. Margaret, a pink inarticulate lump, scrabbled in the warm sand under Jessica's care. Your mother sat and watched you--thoughtfully. And before any of you knew that I was there my shadow fell across you all.
You accepted my appearance when I ought to have been in Italy with the unquestioning confidence with which you still take all my comings and goings. For you, Italy, America, any place is just round the corner. I was kissed with affection but haste, and you got back to your sand-works as speedily as possible. I inspected Rachel Two's mounds,--she was giving them the names of her various aunts and uncles--and patted the crowing Margaret, who ignored me. Rachel had sprung to her feet and kissed me and now hovered radiant over me as I caressed you youngsters. It was all so warm, so real, that for an instant the dark threat that hung over us all vanished from my skies, to return with the force of a blow.
"And what has brought you back?" said Rachel. "I had expected a month of widowhood. What can have brought you back?"
The dancing gladness in her eyes vanished swiftly as she waited for an answer to her question. She caught the note of tragedy from my face. "Why have you come back from Italy?" she asked in an altered voice.
"Rachel," I said taking her arm, with a desolating sense of the futility in my gesture of protection; "let us walk along the beach. I want to tell you something---- Something rather complicated."
"Is there going to be war, Stephen?" she asked abruptly.
It seemed then that this question which merely concerned the welfare of a hundred million people or so and pain, destruction and disaster beyond measure, was the most trivial of digressions.
"No," I said. "I haven't thought about the war."
"But I thought--you were thinking of nothing else."
"This has put it out of my head. It's something---- Something disastrous to us."
"Something has happened to our money?"
"I wish that was all."
"Then what is it?" Her mind flashed out. "It has something to do with Mary Justin."
"How did you know that?"
"I guessed."
"Well. It is. You see--in Switzerland we met."
"You _met_!"
"By accident. She had been staying at the hotel on Engstlen Alp."
"You slept there!" cried Rachel.
"I didn't know she was in the hotel until the next day."
"And then you came away!"
"That day."
"But you talked together?"
"Yes."
"And for some reason---- You never told me, Stephen! You never told me. And you met. But---- Why is this, disaster?"
"Because Justin knows and he means to divorce her--and it may be he will succeed...."
Rachel's face had become white, for some time she said nothing. Then slowly, "And if he had not known and done that--I should never have known."
I had no answer to make to that. It was true. Rachel's face was very still, and her eyes stared at the situation laid bare to her.
"When you began," she choked presently, "when she wrote--I knew--I felt----"
She ceased for fear she might weep, and for a time we walked in silence.
"I suppose," she said desperately at last, "he will get his divorce."
"I am afraid he will."
"There's no evidence--you didn't...."
"No."
"And I never dreamt----!"
Then her passion tore at her. "Stephen my dear," she wept, "you didn't? you didn't? Stephen, indeed you didn't, did you? You kept faith with me as a husband should. It was an accident--a real accident--and there was no planning for you to meet together. It was as you say? I've never doubted your word ever--I've never doubted you."
Well, at any rate I could answer that plainly, and I did.
"And you know, Stephen," she said, "I believe you. And I _can't_ believe you. My heart is tormented. Why did you write to her? Why did you two write and go on writing? And why did you tell me nothing of that meeting? I believe you because I can't do anything but believe you. It would kill me not to believe you in a thing that came so near to us. And yet, there it is, like a knife being twisted in my heart--that you met. Should I have known of your meeting, Stephen--ever? I know I'm talking badly for you.... But this thing strikes me suddenly. Out of this clear beautiful sky! And the children there--so happy in the sunshine! I was so happy. So happy. With you coming.... It will mean shames and law-courts and newspapers, losses of friends, losses of money and freedom.... My mother and my people!... And you and all the work you do!... People will never forget it, never forgive it. They will say you promised.... If she had never written, if she had kept to her bargain----"
"We should still have met."
"Stephen!... Stephen, you must bear with me...."
"This is a thing," I said, "that falls as you say out of the sky. It seemed so natural--for her to write.... And the meeting ... it is like some tremendous disaster of nature. I do not feel I have deserved it. It is--irrational. But there it is, little Rachel of my heart, and we have to face it. Whatever happens we have to go on. It doesn't alter the work we have to do. If it clips our wings--we have to hop along with clipped wings.... For you--I wish it could spare you. And she--she too is a victim, Rachel."
"She need not have written," said Rachel. "She need not have written. And then if you had met----"
She could not go on with that.
"It is so hard," I said, "to ask you to be just to her--and me. I wish I could have come to you and married you--without all that legacy--of things remembered.... I was what I was.... One can't shake off a thing in one's blood. And besides--besides----"
I stopped helplessly.
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And then Mary came herself to tell me there would be no divorce.
She came to me unexpectedly. I had returned to town that evening, and next morning as I was sitting down in my study to answer some unimportant questions Maxwell Hartington had sent me, my parlormaid appeared. "Can you speak," she asked, "to Lady Mary Justin?"
I stood up to receive my visitor.
She came in, a tall dark figure, and stood facing me in silence until the door had closed behind her. Her face was white and drawn and very grave. She stooped a little, I could see she had had no sleep, never before had I seen her face marked by pain. And she hesitated.... "My dear!" I said; "why have you come to me?"
I put a chair for her and she sat down.
For a moment she controlled herself with difficulty. She put her hand over her eyes, she seemed on the verge of bitter weeping....
"I came," she said at last.... "I came. I had to come ... to see you."
I sat down in a chair beside her.
"It wasn't wise," I said. "But--never mind. You look so tired, my dear!"
She sat quite still for a little while.
Then she moved her arm as though she felt for me blindly, and I put my arms about her and drew her head to my shoulder and she wept....
"I knew," she sobbed, "if I came to you...."
Presently her weeping was over.
"Get me a little cold water, Stephen," she said. "Let me have a little cold water on my face. I've got my courage now again. Just then,--I was down too low. Yes--cold water. Because I want to tell you--things you will be glad to hear."
"You see, Stephen," she said--and now all her self-possession had returned; "there mustn't be a divorce. I've thought it all out. And there needn't be a divorce."
"Needn't be?"
"No."
"What do you mean?"
"I can stop it."
"But how?"
"I can stop it. I can manage---- I can make a bargain.... It's very sweet, dear Stephen, to be here talking to you again."
She stood up.
"Sit at your desk, my dear," she said. "I'm all right now. That water was good. How good cold things can be! Sit down at your desk and let me sit here. And then I will talk to you. I've had such a time, my dear. Ah!"
She paused and stuck her elbows on the desk and looked me in the eyes. And suddenly that sweet, frank smile of hers swept like sunshine across the wintry desolation of her face. "We've both been having a time," she said. "This odd little world,--it's battered us with its fists. For such a little. And we were both so ridiculously happy. Do you remember it, the rocks and the sunshine and all those twisted and tangled little plants? And how the boat leaked and you baled it out! And the parting, and how you trudged up that winding path away from me! A grey figure that stopped and waved--a little figure--such a virtuous figure! And then, this storm! this _awful_ hullabaloo! Lawyers, curses, threats----. And Stella Summersley Satchel like a Fury of denunciation. What hatred that woman has hidden from me! It must have accumulated.... It's terrible to think, Stephen, how much I must have tried her.... Oh! how far away those Alps are now, Stephen! Like something in another life.... And here we are!--among the consequences."