Prisoners Part 42

"Yes, I meant to do it," said Fay, looking at him with miserable eyes.

"But the Marchesa, the same day--it was in the papers."

"I know, I know. The Bishop told me. He said I ought to know that you had been willing to make the sacrifice. I have come to thank you, Fay, and to ask you to forgive me for misjudging you. You see I was not aware you--had thought of it."

"It's for you to forgive me, Michael, not me you. And you don't bear me a grudge, do you? I somehow don't feel as if you did. And--oh, Michael, you never, never will say anything or do anything, will you--you _could_, you know--to stop my marrying Wentworth?"

Michael's eyes turned on her almost with scorn.

"When first we met again, that second time in Italy," he said gently, "do you remember it by the tomb in the gardens? There were roses all over it. I never saw such roses. Perhaps there were none like them. Then I had no faintest thought or hope of marrying you, though I had not forgotten you, Fay. I had put it all away, buried it. You were another man's wife. Now that we meet again--_the position is the same_."

Fay looked at Michael.

The impersonal detached look which she had set herself to extinguish that day amid the roses, which had been in his face when she saw him first as a lad, which she had _twice_ extinguished, was in his eyes again. There was no pain in them now, any more than there had been when they leaned together beside the tomb: only the shadow of something exceeding sharp, endured, accepted, outlived. Michael looked through her, beyond her.

"And yet the position is not quite the same," he said tranquilly, "for then you were married to a man you did not love, and now you are to marry a man you--Oh! Fay, you _do_ care for Wentworth, don't you?"

"I would not have kept _him_ in prison for a day," she said, and hid her face in her hands.

If only it might have been Wentworth who had sacrificed himself for her with what desperate rapidity she would have rescued him. How calm her agonised heart would be now. Fay was beginning to learn that it is ill to take a service save from the hand we love. And perhaps, too, in her heart she knew that Wentworth would never have sacrificed himself for her, for Michael possibly, but not for her.

"Wentworth is worth caring for," said Michael. "Not worth caring for in part, a bit here and a bit there, who is? but worth caring for _altogether_. I have loved him all my life. I love him more than anyone in the world. You asked me just now not to say anything to stop his marrying you. But that is just what I've come about. I am so afraid of his marriage with you being stopped."

Fay raised her face out of her hands, and stared at him.

"It's the only thing I've ever known him really wish for, almost keen about. He can't care much about things, not as other men care. He has always waited to see whether things will come to him of themselves, and then if they didn't he thought it was a wise Providence taking them away, showing him the vanity of setting his heart on anything, while all the time it's his own nature really that makes things somehow slip away from him. People slip away from him. I've seen it happen over and over again. He can't take hold like other men. He does not put himself out for any one, you know, and he doesn't realise that other people _do_; he has no idea how men like the Bishop and Grenfell and the Archbishop stand by each other, and hold together through thick and thin. Wentworth has no friends, but he doesn't know it. He has only you and me. The Bishop said we must remember that, and that if--anything happened to shake his--his feeling for either of us, his belief in either of us, it would be cruelly hard on him."

"Why should anything happen," said Fay faintly, "if you don't tell him?"

"I shan't tell him on purpose, you may be sure of that, but since--since the Bishop came over I'm certain he suspects something, I don't know what, and I have to be careful all the time. Fay, I've grown so stupid and muddle-headed since I've been in--in _Italy_ that I _can't_ remember what I may say and what I mayn't about that time. My only safety is in absolute silence, and lately that has begun to vex him. And he asks such odd questions, which I don't see the meaning of at first, like traps. He often tells me he never asks any questions, but he does, indirect ones, all the time. I'm getting afraid of being alone with him. Sometimes I think if I stay much longer at Barford I'm so idiotic he'll get it out of me. Has he asked you any leading questions?"

"No. Once he asked if you showed any grat.i.tude for what I had done for you in the past. And I said no. It was the first time I had told him a lie, for it was a lie except in the actual words."

"Aren't you afraid," said Michael gently, "that it may not be the only one, that perhaps there may be some more?"

There was a long pause.

"I think Wentworth will find out some day," he went on. "I'm _sure_ he will. Then, Fay, it might be too late for you and me to save him from a great pain. He might feel that we had both betrayed him."

Fay turned her quivering face towards him.

"Oh, no. I haven't done that. It's you I betrayed, Michael. I'm so thankful it was _you_, and not him."

"I was yours to keep or to throw away. You could do what you liked with your own. But it is not the same for Wentworth. Wentworth belongs--to _himself_."

In her heart she knew it. Love had shown even her certain things about the man she loved.

"And I am afraid he might feel it if he found out that you had let me stay--in Italy."

"I'd give anything I have," she said with a sob; "I'd give both my hands, I'd give my being pretty, which I think so much of, and he thinks so much of, I'd give anything if only I had not--done that, if I could only undo that. Sometimes I wake in the morning and think I haven't done it, that it's only a dream. And it's like Heaven! I cry for joy. And then the knowledge comes. I did not know, Michael, what I was doing.

But since you came back I've _seen_; since I loved Wentworth I've _seen_--what I've done to you; just brushed you aside when you got in the way, and left you to die."

He looked at her in silence. It had come, the moment of anguished realisation that he had foreseen for her, but it had come to her through love for another. That to which his great love would fain have drawn her, she had reached at last by a lesser love than his.

"I have been cruel to Wentworth. I might have tried to get you out for his sake if not for yours. He never had a moment's happiness while you were shut up. But I didn't. I didn't really care for him then. I only tried at last to get you out, because I could not bear the misery of it any longer. I have never cared for anyone but myself--till now. I see now that I have been hard and cruel. I have always thought myself gentle and loving and tender-hearted, like you thought me, poor, poor Michael.

You have paid for that. Like Wentworth thinks me now. Oh, Michael, _must Wentworth pay too_?"

Michael looked at her with compa.s.sion. "I am afraid he must. But do not let him pay a penny more than is necessary. You still have it in your power to save him part of the--the expense. Let him pay the lesser price instead of the greater. Tell him, instead of letting him find out."

Silence.

"It is the only thing to do, Fay."

No answer.

"I am afraid you do not love him after all," said the inexorable voice.

Again silence.

Michael dragged himself feebly from his chair, and took her clenched hands between both of his.

"Love him a little more," he said. "Take the risk and tell him everything--while there is still time. Listen, Fay, and try to forgive me if I seem cruel. You thought you loved me once. But it was not enough to risk anything for me. You threw me away by your silence because you found the truth too difficult. Don't, don't throw Wentworth away too, because the truth is difficult. Fay, believe me," Michael's voice shook, "it's hard to find out you've been deceived. It's hard to be betrayed."

His voice had sunk to a broken whisper. "Don't put him through it. You wouldn't if you--if you knew what it was like."

Magdalen, coming in half an hour later found Fay lying on her face on the sofa alone. She looked, poor little creature, with her outstretched arms, not unlike a cross on which Love might very well be crucified anew. It does not matter much whether it is on a cross of wood, or of fear, or of egotism, that we nail Love to his slow death.

Fay loved for the first time. Was she going to crucify that love, to pierce its upholding hands, to betray that benign saviour, come so late but come at last, to help her in her sore need?

CHAPTER x.x.xIII

His own thought drove him like a goad.--TENNYSON.

"Now," said the great doctor to Michael next day, "I have been hustled down here against my will by Mr. Maine. I'm wanted elsewhere. I calculate my time at a pound a minute. Out with it. What is it that's worrying you?"

Michael did not answer.

The great man groaned. But his eyes were kindly.

"You want something you have not got, eh? like the rest of us. We are all in the same steam launch."

"I don't want anything, thanks."

"In love?"