Chapter VII

"There's a woman like a dewdrop, she's so purer than the purest; And her noble heart's the noblest, yes, and her sure faith's the surest: And this woman says, 'My days were sunless and my nights were moonless, Parched the pleasant April herbage, and the lark's heart's outbreak tuneless, If you loved me not!' And I, who--(ah, for words of flame!) adore her! Who am mad to lay my spirit prostrate palpably before her."

Lady Perivale's victoria was standing at Miss Rodney's gate, but before she could step into it her path was intercepted by the last person she expected to see at that moment, though he had so recently left her. It was Haldane, who had been pacing the avenue in front of Miss Rodney's windows, and who crossed the road hurriedly as Grace came out of the gate.

"Will you let your carriage wait while you walk with me for a few minutes in the Park, Lady Perivale?" he asked gravely. "I have something to say to you--that--that I want very much to say," he concluded feebly, the man whose distinction of style the critics praised finding himself suddenly at a loss for the commonest forms of speech.

Grace was too surprised to refuse. She gave a tacit assent, and they crossed the road side by side, and went into the Park, by a turnstile nearly opposite Miss Rodney's house. They walked along the quiet pathway between two rows of limes that were just beginning to flower, and through whose leafy boughs the evening light showed golden. They walked slowly, in a troubled silence, neither of them venturing to look at the other, yet both of them feeling the charm of the hour, and that more subtle charm of being in each other's company.

"Lady Perivale, when I left Miss Rodney's drawing-room just now, my mind was so overwhelmed with trouble that I wanted to be alone--wanted time to think. I have been pacing this pathway ever since, not long, perhaps, in actual moments, but an age in thought, and--and--the end of it all is that, in the most profound humility and self-contempt, I have to implore your pardon for having suffered my thoughts to wrong you. My judgment has been to blame--not my heart. That has never wavered."

"Oh, Mr. Haldane, was it worth while to apologize? You have acted like all my other society friends--except one. People who have known me ever since my marriage choose to believe that I have made myself unworthy of their acquaintance. I cannot call it friendship, for no friend could believe the story that has been told of me."

"You cut me to the heart. No friend, you say! And I--I who have so honoured you in the past, I was fool enough to believe the slander that was dinned into my ear, chapter and verse, with damning iteration. I struggled against that belief--struggled and succumbed--because people were so sure of their facts, and because--well, I confess, I believed the story. But I thought there might have been a marriage--that for some reason of your own you wanted to keep it dark. I could not think of you as other people thought, but I believed that you were lost to me for ever. I had seen Rannock at your house, seen him about with you--and--and I thought you cared for him."

"You were mistaken. I know now that I was foolish in receiving him upon such a friendly footing."

"Only because the man is unworthy of any woman's confidence or regard. Lady Perivale, I think last year you must have had some suspicion that I was fighting a battle with my own heart."

"I don't quite follow you."

"I must be a better actor than I fancy myself if you did not know that I loved you."

"I can see no reason for fighting battles--if--if that were so."

"Can you not? You don't know--or you did not know then--how malevolent the world can be--this modern world, which measures everything in life by its money value. You are rich, and I have just enough to live upon comfortably without watching my bank-book. From the society point of view I am a pauper."

"What would other people's opinion matter if I knew you were sincere?"

"Yes, that is the question. That was why I kept silence. My pride could not endure that you should rank me with such men as Rannock. And there were others of the class pursuing you--ruined spendthrifts, to whom your fortune would mean a new lease of profligate pleasures. I saw Rannock favoured by you----"

"He was never favoured. I liked his society because he was unlike the rest of the world. I was sorry for him, for his disappointment, his lost opportunities. I thought him a broken-hearted man."

"Broken-hearted? Yes, that is the reprobate's last card; and unfortunately it often wins the game. Broken-hearted!--as if that battered heart could break! A man who has lived only to do mischief, a man whose friendship meant ruin for younger and better men."

"Women know so little of men's lives."

"Not such women as you."

"I confess that he interested me. He seemed a creature of whim and fancy, fluctuating between wild fun and deepest melancholy. I thought him generous and large-minded; since he showed no unkindly feeling when I refused to marry him, as other men had done whom I once thought my friends."

"Rannock looks longer ahead than other men. Be sure he did not love you for your refusal, and that he hung on in the hope you would change your mind. No man of that stamp was ever a woman's friend."

"Don't let us talk of him. I hate the sound of his name."

"Yet you pronounced it so bravely just now in Miss Rodney's drawing-room, and looked me in the face, as if you defied me to think ill of you."

"Well, it was something like a challenge perhaps. And did that convince you?"

"_You_ convinced me. I rushed from the house in a tumult of wonder and doubt. But I had seen you, and could not go on doubting. Your eyes, your voice, the pride in your glance, the pride of wounded innocence, defiant, yet pathetic! Who that had seen you could go on doubting? Lady Perivale--Grace--can you forgive a jealous fool who made his love for you a rod to scourge him, whose thoughts have been cruel to you, but, God knows, how much more cruel to himself?"

"I am glad you are beginning to think better of me," she answered quietly.

"Beginning! I have not the shadow of a thought that wrongs you. I am humbled in the dust under your feet. I ask for nothing but to be forgiven, to be restored to your friendship, to help you as a friend, brother, father might help you, in any difficulty, in any trouble."

"Thank you," she said quietly, holding out her hand to him; and their hands met in a firm and lingering grasp, which meant something more than everyday friendliness.

"I am very glad you trust me, in the face of that odious rumour," she said. "I confess that I felt your unkindness--for it was unkind to hold yourself aloof like other people whose friendship I had never particularly valued. As to their preposterous story about me, it would be easy to answer it with an alibi, since I was at my villa on the Italian Riviera from November to April, and have not seen Colonel Rannock since the last Goodwood, when we were both in Lady Carlaverock's house party."

They walked up and down the little avenue of limes till the golden light took a rosier glow and shone upon a lower level, and until Lady Perivale's servants thought she had gone home in somebody else's carriage, and forgotten that her own was waiting for her.

She told Haldane all that had happened to her since her return to London--her indignation, her contempt for her false friends, Lady Morningside's kindness, her engagement of Faunce, the detective, and her hope that she would be able to refute the slander in a court of law.

"Everybody in London has seen my disgrace, and everybody in London must know of my rehabilitation," she said; and then, in a contemptuous tone, "Is it not absurd that I must take all this trouble simply because another woman happens to be like me?"

"And because a man happens to be a villain. I believe the thing was a deep-laid scheme of Rannock's."

"But why should he do such a vile thing?"

"Because he wanted to be even with you--that would be his expression--for your refusing to marry him."

"Oh, surely no man could be capable of anything so diabolical."

"I know a good deal about Rannock's antecedents, and I believe _he_ could."

"But, even if he were capable of such baseness, how could he plan the thing so as to be met by people who know me?"

"That was not difficult. He had only to watch the papers, and throw himself in people's way. He knew that wherever he went there would be travellers who knew you. He chose Algiers, Corsica, Sardinia, as less public than Cannes or Nice, and so affected an air of avoiding the rush of tourists. God forgive me, if I wrong the man--I hate him too much to reason fairly about him, but the fact of his absence from London this season counts against him. It looks as if, having fired his shot, he kept himself clear of the consequences."

"Nobody would have cut him if he had been in London!" Lady Perivale said scornfully.

"Not more than usual. He was not liked--by the best people!"

"No! But he was so clever, so amusing, played the 'cello divinely--and he flattered me by telling me his troubles, and how hardly the world had used him. I thought him a victim. Oh, what an idiot I have been!"

"No, no. You have only been not quite a woman of the world."

"And I thought I was one. I thought I had learnt everything in my half-dozen years of society, and that the pristine simplicity of my father's parsonage was a thing of the past. And I suffered myself to be talked about, my name bandied about."

"Give me the privilege of your friendship till you think me worthy of a dearer bond, and I will protect you from all the errors of unworldliness. I would not have you one jot more of a worldling than you are. I have worldly wisdom enough for both of us--the wisdom of Mayfair and Belgravia, which the angels call folly."

He took her to her carriage, but he did not ask to be allowed to call upon her.

"I shall be leaving town shortly," he said, "but I hope we may meet in the autumn."

"Are you going abroad?"

"I think so, but I have not determined the direction. I will write to you from--wherever I am--if you will allow me."

"I shall be pleased to hear from you," she answered gently. "I am very glad we are friends again."

On this they clasped hands and parted, lovers half avowed.

Grace went home radiant. She had always liked him. It might be that she had always loved him. His coldness had cut her to the heart, yet now that he was at her feet again, she respected him for having held himself aloof while there was a shadow of doubt in his mind. The fortune-hunter would have taken advantage of her isolation, and pursued her all the more ardently while she was under a cloud. And she was touched by his surrendering at once to her personal influence, to the eyes and voice that he loved. He could not meet her face to face, and go on doubting her.