CHAPTER XXXVII

THE CIRCULAR TOUR

The evening, with her quiet feet, had stolen across the sky; night was fast riding in the wake of her, when at last they left the little old white-haired lady alone.

Repeatedly John had offered to stay and keep her company.

"You may not sleep, dearest," he said gently. "Someone had better be with you."

"I shall have Claudina," she replied with a smile of gratitude. "And I think I shall sleep. I've scarcely been to bed since he was ill. I think I shall sleep." And her eyes closed involuntarily.

Jill offered to stay, to help her to bed, to sit by her side until she slept. But, patiently and persistently, she shook her tired, white head and smiled.

"Claudina understands my little fidgety ways," she said--"and perhaps I shall be better with her."

Down the vast chamber, she walked with them again to the little door. Her head was high and brave, but the heart within her beat so faintly and so still, that sometimes, unseen by them, she put her hand upon her bodice to assure herself that it beat at all.

Before they pulled the heavy curtain, she stopped and took both their hands in hers.

"My dear--dear children," she whispered, and for the first time her voice quivered. A sob answered it in Jill's throat. She tried to face the old lady's eyes, bright with a strange and almost unnatural brilliance, but a thousand reproaches cried at her courage and beat it back.

"My dear--dear children," said the old lady once more, and this time her voice took a new power into itself. Her figure seemed to straighten, her eyes to steady with resolve.

"I have something I want to say; something your father would have said as well, had there been time. I thought of waiting till to-morrow, perhaps till he was buried. But I'm going to say it now; before you can tell me what I know you mean to. I discussed it all with your father before you came, and he quite agreed with me." She paused. A great, deep breath she drew, as does a painter when he nerves his hand. And in the gathering darkness in that great room, they waited with all attention expectant.

"When your father is buried," she began slowly, drawing with reserve from that long deep breath, "I am going to live on here." Quickly she raised her hand before John could answer. She thought she knew what he was going to say. "No!" she said, "you must let me finish. I'm going to live on here. For the next ten years, these rooms belong to us--and ten years----" she smiled--"are more than I shall need. I could not leave here. I know it so well. You want me to come and live with you--but no----" the white head shook, and a curl fell out of place upon her cheek. She did not notice it. "No--I know what is best," she went on. "Your father and I decided what was right. Old people have their place. They should never get in the way of the ones who are just beginning. I shall be contented waiting here for the year to come round to bring you both to see me. Don't think I shall be discontented. Claudina will take care of me, and I shall not be in your way. You'll like me all the better in the summer. I get tiresome in the winter. I know I do. He used not to say so, but Claudina has to admit it. I get colds. I have to be looked after. Sometimes I'm in bed for days together and have to be nursed. All of which things," she added, turning with a bright smile to Jill, "Claudina can do so much more easily than you. She's more accustomed to them."

And look at my poor hands, she might have said, how much would you not have to do for me? You would have to dress me, to undress me, to get me up, to put me to bed. But she hid her hands. Those withered hands had their pathos even for her. She would not press them upon their notice.

"Think over what I've said, dear," she concluded, looking up to John. "Tell me what you've thought about it to-morrow, or the next day. I know all this evening, it has been in your mind to tell me of the arrangements you have thought of making for me in your little cottage; but think over it again, from my point of view. Understand it as I do, and I'm sure you'll find I'm right."

And they could say nothing. In silence, they had listened to all this indomitable courage, to this little old white-haired lady preparing to face the great loneliness after death. In silence, Jill had bent down and kissed her. The last lash had fallen upon her then. She could not speak. By the bedside of the old gentleman, the utmost tears had tumbled from her eyes. And now this, from the little old lady, had been more than she could bear. That sensation which they call the breaking of the heart, was almost stifling the breath within her. The whole army of her emotions had been thundering all this time at the gates of her heart. When she had heard his blessing, she had flung the gates open wide. Now, they were trampling her beneath their feet. She could not rise above them. She could not even cry out loud the remorse and pain she felt.

With John, this silence that was forced upon him was more cruel still. On a scaffold, set before the crowd, he stood, listening to the loathing and reproach that groaned in every throat. The little old lady was making this sacrifice, and yet, he knew a thousand times that he should not let it be. To stand there then and, in that derisive silence, to quietly give consent, was the utmost penalty that he could pay. Then, in the teeth of all reproach, as though to shut out from his ears the moaning of that cruel, relentless crowd, he caught her slender figure in his arms and strained her to him.

"My little mother," he said wildly in his breath, "it can't be like that--it can't be! Something must be done. I'll think it out, but something must be done."

Then, kissing her again and again, he put her down from him, as you put back a little doll into its cradle--a little doll which some thoughtless hand has treated ill.

They said no word to each other as they passed through the archway this time. In silence, they stepped into the gondola which had been waiting for them at the steps for an hour and more.

John told him the hotel at which Jill was staying, and the gondolier pushed out into the black water. Another moment, and they were swaying into the soft velvet darkness, rent here and there with little points of orange light, where a lamp burnt warmly in some tiny window.

"And to-morrow," said John presently, "you must go back? Perhaps that's the hardest part of it."

"I shall not go for a few days," Jill replied quietly.

He looked quickly at her white face. Impulsively his hand stretched out to hers. She stared before her as he took it. She was like a figure of ivory, set strangely in black marble, as black as the water itself. There was no movement from her, no stir, scarcely a sign of life.

"That's good of you," he said in honest thankfulness. "You're being wonderfully good to me." He repeated it, ruminating, with his eyes looking out into the distance where hers were set. "But, I might have known you'd be that."

She shuddered. Praise from him, then, hurt more than all. She shuddered as if a wind had chilled her.

After a long pause, he moved and spoke again.

"How are you going to manage?" he asked. "What are you going to do?"

"I shall write."

"Home?"

"No--to Mrs. Crossthwaite."

"Is it safe?"

"I think so."

"But you mustn't be discovered," he said quickly. Conscience pulled him first one way, then another. Every instinct prompted him to accept her generosity without question. "You must not take too great a risk. Why, indeed, should you take any?"

The words came slowly. He felt both glad and sorry when once they were spoken. The tragedy of life is indecision. They bury suicides at the crossroads, for that is where lurks all tragedy--the indecision of which way to choose.

At last, she turned her head and looked at him. The hand he held quickened with feeling. It became alive. He felt the fingers tighten on his own.

"You are thinking of me?" she said.

"I must," he replied.

"You feel it your duty because I'm here alone?"

He shook his head.

"I don't feel duty," he answered. "There is no such thing. People do what they do. When it is a disagreeable thing to do, they make it worth the doing by calling it duty. That is the satisfaction they get out of it. But everything that is done, is done for love--love of self or love of other people. Duty is the name that enhances the value of disagreeable things. But it's only a name. There's nothing behind it--nothing human, nothing real. I don't feel duty as some do, and so I never attempt anything that's disagreeable. A thing that is weighed is repugnant to me. Just now things are very hard--just now I scarcely know which way to turn. The little old white-haired lady puts her arms round me and I feel I can't let her go. You hold my hand and I feel that I would move heaven and earth to save you from a moment's unhappiness." Reluctantly, he let go her hand and sat upright. "Here we are; I say good-night here. You must think before you write that letter."

She put out a detaining hand.

"Tell him to go back to your rooms," she said--"I'll take you back there before I go in. I've got a lot to say."

John smiled incredulously. He could have asked heaven for no greater gift. His heart was sick. There was nothing but disillusionment to which he could look forward. His own disillusionment had come already; but that of the little old white-haired lady was harder to bear than his own. Stretching before him, an ugly shadow, he saw the unswerving promise of that day when he must tell her all the truth; that day, a year perhaps to come, when, arriving in Venice without Jill, he must explain her absence, either by another fabrication or the naked fact.

To hide his face from it all a little longer; to have Jill's presence closing his eyes to it, even though it were only for a speck of time in the eternity that was to follow, was a reprieve for which he had not dared to hope.

"You mean that?" he said eagerly.

"Yes."

John gave the order. The gondolier did not smile. Perhaps the motion of his oar as he swung them round was a gentle comment. Every man has his different medium of expression. There was once a ballet dancer who, whenever she became excited and was driven to gesticulation, always caught her skirt just below the knee and lifted it to show her instep. It meant more than any words she could ever have uttered.

John sat back again by Jill's side.

"Oh! it's good," he said, half aloud, half to himself.

"What is good?" she whispered.

"To be just a little while longer with you. I dread to-night, I dread the next few nights to come. I shall see his eyes. I shall hear that sound in his voice when he called to her. I shall see that brave look in her face, and hear that whole speech of her sacrifice as we stood by the door. My God! What wonderful things women can be when they love."

"She's so gentle and yet so brave," said Jill.

"Brave!" he echoed it, but it had not the force of all he felt. "Great Heavens! Think of her there now, alone. Everything but us gone out of her life; a sudden rent in the clouds--just a flash, and but for us, in that moment she's made destitute. And then, with a smile in her eyes, to give up what little she has. And I, to have to accept it. Lord! what a fool I've been. I remember that day when Mrs. Morrell's sandy cat came slouching into the room and I'd just received the letter saying she would write no more of you. I took that confounded cat into my confidence--'The little old lady wants a love story,' I said. And the cat seemed to wink as though it had no objection to hearing one, too. Then I began. Lord! what a child I am. Not the faintest idea of the future! No conception of consequence! Just a blind idea of doing things as they come, without the smallest consideration of results! I never foresaw that it was going to lead to this. What a child! My heavens! What a child! He was a child! She's a child! I'm a child, too! We're a family of children, not fit for one of the responsibilities of life."

"Do you think you're any the worse for that?" she asked softly.

"I don't know," he shrugged his shoulders. "Upon my soul, it seems now the greatest crime a man can commit. In a world of grown-up men and women who can pay their rents and taxes, meet their bills and save their money, to be a child is a monstrous, a heinous crime."

"Only to those who don't understand," she answered.

"Well--and who does?"

"I do."

"You do? Yes, I know that--but how can you help? You've done more than a thousand women would have done. You helped me to make his passing a happy one; you can't do more than that. You're even going to stay on a few days longer to help this fool of a child still more. That proves you understand. I know you understand--God bless you."

He shrank into himself despairingly. His whole body seemed to contract in the pain of self-condemnation, and he pressed his hands violently over his eyes. Suddenly, he felt her move. He took his hands away and found her kneeling at his feet, that white face of ivory turned up to his, her eyes dimmed with tears.

"Do you call it understanding if I leave you now--little child?" she whispered, and her voice was like the sound in a long-dreamt dream which, on the morning, he had forgotten and striven to remember ever since.

Slowly, he took away his hands. Now he recalled the voice. The whole dream came back. It was summer--summer in England. They were in a field where cattle grazed under the warm shadows of high elm trees. Cowslips grew there, standing up through the grass with their thin, white, velvet stems; here and there an orchid with spotted leaves, a group of scabii bending their feathered heads in the heat of the day. Jill sat sewing little garments, and he lay idle, stretched upon his back, gazing up into the endless blue where the white clouds sailed like little ships, making for distant harbours. And as she sewed, she talked of things more wonderful than God had made the day; of things that women, in the most sacred moments of their life, sometimes reveal to men.

This was the dream he had forgotten. In his sleep, he had known that it was a dream; had known that he must remember it all his life; yet in the morning, but faintly recollected he had dreamt at all. Now, those two words of hers--little child--and the summer day, the browsing cattle, the white flutter of the tiny garments, the scent of the fields and the sound of her voice had all returned in one swift rush of memory.

"What do you mean?" he asked slowly--"if you leave me now, what do you mean? What do you mean by--little child?"

Both hands, she put out; both hands to clasp on his. The tears ceased gathering in her eyes. Before God and in great moments, the eyes forget their tears; there is no trembling of the lips; the voice is clear and true.

"Don't you remember what he said?" she asked. "'Make your lives out of love, as I have made mine. Make your children out of love as I have made mine.' Did you think I could hear that from him without knowing what you yourself have said just now, that there is no such thing as Duty?"

John stared at her. He dared not interpose. He dared not even answer the question she had asked, for fear his voice should break the linking of her thoughts.

"Can you hear him saying--'Make your lives out of duty, as I have made mine. Make your children out of duty as I have made mine?' Can you imagine him saying that? Can you feel how it would have grated on your ears? Yet that's just what I'm going to do; but I didn't realise it till then."

"What is it you're going to say?" he asked below his breath. "What is it you're leading to? All this is leading to something. What is it?"

"That I'm not going to leave you, little child. That if, after all, there is such a thing as Duty, he has shown me what it is."

The gondola bumped against the steps. The voice of the gondolier called out that their destination was reached. John rose quickly to his feet.

"Go back," he said. "Go back to the hotel."

Away they started again and as he plied his oar, the gondolier gazed up at the stars, and hummed a muffled tune.

For a few moments, John remained standing. She was not going to leave him. She was never going to leave him. That was the big thought, triumphant in his mind. But a thousand little thoughts, like grains of dust in a great sunbeam, danced and whirled about it. He thought of those rooms of his in Fetter Lane; of his own improvidence, of the disreputable appearance of Mrs. Morrell on Saturday mornings when she cleaned the stairs of the house, and conversed, in language none too refined, with Miss Morrell. He thought of the impudence of Mrs. Brown, when she appeared in curling papers and made remarks about her neighbours with a choice of words that can only be said to go with that particular adornment of the hair.

But these were only cavilling considerations, which made the big thought real. He could change his address. Now, indeed, he could go down to Harefield. He could work twice as hard; he could make twice as much money. All these things, ambition will easily overcome in the face of so big a thought as this. She was never going to leave him.

He took her hands as he sat down.

"Do you think you realise everything?" he said; for the first instinct of the grateful recipient is to return the gift. He does not mean to give it back; but neither does he quite know how to take it.

She nodded her head.

"All my circumstances? How poor I am?"

"Everything."

"And still----?"

"And still," she replied. "Nothing but your asking could change me."

He sat gazing at her, just holding her hands. Only in real stories do people at such a moment fall into each other's arms. When the matter is really nonsense, then people act differently--perhaps they are more reserved--possibly the wonder of it all is greater then.

John sat silently beside her and tried to understand. It was so unexpected. He had scarcely even wished that it might be so.

"When did you think this?" he asked presently.

"Just--before he died."

"When he blessed us?"

"Yes."

"Why haven't you said so before?"

"I couldn't. I haven't been able to speak. I've suddenly seen things real----"

"In the midst of all this nonsense----"

"Yes--and it's taken my breath away. All in a few hours, I've seen death and love, and I don't know what the change is in me, but I'm different. I've grown up. I understand. You say I have understood before; but I've understood nothing. I should never have come here last year, if I had understood. I should never have continued meeting you in Kensington Gardens, if I had understood. Women don't understand as a rule; no girl understands. She would never play with love, if she did. I know, suddenly, that I belong to you; that I have no right to marry anyone else. In these last few hours, I've felt that a force outside me determines the giving of my life, and it has frightened me. I couldn't say anything. When you said you were a child, then I suddenly found my tongue. I wasn't afraid any more. I knew you were a child, my child--my little child--not my master. There's no mastery in it; you're just my child."

Suddenly she closed her arms round him; she buried her head on his shoulder.

"I can't explain any more!" she whispered--"It's something I can't explain--I haven't any words for it."

And, as he held her to him, John thought of the dream he had dreamt, of the field and the cattle, and the white fluttering of the tiny garments, and the clouds sailing in the sky, and again came to him the note in her voice as she told him the most wonderful thing in the whole world. Then, leaning out from the hood, he called out to the gondolier:

"Just take us out on the Lagoon before we go back."

And they swung round again to his oar.