Chapter VI: Her Resolve

Iris stood by the window in her room looking out on the sea-blue mountains with strangely glowing eyes and flushed cheeks. Her tense, nervous fingers held a letter which had been slipped under her door while they were at lunch, and she had found it there a little while ago when she came back to rest before starting for a long ride in the car.

She stood for some time absolutely motionless; her form might have been lifeless if it had not been for her curiously vivid face. Then she moved suddenly, crossed the floor, opened the door, and went along to her cousin’s room.

“Amy,” she said when she entered, “please go without me this afternoon; I--can’t possibly come.”

“Why, dearest--what is the matter?” she asked, catching sight of the girl’s face.

Iris smiled bravely. “I just want the afternoon to myself, that is all.”

“Are you grieving about anything, dear?” asked Mrs. Henderson. “Your eyes look so blue--as blue as the hills when it is going to rain.”

The girl smiled again; and, under her thick black lashes, electric-blue fires burned.

“Dearest, you are not ill, are you?” her cousin said with concern. “Your lips are so red and you look so oddly brilliant, as if you were in pain.”

“No, darling,” the tall girl replied, stooping down to kiss the woman who had given her the only mother-love she had ever known. “I am not going to be ill--not at all. Just let me have this afternoon to myself, and I shall be all right when you come back. You can explain to Ralph,” and with another warm embrace she left her cousin.

“That love affair will be the death of Iris, if it doesn’t turn out right,” thought Mrs. Henderson when the girl had left the room. “She has not been herself since he went away; it is not like her to be so listless and quiet. She was pale before, but since he left---- Why on earth did he go? I suppose the poor fellow was driven crazy seeing her so much with Ralph! But if she really cares for him, why on earth has she allowed Ralph to come between them?” She sighed. “I don’t understand--love affairs are incomprehensible things!”

Iris returned to her own room and sank into a chair by the window; then she took Justin’s letter from the envelope and began to read it again. This was his first letter to her, his first and only one, and--such a letter! The small sheet of notepaper held only a few lines, telling her of his fall, its extent, even to the kissing of the barmaid. He made no extenuating excuses for himself, not one; he only stated facts. He did not say he was sorry, did not ask to be forgiven; his despair was too deep for that. Iris read between the lines, read all the unsaid important things, and--understood.

But, though she understood, an awful stillness came into her face as she re-read the words--

“I sang our song from the cave to the barmaid, and then I kissed her.”

She sat for a while in a death-like quiet, her wide eyes looking unseeingly into space. Then she shuddered visibly and the corners of her mouth began to quiver. His _failing_ had made him do that--a man with his code of honour, his ideals--the ghastly, appalling horror of it!

She rose quickly from her chair and paced about the room restlessly, moving one object on the dressing-table after another; then came back and sat down by the window again, looking absently at the rose-garden below. And there was no help for such as he--no safeguard, no shelter? She glanced up at the long chain of lofty mountains with their glowing, sun-kissed faces rising out of a deep blue haze; then she placed her elbow on the window-sill, and, chin in hand, she said half aloud: “_You_ have been kind to him, you dear, blue, beautiful things! You have sheltered him and kept him safe; but--” a strange glitter flashed under her lashes--“humanity has not been kind. It has had no pity. It has placed stumbling-block after stumbling-block in his way. His only chance has been to keep away from the haunts of men and live near the heart of great, merciful Nature. Nature is kind, it has more heart than man; it pities!” A passionate wistfulness glistened in her magnificent eyes. “My poor boy!” she whispered, now shading her face with her hand. “You are in the depth of despair because of--this. Humanity has found the one weak spot in your otherwise perfect armour of strength, and has wounded you mercilessly through it. Oh, Justin--the sorrow of it!” Her superb young head sank down on the window-sill and long, dry sobs shook her splendid form.

“Oh, Justin!” she whispered brokenly. “The worst of all is, that I drove you from your place of shelter. I thought you blind--but I was blinder; I thought you cruel--but I was ten times more cruel myself! I allowed you to see me daily, hourly, with another man, till you must have been driven mad with the strain of it! If I had thought myself called upon to give you up to another woman and had to see you together every day--constantly.” She rose hastily and began to pace the floor. “How could I have done such a thing? How could I have allowed you to bear such cruel, horrible pain? It is I who have sinned against you. I knew how unselfish, how noble your sacrifice was in giving me up to Ralph, and you bore seeing me with him all that time; you suffered this because you thought it was for my good. You might have come any day and claimed me, and you would have had all I was waiting to give! You could have relieved your own pain, but you chose to suffer instead--ah! the great, lofty strength of you! But at last your powers of endurance became exhausted, and rather than do anything you thought might harm my life you chose to go away from your shelter and expose yourself to the most hideous danger--oh, the nobility of you! And now you are in the depths of remorse, all because you tried to save me.” She picked up his letter and pressed it vehemently to her lips.

“But,” she continued, a grand resolve flashing in her eyes, “you shall suffer no more; I will go to you, I will comfort you--nothing shall keep me from you any longer--no shyness, no reserve, no convention! I will give my life to protect you; you shall not be allowed to slip back into the awful degradation which engulfed you in the past. If you will not marry me, I will live somewhere near you, hover over your life, shelter you--I will stand between you and your awful foe!”

Then she heard the buzz of the motor. Amy and Ralph had gone at last.

Very quietly she went down the corridor and knocked at Justin’s door, but there was no answer. So she ran downstairs and asked Miss Smith about him, and was told that he had left immediately after lunch and gone to a farm some miles away, where he would stay till the following morning, when he would return to work.

Iris was disappointed; she had kept the afternoon free to talk to him, but she could go and read to Mr. Green instead.

* * * * *

“I must wait till to-morrow night; I _will_ see him then, whatever happens; he must not be allowed to suffer any more--my poor, noble boy!” she thought as she walked along the road to see the invalid.