Red Pottage Part 61

She remained a long time on her knees, her face hidden. The Bishop did not hurry her. At last she began to sob silently, shuddering from head to foot.

Then he came and sat down near her, and took the cold clinched hands in his.

"Rachel, tell me," he said, gently.

She tried to pull her hands away, but he held them firmly. He obliged her to look up at him. She raised her fierce, disfigured face for a moment, and then let it fall on his hands and hers.

"I am a wicked woman," she said. "Don't trouble about me. I'm not worth it. I thought I would have kept all suffering from him, but now--if I could make him suffer--I would."

"I have no doubt he is suffering."

"Not enough. Not like me. And I loved him and trusted him. And he is false, too, like that other man I loved; like you, only I have not found you out yet; like Hester; like all the rest. I will never trust any one again. I will never be deceived again. This is--the--second time."

And Rachel broke into a pa.s.sion of tears.

The Bishop released her hands and felt for his own handkerchief.

Then he waited, praying silently. The clock had made a long circuit before she raised herself.

"I am very selfish," she said, looking with compunction at the kind, tired face. "I ought to have gone to my room instead of breaking down here. Dear Bishop, forgive me. It is past now. I shall not give way again."

"Will you make me some tea?" he said.

She made the tea with shaking hands and awkward, half-blind movements.

It was close on dinner-time, but she did not notice it. He obliged her to drink some, and then he settled himself in his leather arm-chair. He went over his engagements for the evening. In half an hour he ought to be dining with Canon Glynn to meet an old college friend. At eleven he had arranged to see a young clergyman whose conscience was harrying him. He wrote a note on his knee without moving, saying he could not come, and touched the bell at his elbow. When the servant had taken the note he relapsed into the depths of his arm-chair and sipped his tea.

"I think, Rachel," he said at last, "that I ought to tell you that I partly guess at your reason for breaking off your engagement. I have known for some time that there was trouble between the Newhavens. From what Lady Newhaven said to me to-day, and from the fact that she has been here, and that immediately after seeing her you broke your engagement with Scarlett, I must come to the conclusion that Scarlett had been the cause of this trouble."

Rachel had regained her composure. Her face was white and hard.

"You are right," she said. "He was at one time--her lover."

"And you consider, in consequence, that he is unfit to become your husband?"

"No. He told me about it before he asked me to marry him. I accepted him, knowing it."

"Then he was trying to retrieve himself. He acted towards you, at any rate, like an honorable man."

Rachel laughed. "So I thought at the time."

"If you accepted him, knowing about his past, I don't see why you should have thrown him over. One dishonorable action sincerely repented does not make a dishonorable man."

"I did not know all," said Rachel. "I do now."

The Bishop looked into the fire.

Her next words surprised him.

"You really cared for Lord Newhaven, did you not?"

"I did."

"Then as you know the one thing he risked his life to conceal for the sake of his children--namely, his wife's misconduct--I think I had better tell you the rest."

So Rachel told him in harsh, bald language the story of the drawing of lots, and how she and Lady Newhaven had remained ignorant as to which had drawn the short lighter. How Hugh had drawn it; how when the time came he had failed to fulfil the agreement; how two days later Lord Newhaven had killed himself; and how she and Lady Newhaven had both, of course, concluded that Lord Newhaven must have drawn the short lighter.

Rachel went on, her hard voice shaking a little.

"Hugh had told me that he had had an entanglement with a married woman.

I knew it long before he spoke of it, but just because he risked losing me by owning it I loved and trusted him all the more. I thought he was, at any rate, an upright man. After Lord Newhaven's death he asked me to marry him, and I accepted him. And when we were talking quietly one day"--Rachel's face became, if possible, whiter than before--"I told him that I knew of the drawing of lots. (He thought no one knew of it except the dead man and himself.) And I told him that he must not blame himself for Lord Newhaven's death. He had brought it on himself. I said to him"--Rachel's voice trembled more and more-"'It was an even chance. You might have drawn the short lighter yourself.' And--he--said that if he had, he should have had to abide by it."

The Bishop shaded his eyes with his hand. It seemed cruel to look at Rachel, as it is cruel to watch a man drown.

"And how do you know he did draw it?" he said.

"It seems Lord Newhaven left his wife a letter, which she has only just received, telling her so. She brought it here to-day to show me."

"Ah! A letter! And you read it?"

"No," said Rachel, scornfully, "I did not read it. I did not believe a word she said about it. Hugh was there, and I told him I trusted him; and he took the letter from her, and put it in the fire."

"And did he not contradict it?"

"No. He said it was true. He has lied to me over and over again; but I saw he was speaking the truth for once."

There was a long silence.

"I don't know how other people regard those things," said Rachel at last, less harshly--she was gradually recovering herself--"but I know to me it was much worse that he could deceive me than that he should have been Lady Newhaven's lover. I did feel that dreadfully. I had to choke down my jealousy when he kissed me. He had kissed her first. He had made that side of his love common and profane; but the other side remained. I clung to that. I believed he really loved me, and that supported me and enabled me to forgive him, though men don't know what that forgiveness costs us. Only the walls of our rooms know that. But it seems to me much worse to have failed me on that other side as well--to have deceived me--to have told me a lie--just when--just when we were talking intimately."

"It was infinitely worse," said the Bishop.

"And it was the action of a coward to draw lots in the first instance if he did not mean to abide by the drawing, and the action of a traitor, once they were drawn, not to abide by them. But yet, if he had told me--if he had only told me the whole truth--I loved him so entirely that I would have forgiven--_even that_. But whenever I alluded to it, he lied."

"He was afraid of losing you."

"He has lost me by his deceit. He would not have lost me if he had told me the truth. I think--I know--that I could have got over anything, forgiven anything, even his cowardice, if he had only admitted it and been straightforward with me. A little plain dealing was all I asked, but--I did not get it."

The Bishop looked sadly at her. Straightforwardness is so seldom the first requirement a woman makes of the man she loves. Women, as a rule, regard men and their conduct only from the point of view of their relation to women--as sons, as husbands, as fathers. Yet Rachel, it seemed, could forgive Hugh's sin against her as a woman, but not his further sin against her as a friend.

"Yet it seems he did speak the truth at last," he said.

"Yes."

"And after he had destroyed the letter, which was the only proof against him."

"Yes."

Another silence.