"Because you had deserted her to start with," said Janey.

"No; she was not like that. Because she was dying of the same disease as her husband. She had contracted it from him. That was why she had never let me be much with him, or afterwards with her. When I knew, I was willing to risk it, but she was not. She had her rules, and from them she never departed. She let me sit with her in the garden, and to the last she was carried out to her long chair so that I might be with her.

She told me it was the happiest time of her life. I found that from the first she had loved me, and she loved me to the last. She never reproached me for leaving her. She was a simple person. I told her I had done it on account of my friend, and she thought it very n.o.ble of me, and said it was just what she should have expected of me. There was no irony in her. And she slipped quietly out of life, keeping her ideal of me to the last."

"I think it was n.o.ble too," said Janey stolidly.

"Was it? I never considered her for a moment. I had had the desire to serve her, but I never served her. Instead, I caused her long, long unhappiness--for my friend had a difficult temperament--and suffering and early death. I never realized that she was alive, vulnerable, sensitive. I should have done better to have married her and devoted myself to her. I have never wanted to devote myself to any woman since.

We should have been happy together. And she might have been with me still, and we might have had a son who would just have been the right age to marry Miss Georges."

"You would not have wanted him to marry her now," said Janey hoa.r.s.ely.

"You would not want her to marry anyone you were fond of."

Among a confusion of tangled threads Mr. Stirling saw a clue--at last.

A dragon-fly alighted on the stone at his feet, its long orange body and its gauze wings gleaming in the vivid sunshine. It stood motionless save for its golden eyes. Even at that moment, his mind, intent on another object, unconsciously noted and registered the transparent shadow on the stone of its transparent wings.

"I think," he said, "if I had had a son who was trying to marry her, I should have come to you just as I have come now, and I should have said, 'Why should anyone but you and I ever know?'"

"No. No, you wouldn't," said Janey, as if desperately defending some position which he was attacking. "You would want to save him at all costs."

"From what? From the woman he loves? I have not found it such great happiness to be saved from the woman I loved."

Janey hesitated, and then said--

"From some one unworthy of him."

Mr. Stirling watched an amber leaf sail to the ground. Then he said slowly--

"How do I know that Annette is unworthy of him? She may have done wrong and still be worthy of him. Do you not see that if I decided she was unworthy and hurried my son away, I should be acting on the same principle as I did in my own youth, the old weary principle which has pressed so hard on women, that you can treat a fellow-creature like a picture or a lily, or a sum of money? I handed over my love just as if she had been a lily. How often I had likened her to one! But she was alive, poor soul, all the time, and I only found it out when she was dying, years and years afterwards. Only then did my colossal selfishness confront me. She was a fellow-creature like you and me. What was it Shylock said? 'If you p.r.i.c.k us, do we not bleed?' Now, for aught we know to the contrary, Annette _may be_ alive."

His grave eyes met hers, with a light in them, gentle, inexorable.

"Unless we are careful we may make her bleed. We have the knife ready to our hands. If you were in her place, and had a grievous incident in your past, would anything wound you more deeply than if she, she your friend, living in the same village, raked up that ugly past, and made it public for no reason?"

"But there is a reason," said Janey pa.s.sionately,--"not a reason that everyone should know, G.o.d forbid, but that one person should be told, who may marry her in ignorance, and who would never marry her if he knew what you and I know--never, never, never!"

"And what would you do in her place, in such a predicament?"

"I should not be in it, because when he asked me to marry him I should tell him everything."

"Perhaps that is just what she will do. Knowing her intimately as you do, can you think that she would act meanly and deceitfully? I can't."

Janey avoided his searching glance, and made no answer.

"You can't either," he said tranquilly. "And do you think she would lie about it?"

"No," said Janey slowly, against her will.

"Then let us, at any rate, give her her chance of telling him herself."

He got up slowly, and Janey did the same. He saw that her stubbornness though shaken was not vanquished, and that he should obtain no a.s.surance from her that she would be silent.

"And let us give this man, whoever he may be, his chance too," he said, taking her hand and holding it. He felt it tremble, and his heart ached for her. He had guessed. "The chance of being loyal, the chance of being tender, generous, understanding. Do not let us wreck it by interference.

This is a matter which lies between her and him, and between her and him only. It may be the making of him. It would have been the making of me if I could but have taken it--my great chance--if I had not preferred to sacrifice her, in order to be a sham hero."

CHAPTER XXVI

"Look long, look long in the water Melisande, Is there never a face but your own?

There is never a soul you shall know Melisande, Your soul must stand alone.

All alone in the world Melisande, Alone, alone."

ETHEL CLIFFORD.

The long evening was before Janey. Since her stroke, her mother "retired for the night," as the nurse called it, at nine instead of ten. And at nine, Janey came down to the drawing-room and established herself with her work beside the lamp. Harry, whom nothing could keep awake after his game of dominoes, went to bed at nine also.

But to-night, as she took up her work, her spirit quailed at the long array of threadbare thoughts that were lying in wait for her. She dared not think any more. She laid down her work, and took up the paper. But she had no interest in politics. There seemed to be nothing in it. She got up, and taking the lamp in her hand crossed the room and looked at the books in the Chippendale bookcase, the few books which her mother had brought with her from Hulver. They were well chosen, no doubt, but somehow Janey did not want them. Shakespeare? No. Longfellow? No. She was tired of him, tired even of her favourite lines, "Life is real, life is earnest." Tennyson? No. Pepys' Diary? She had heard people speak of it. No. Bulwer's novels, Jane Austen's, Maria Edgeworth's, Sir Walter Scott's? No. _Crooks and Coronets_? She had only read it once. She might look at it again. She liked Miss Nevill's books. She had read most of them, not intentionally, but because while she was binding them in brown paper for the village library, she had found herself turning the leaves.

She especially liked the last but one, about simple fisher-folk. She often wondered how Miss Nevill knew so much about them. If she had herself been acquainted with fishermen, she would have realized how little the dignified auth.o.r.ess did know. Somehow, she did not care to read even one of Miss Nevill's books to-night.

_The Magnet_, by Reginald Stirling. She hesitated, put out her hand, and took the first of the three volumes from the shelf. She had skimmed it when it came out five years ago, because the Bishop, when he stayed with them for a confirmation, had praised it. Janey had been surprised that he had recommended it when she came to read it, for parts of it were decidedly unpleasant. She might look at it again. She had no recollection of it, except that she had not liked it. Her conversation with Mr. Stirling had agitated her, but it had also stirred her. Though she did not know it, it was the first time she had come into real contact with an educated and sensitive mind, and one bent for the moment on understanding hers. No one as a rule tried to understand Janey. It was not necessary. No one was interested in her. You might easily love Janey, but you could not easily be interested in her.

The book was dusty. It was obvious that _The Magnet_ had not proved a magnet to anyone in the Dower House.

She got out an old silk handkerchief from a drawer and dusted it carefully. Then she sat down by the lamp once more and opened it.

Ninetieth thousand. Was that many or few to have sold? It seemed to her a good many, but perhaps all books sold as many as that. She glanced at the first page.

"TO A BLESSED MEMORY."

That, no doubt, was the memory of the woman of whom he had spoken. She realized suddenly that it had cost him something to speak of that. Why had he done it? To help Annette? Every one wanted to help and protect Annette, and ward off trouble from her. No one wanted to help or guard her--Janey.

"No one?" asked Conscience.

Janey saw suddenly the yellow leaves on the flags. She had not noticed them at the time. She saw the two baby-swallows sitting on their b.r.e.a.s.t.s on the sun-warmed stone. She had not noticed them at the time.

She saw suddenly, as in a gla.s.s, the n.o.bility, the humility, and the benevolence of the man sitting beside her, and his intense desire to save her from what he believed to be a cruel action. She had noticed nothing at the time. She had been full of herself and her own devastating problem. She saw that he had pleaded with her in a great compa.s.sion as much on her own account as on Annette's. He had stretched out a hand to help her, had tried to guard her, to ward off trouble from her. This required thought. Janey and Roger could both think, though they did not do so if they could help it, and he did his aloud to Janey by preference whenever it really had to be done. Janey's mind got slowly and reluctantly to its feet. It had been accustomed from early days to walk alone.

A step crunched the gravel, came along the terrace, a well-known step.

Roger's face, very red and round-eyed behind a glowing cigarette end, appeared at the open window.

"I saw by the lamp you had not gone to bed yet. May I come in?" Coming in. "My! It is like an oven in here."

"I will come out," said Janey.

They sat down on the terrace on two wicker chairs. It was the first time she had been alone with him since she had met Geoff Lestrange. And as Roger puffed at his cigarette in silence she became aware that he had something on his mind, and had come to unburden himself to her. The moon was not yet risen, and the church tower and the twisted pines stood as if cut out of black velvet against the dim pearl of the eastern sky.