Part 14

He considered Lady Mary. Was not the world justified in that it put her high above fear and calculation, bidding her be queenly and untroubled? Peter tried to see her snatched from her world of policy and grace. Might she not show fairer yet, seen apart from the things for which she stood? Last night she had seemed like a creature with wings caught and held. How would they fare, those beating wings, if the common round too obstinately claimed her? Jealousy caught at Peter--the jealousy he had felt years ago when he saw a woman of the street pass to her desecration.

"How much do I love her?" he asked, prompted by the pain at his heart.

He loved her as far as the clasping of hands and his privileged admission to regard closely her perfection. His passion was a strong resolve that she should purely stand to be adored, not familiar, too delicate to catch at rudely for a possession.

His thoughts were shattered by a screaming in the street. Something extraordinary had happened. Peter moved to the window, and saw a newsboy rushing down from Piccadilly. Servants hurried from the doors, and bought the papers as he came. Peter at last heard the news, and saw the big black letters of the boy's fluttering bill. Wenderby had resigned. Peter turned impatiently away. These politics did not touch him.

But London was clearly interested. Next morning the papers were heavy with this great event. It stared at Peter from every corner of the street. Peter did not trouble to read the excited press. Since Wenderby had ceased to cloud the presence of his angel Peter had not regarded him. Frequently he paused that morning in his quiet reading of the law, but he paused to think only of an evening with Lady Mary.

Lady Mary was with Wenderby at that moment in her drawing-room at Arlington Street.

"I am pledged to you, Lord Wenderby," she was saying; and he answered:

"You talk like a creditor."

"Are you not a creditor?" she insisted. "You have put me beyond remedy into your debt."

"My resignation had to come last night, or not at all," he explained. "I was not trying to force you."

She measured him with a look, deliberate and frank.

"If I thought you were trying to force me," she said, "I should not be listening to you now. Your debt will be paid in full. But you must give me time. There are things you must allow me to forget."

Wenderby rose to go. He held her hand at parting, and hesitated a moment. The settled sadness of her manner showed him that she was looking back; showed him also that she had faced the future, and would not weakly remember things she must put away.

"Mary," he said, "if you cannot reasonably go through with this, remember that I resigned last night for the chance of you. It was only a chance."

"It was a safe chance," she answered quickly; "a chance that depended on my honour."

Wenderby gratefully accepted her decision. He became practical.

"How would you have it arranged?" he asked. "I mean the formal part of it."

"We must meet, and be publicly seen. The engagement--shall we say three months from now?"

Her sobriety misgave him. He began to realise the extent of her sacrifice. Had he pressed her unfairly?

"You are sure you can go on with this?" he urgently asked, again opening a way of retreat.

"Quite sure," she firmly answered. "I cannot yet be glad of this event; but I shouldn't undertake to be your wife if I did not think I was able to keep faith. I shall join you gladly, and without reserve."

Wenderby bent his head.

"I don't think you will regret this," he said with deep emotion. "Everything I have is now devoted to you and the things which are dear to you. But I won't urge personal feeling on you now."

He pressed her hand in a quick and friendly farewell. In another moment she was alone, able to think of her coming interview with Peter. She had begun to dread this so keenly that in a fit of shrinking she had almost written to him. She feared to see his pain, and trembled for its effect upon herself.

Peter's invitation was for dinner at Arlington Street. Shortly before he came Lady Mary talked with her brother. He had just arrived in town, brought by Wenderby's resignation. He at once looked for his sister.

They greeted in the drawing-room shortly before dinner.

"This is great news," he began. "I came up from Yorkshire with the Chief Whip. He thinks we shall turn them out." He paused, and looked closely at his sister.

"I am very proud of you, Mary," he went on. "You have accepted the work of your life."

Lady Mary had lately seen little of Haversham. His work began utterly to absorb him. She put her hand on his arm.

"Tony," she said, "I sometimes wonder if I'm not losing a brother."

"Mary, dear," he protested, "you are more than ever precious to me now."

Lady Mary sadly shook her head.

"Your first word to me was of the Chief Whip," she reminded him.

Haversham was touched. He put his hand gently on his sister's arm.

"We do not belong to ourselves," he pleaded. "This act of yours is a public thing."

"I have a personal thing still left to do," she said. "Peter is coming to-night. You must leave him with me."

"That will be easy," he assured her. "They're all political people this evening. We shall go on afterwards to the House."

The talk at dinner was all of Wenderby's resignation. The division that night would show the strength of his following. Peter was exasperated by the persistence with which this event pursued him.

"Is this resignation really important?" he asked in an early pause of the conversation. Lady Mary had left her seat at the foot of the table.

"Important!" his neighbour exclaimed at him. "Why, it's the most important event in politics for fifty years. It changes everything."

"This, Peter, is not one of those important things which happen every day," said Haversham quietly. "I would have given almost anything to bring this about."

"At any rate, Haversham," said one of the politicians, "you have helped it a little."

"I'm afraid not."

"Just a little, I think," the politician insisted. "Your friendship with Wenderby must have counted. These personal things do weigh. Wenderby was not very comfortable with his late friends."

"Lord Wenderby's change of party, I suppose, is final?" Peter politely suggested.

"Quite," said Haversham curtly.

"He'll certainly stay with us," chuckled Peter's neighbour. "We shall make it worth while."

"There's less competition on our side," said another. "We haven't any brains under sixty-five."

"Moreover," said Haversham incisively, "Wenderby is a man of honour."

"Has that anything to do with it?" Peter must somehow persist in his hostility. He could only think of Wenderby as an adventurer. Haversham lifted a finger at him:

"Peter," he said, "we shall quarrel if you cannot help being rude to one of my best friends. You must believe in Wenderby. You don't know how essential it is."

They broke up, and prepared to leave for the House. Haversham told Peter he would find Lady Mary in her drawing-room. Peter went happily to discover her. He had seen her room only once before. He remembered with pleasure how exquisitely it framed her.

XXXV

The servants were removing the coffee as he came in, and Lady Mary was softly at the piano. She continued her music after they were alone, Peter watching her in a light soft as the blurred harmonies of her playing. She had never seemed so elusive. At last she abruptly turned.

"What would you do, Peter, if this were our last evening together?"

Peter was surprised at her sudden question. He took it seriously, and thought a little.

"I should sit quietly here," he said at last, "and learn you by heart."

"But you would want to talk," she protested.

"There has been talking enough."

She had come from the piano, and now sat near him upon a low chair. The silence deepened as she hunted for an opening. Then suddenly she uttered her secret thought:

"I wonder how much you love me, Peter?"

Peter did not in words answer her quiet speculation. He dropped softly beside her on the rug, putting his free hand between hers. There calmly it lay upon her lap as he looked at the fire. The minutes passed till Lady Mary found them intolerable. Her hands closed tightly upon his.

"Peter, dear," she whispered.

Peter turned slowly towards her, startled by the stress of her voice, startled yet more when he found it in her eyes.

"You are in trouble?"

"I have something to tell you," she said.

"About yourself?"

Lady Mary bent her head.

"You remember," she went on, "our evening on the water?"

"I shall not forget it."

"I said then that the time might come when I should be drawn away from you."

"That is impossible," he protested. "I cannot lose you. I shall always know that you are wonderful."

"Will you always think of me like that?" she mournfully wondered.

"You are sacred," said Peter simply. He bent to kiss her fingers, but she drew them sharply back.

"No, Peter," she cried in pain; "I have given your hand away."

Peter stared at her.

"Do you mean," he slowly asked, "that I have no share in you at all?"

"Tell me"--she spoke in a low voice, and her eyes were veiled--"will you hold me sacred"--she shyly quoted his word--"as the wife of another man?"

Peter struggled with this new idea. It raised in him a bitter confusion. His calm devotion was shaken and stirred. Above it triumphed a sense of loss, an instinct to grasp at something threatened.

"You are pledged?" he abruptly asked.

"Yes, Peter." It came from her like a confession.

The idea was now being driven into his brain. He looked at Lady Mary as he had not looked before. She sat back in her chair, turning aside from him. With opened eyes, he saw now the beauty of a woman snatched away. He leant towards her, uttering one hungry syllable:

"Who?"

It was the first time Peter's voice had challenged her. The adoration had gone out of it. It was hard.

"Does it matter?" she protested.

"It is a secret, then?" he coldly asked.

"No; I have promised to marry Lord Wenderby."

"Lord Wenderby," he echoed.

The name tore savagely at his heart, wounding him into jealousy and distrust. He was all blind passion now. Wenderby sprang to his eye, as he had stood darkly beside Lady Mary at the theatre. He saw, redly, in his galloping mind, his shining angel--now a beautiful woman he had exquisitely touched--possessed by another.

"Turn to me, Lady Mary."

It was a command, and she obeyed. She bravely met his burning look, but she did not know how unendurable it had become. It searched and denounced her. Her eyes failed.

"You do not love Lord Wenderby."

Now he accused her. She collected her mind for a defence.

"It is not so simple as that," she pleaded.

"You do not love him," he repeated.

She drew herself erect and faced him.

"You must not speak like that," she said. "You are talking wildly. I tell you again this is not a simple thing."

"Love is a simple thing," he rudely countered.

"You are disappointing me, Peter."

The pain in her eyes for a moment arrested his passion. He stood away from her, and grasped at his vanishing peace. Lady Mary perceived his effort, and appealed once more to the boy who had so suddenly leaped out of her knowledge.

"You will listen to me, Peter!" she urged.

He stood silently waiting to hear what she had to say. She spoke quickly, running from the breaking storm in his eyes:

"I am quite content to be the wife of Lord Wenderby. I have always liked him and admired him. Six months ago he asked me if I would help him to join us politically. I have used my influence to bring him over. This pledges me to work with him."

"Does it pledge you to be his wife?"

"That is understood."

"So Lord Wenderby has been bribed," Peter flashed.

He looked at her cold and hostile. His thwarted pride of possession in Lady Mary stirred a cruelty he had never known.

Between love and anger she cried to him:

"This is not worthy of you, Peter."

But Peter's mind was busy now elsewhere. He was putting time and fact together.

"Lord Wenderby arranged for this six months ago," he suggested.

"He asked me to be his wife six months ago."

Now he stabbed at her again:

"You have let me love the promised wife of Lord Wenderby for six months."

"No," she sharply corrected him; "I answered him yesterday."

"But you had this in your mind?" Peter insisted.

Lady Mary was too deeply grieved for dignity or anger.

"I am on my defence, it seems," she said, suddenly weary of their fruitless talk.

"You have made me your judge," he bitterly retorted. "Why else do you tell me these things?"

"I wanted you to understand."

"I shall never understand."

Lady Mary looked at Peter, and saw the face of an enemy.

"We will put an end to this," she said. "It is useless."

She moved to dismiss him. Peter saw her passing to another.

He took her by the arm, harshly.

"You cannot so easily be rid of me."

"I do not know you, Peter," she protested, drawing away from him.

He released her as to the troubled surface of his mind there came an impulse of his old devotion.

"How can you do this thing?" he asked in a burst of grief. "You were the angel of my life."

Her pride sank at this.

"Peter, be just to me," she said. "This is a sacrifice."

He caught at the word, and returned to his old refrain.

"Sacrifice! You do not love Lord Wenderby."

"I shall be his wife. I am content to work with him."

"Lord Wenderby is old," said Peter brutally. "He has bribed you to give him all your beautiful years."

She shrank from the climbing rhetoric of his passion.

"It is infamous," he almost shouted.

Lady Mary flung back the challenge.

"It is my appointed work. I shall work with Lord Wenderby for all I hold dear. I am going to live as Eustace Haversham died. Cannot you realise that this is required of me? I cannot choose only for myself. You must understand me, Peter. I can only endure this if you will believe that I am doing what is right."

Peter was obstinate.

"I do not believe it," he said. "It is a terrible mistake."

"Once you believed," she reminded him.

"I believed in you."

She faced him, queenly now, as when Peter had worshipped her. His soul fell suddenly at her feet.

"I still believe in you," he cried out. "I believe that you are too dear to be flung away."

"I cannot value myself as you do."

"You are giving yourself up," he said contemptuously, "so that your people for a few more years may live as we are living now."

"So that we may for a few more years be allowed to work as we must," she corrected him.

Peter was silent. He had seen her justification, but his passion prompted him to put it away. Lady Mary now touched him to the quick.

"You begin to see that I am right," she said, searching for his acquiescence.

"I see nothing," he insisted. "I only see that I am losing you."

"You make this very difficult," she said, trembling before the passion of his voice.

"Difficult!" He caught her by the arm. "Why should you care what I say or believe?"

She looked at his fingers imprinted in her flesh. She was weary and faint. She knew that love without reserve was confessed in her eyes.

"You know that I care, Peter. Please let me go."

Peter leaned towards her. He wanted to see her face. She felt that in a moment she must yield the message shut under her lids. She desperately shook free of him and stood away. But Peter read the deep flush of her neck and the motion she made to suppress the labour of her breath. She superbly filled his eyes against a background that had grown dim. He caught at her.

"My darling," he suddenly cried out, "I cannot let you go."

She felt the blood rushing to cover her.

"On your honour, Peter."

For a moment he was checked. "Tell me again to leave you," he said.

She faced him, and her eyes were fast held. He read the whole of her secret. In a flash his arms were about her.

"You cannot tell me to go."

She rested helplessly. Peter held her with a fierce pride. He would not surrender her. She closed her eyes upon a whispered entreaty as he touched her lips. He felt the stir of her heart, and the jealousy of possession utterly claimed him. Something wild and cruel lit in him. He kissed her upon the face and neck. She felt them as the kisses of mere hunger, and she suddenly rebelled.

"Peter, you dishonour me." Her voice smote into him a revelation. Already the passion had gone out of him. It had died in the act of touching her. He knew what he had done; he was utterly ashamed. His arms fell away from her. He stood with bent head waiting for her decree.

"I will write to you, Peter."

He accepted his dismissal, turning without a word. Lady Mary heard that the door had closed. She stood silently for a moment. Then, all that evening, she lay back in her chair stone still. Her eyes were tight shut; but at long intervals a tear was forced from under her lids, and fell insensibly.

XXXVI

Peter blundered away into the streets, an outcast. He walked furiously about, getting in the way of people who looked for pleasure.

He lived again the late encounter. Remotely he saw himself quietly at the feet of Lady Mary, before he had lost his happy peace. Then the storm was loose, and he saw her merely as one to be desired and held. Finally, his imagination inexorably came full circle in the cold shame with which he had left her. He repeated continually the moment when his kisses had gone out, and he knew them for the vulgar gust of his jealousy. Their passion had not been true. Lady Mary had cried in bitter verity. They dishonoured her.

Was all the story equally a falsehood? Peter dipped for assurance back into the quiet past. He floated again with Lady Mary under a dying sky, and saw her unattainably fair, with a hand that quietly rested under his. Surely this had been wonderful. Not even the stain of his brutal hunger for her dedicated beauty could destroy it.

Why, then, did he so certainly know that his passion to-night was evil? His conscience, bringing him to a reckoning, told him that he did not love her. There was a rift, not to be closed, between his adoration of Lady Mary and the passion with which he had thought to claim her. He put Wenderby aside, and asked himself whether he could ever have taken her by right of a vital need. His imagination would not allow him to do so. He could only see himself for ever kneeling, or delicately touching her as an exquisite privilege. He could not again repeat the physical claim. Mere coveting had prompted it. The soul had perished on his lips.

How instantly she had read the quality of his act. Every beat of the quick moment of his taking her was minutely divided in his memory. He felt again her surrender, her expectation of the kiss she could not deny--the farewell moment of her youth to be expiated in years of sacrifice. Then suddenly she had rebelled, feeling the soul go out of him, protesting against her dishonour.

Peter quailed to think how he had tortured her. He knew now that Lady Mary loved him. She had been outraged where most she was virginal.

For a moment Peter caught at a hope that yet the mysterious rift might close between the soul and body of his love. Must he always be thus divided? Was he never to know a perfect passion where the blood ran in obedient rapture to celebrate the meeting of two in one? He remembered the beautiful girl he had tracked on a summer night, to shrink from taking her because his spirit was her enemy. Now that he in spirit loved Lady Mary--he insistently fought through to-day's murk back to his adoration--he was still divided. His moment of hope died out. He had no right to Lady Mary. He could not passionately claim her. His passion would fail again, as to-night it had failed, leaving only the senses to be fed.

He did not love her. Brutally it came to that. Lady Mary must take the way she had herself appointed. She could not be asked to put away the work of her life in return for a worship that fed upon the air, or for a hunger that seized on a vanishing feast. Himself he felt entirely in her hands. He hoped to be forgiven, and accepted as the witness of her dedicated life. But he did not expect it, or make a claim.

He reached Curzon Street at ten o'clock, and found his mother returned from dining out. Mrs. Paragon now had her own friends. She quietly came and went, usually not asking how Peter fared. All his time was taken up with Lady Mary, and with Lady Mary she left the issue in perfect trust. But to-night she was startled from her assurance. Peter, unaware that he betrayed himself, had the face of a soul newly admitted to damnation.

"What has happened to you, Peter?" she asked.

"Nothing, mother."

She came to him where he had flung himself into a chair beside the fire.

"Has Lady Mary sent you away?"

Peter stared at her in amazement. He had never talked of Lady Mary. But he always accepted his mother's mysterious knowledge.

"She is soon to be married, mother."

"Lord Wenderby?"

This was more than Peter could accept.

"You know that also?" he exclaimed.

"I saw Lord Wenderby one day in these rooms," said his mother quietly. "I knew he was in love with Lady Mary."

Peter looked keenly at his mother.

"You are sure he loves her?" he asked.

"Quite."

"I should be happy to believe that. It gives him a better claim."

"Better than your own?" said his mother. She was at last surprised.

"I have no claim at all. I do not love Lady Mary."

He was quaintly wretched. His mother almost smiled. She saw a light in the cloud, but it puzzled her. Would he then have preferred to love Lady Mary and to lose her?

"Tell me what has happened," she said. "I don't understand. You do not love Lady Mary--is that your trouble?"

"She told me of Lord Wenderby," Peter obediently answered, "and I was mad at the idea of losing her. I grasped at her. I was like a wild beast."

"But you do not love her," Mrs. Paragon persisted.

"It was not love made me behave like that. It was brutal. I had no true passion at all. I disgusted her."

Mrs. Paragon suddenly rose.

"What has Lady Mary said? How did she part from you?"

Peter looked at her in wonder. What was his mother going to do now?

"She said she would write," he answered. "Her eyes were closed."

Mrs. Paragon saw that this was not Peter's tragedy. She could leave him to his remorse.

"Give me my cloak, Peter."

"Where are you going?"

Mrs. Paragon ignored his question.

"What is Lady Mary doing now?" she asked.

"She promised to wait for Antony. The division to-night is at eleven o'clock."

Mrs. Paragon looked at the clock.

"It is now half-past ten. Call me a cab, Peter."

"You are going to her?"

"Of course."

On the way to Arlington Street Mrs. Paragon saw the radiant figure of the woman, to whom she had trusted Peter, in dreadful eclipse. She passed without a word Lady Mary's protesting servant, and went directly to her room. Lady Mary still lay with closed eyes where she had been struck down. Mrs. Paragon moved quietly towards her, and gathered her like a child. She opened her eyes, accepting Peter's mother with a clasp of the hand.

"You have seen Peter?" she quietly asked.

"He has just come home. He says he has for ever offended you."

Lady Mary smiled.

"I will send him a word to-night," she said. "I have just been trying to understand. I think I shall soon be happy. I know now that Peter does not love me. That makes it so much easier."

"He worships you," Mrs. Paragon insisted.

"Can that be restored?"

"More than ever now. I am sure he would want me to tell you that."

Lady Mary raised herself from Mrs. Paragon's shoulder and looked at her.

"I cannot yet measure this breach in Peter. He has loved me from the moment we came together at Highbury. But to-night I was humbled. There was no love at all. I cannot now believe that Peter will ever truly love. There is a rift."

"You are wrong," said Peter's mother.

Mrs. Paragon told Lady Mary how lately she had watched beside him as he wandered in an empty house. Lady Mary heard the story of Miranda.