Winding Paths Part 78

It was good to be sitting there together by a fireside. So good indeed that it swept everything away that had stood between them, with swift, generous sweeping. There had been nothing real in the barrier, scarcely anything that needed explaining, only the foolish imaginings of two hearts that had become imbued with wrong impressions.

"I thought I loved Doris," he told her, still caressing her hand; "but afterwards it was like a pale fancy to my love for you."

"I was terrified lest she should wreck both your lives," She answered.

"She cared so much for money, and the things money can buy. Without it, she might have grown bitter and hard and reckless. With it, she wil grow kinder, I think. She felt Basil's death very much. She shed the most genuine tears she has ever shed in her life. Dudley, if Basil had known that this was coming, it would have been a great comfort to him."

"He did know."

"He knew!..." in surprise. "How could he?"

"I told him. I saw he was fretting very much about you, and I guessed what was in his mind. I told him I loved you better than my life; and he said: "Thank G.o.d, it will all come right some day."

"Ah, I am glad that he knew. Dear Basil, dear Basil. If he had been less splendid, Dudley, I think I should have taken my own life when he died and left me alone. But in the face of courage like his, one could not be a coward."

Later Dudley took her home. At the door he asked her pleadingly:

"May I came in for a moment? I want to see the flat as it looks now."

She led the way, and they stood together in the little sitting-room where Basil had lived and died, and where Dudley's flowers now shed a fragrance of welcome.

She buried her face in the delicate petals, with memories, and thoughts, and feelings too deep for words.

"It feels almost as if his spirit were here with us now," he said softly. "He was so sure he was only going to a grander and wider life.

I think he must have been right; and that to-night he _knows_."

Tears were in her eyes again. The loss was so recent still - the memory so painful. He drew her to him, and kissed them away.

"That night, Ethel, that first, terrible night when you were alone, it nearly killed me to have to go away and leave you, to feel I could not do anything at all. You must let me comfort you doubly now to make up for it. You must come to me quickly." She smiled softly, and he added: "It would have been Basil's wish, too. He hated the office as much as I do. Tell them to-morrow that you're not coming any more."

Her smile deepened at his boyishness.

"There are certain hard-and-fast rules to be observed about leaving.

I'm afraid they won't waive them for you."

"Well, tell them you are going to be married... You _are_ going to be married, aren't you?..." for a moment he was almost like Hal. "Well, why don't you answer? I want to know."

"I haven't made up my mind sufficiently yet," with a low, happy laugh.

"Then I must make it up for you."

His manner changed again to one of wondering, absorbing tenderness.

Hal had been right, as usual. Under the man's surface-narrowness and superiority was a deep, true heart that had only been waiting the hour of its great emanc.i.p.ation. He took her in his arms and kissed her again and again.

"Child," he breathed, "haven't I waited long enough? Every hour of the last few months, since I knew, has been like a year. Don't make me leave you here alone one moment longer than is necessary."

So it happened that when Hal came back to a dreary, empty, joyless London, an unexpected gladness was waiting for her.

The last few days had almost broken her spirit. The pathos of that lonely, far-off grave, in the little alien churchyard, where they tenderly left the remains of the beautiful, brilliant woman who had been so much in her life for so long, seemed more than she could bear.

They three had stood together, representing her richness in friends.h.i.+p, her poverty in blood ties. The wire to her mother had only brought the reply from some one in London that she was travelling in the South of Italy, and could not possibly arrive in time.

Alymer still seemed almost stunned. He had scarcely spoken since Danton told him what had happened. At first Hal had declined to see him at all, but in the end Denton, with his shrewd common sense, had talked her into a kindlier mood.

When they came back from the churchyard she had gone to him in the little sitting-room, where he sat alone, with bowed head. He stood up when she came in, but he did not speak. He waited for her to say what she would, with a look of quiet misery in his eyes that touched her heart.

For the first time she saw how changed he was. There seemed nothing of the old boyishness left. Only a quiet, grave, deeply suffering man.

She had no conception that she, personally, added every hour and every moment to that suffering. She did not know he was enduring a bitter sense of having lost her for ever, as well as the friend and benefactress he had undoubtedly loved very dearly, if not with the same pa.s.sionate love that she had known for him.

But he only stood before her there, very straight and very still, and with that old, quiet, ineradicable dignity which never failed him.

"Lorraine left a little written message for me," she said to him.

She paused a moment, and her eyes wandered away out to the little garden, with its last fading summer beauty yielding already to autumn.

And so she did not see the expression in his fine face when he ventured to look at her. She did not know that because of his hopeless love, and withal his quiet courage and quiet pain, at that moment he looked even more splendidly a man than perhaps he had ever done before.

Had life been kinder, he would have crossed the s.p.a.ce between them in one step, and folded her in such an embrace as would have lost her slim form entirely in his enfolding bigness. He would have given her a love, and a lover, such as falls to the lot of but few women.

And she stood there, with her head half turned away; with sad eyes and drooping lips that went to his heart; her mind full of her dead friend, and scarcely a glance for him.

"She said I was not to blame you for anything, and she told me to give you her dear, dear love."

He winced visibly, but stood his ground.

"Thank you," he said, in a very low voice.

Then, with a sudden, longing triumphing over all:

"I prefer to take the blame upon myself, but even then I hope some day you will find it possible to forgive me."

"I shall never forget how much Lorraine loved you," was all the poor hope she gave him.

"Will that make it possible for us to remain friends?"

"Yes; I hope so." She gave him her hand with an old-fas.h.i.+oned solemnity. "For Lorraine's sake," she said very simply, and then left him.

He turned with a stifled groan, and, leaning his elbows on the mantelpiece, buried his face in his hands.

Yet in that painful hour, out of all the tragic mistakes of her life, Lorraine might have gleaned this gladness. In that hour he was nearer than he had ever been before to the man she had striven to make him; for, mercifully for all mankind, there is a "power outside ourselves,"

which out of wrong, and weakness, and pain can bring forth good.

The sad trio returned to London the following day, and Hal wondered forlornly if Dudley would leave his office early to come and meet her.

When she stepped out on the platform he and Ethel were standing together, looking for her. Then they saw her, and Ethel came forward first, holding out both hands, with a subdued light in her face, that made Hal pause and wonder.

"How did you know? It was nice of you to come," she said, with another question in her eyes.