Chapter XVII: The Last Chance

"It's a cruel world," complained Mrs. Sheppard. "Nothing ever goes right, and no one ever thinks of anybody but themselves." She wiped her eyes pathetically. "I'm sure I've always tried to consider others. And this is the result. In my hour of need I am forsaken by everybody."

"It's no good fretting," Maud said very wearily. "We must think what is best to be done."

She realized that her mother was in her most unreasonable mood, and she felt herself powerless to cope with it. Yet the situation had to be faced, and with a heavy heart she faced it.

"My dear, I've thought and thought till my brain refuses to work," said Mrs. Sheppard plaintively. "What is the good of it? You know as well as I that if Charlie refuses to help, all hope is gone. And you say he has refused."

"Yes." Maud was stooping over the kettle that she was boiling in her mother's bedroom. "He has refused."

"Unconditionally?" Mrs. Sheppard sent a sudden keen glance across at the slim, drooping figure and noted the weariness of its pose. "Maud, tell me! Unconditionally?"

Maud remained bent. "I am not going to accept his conditions," she said, after a moment.

"Then he made conditions?" The question came sharp and querulous from the bed.

"One condition." Maud bent a little lower.

"What was it? My child, you must tell me. I have a right to know." Mrs. Sheppard raised herself to a sitting position. "What was this condition?"

Maud did not turn. "What does it matter what it was as I am not going to accept it," she said.

"You have refused?"

"I am going to refuse." There was utter weariness in her voice. She spoke as one to whom nothing mattered any more.

"Maud! Then you haven't actually refused him yet?" Mrs. Sheppard suddenly flung out her arms. "Maud--darling, come and tell me all about it!" she urged. "There is something behind that you haven't told me yet. Come here, dearest! Come to me!"

Maud turned an unwilling face over her shoulder. "I am too tired to-night, Mother," she said. "Besides, there is really nothing to tell. Charlie made me a certain proposal which--which I thought for a little that I might accept. I now realize that I can't and--and--" a faint quiver of vehemence crept into her voice,--"I want to forget that I ever thought I could. Please let me forget!"

"My dear child! Do you mean that he made you a proposal of marriage?" The eagerness of Mrs. Sheppard's query was scarcely veiled. Her eyes had the look of one in search of treasure.

"Yes; just that." The emotion had gone out of Maud's voice again. It sounded flat and mechanical. She leaned her arm upon the mantelpiece for support. "I ought not to have suffered it. I was to blame more than he. He has always been--that sort. I--haven't."

"But, my dear, you have always loved each other. Why should either of you be to blame? The fault was certainly yours in the first place for sending him away long ago; but now--now----"

"Now I am married to another man," Maud said.

Mrs. Sheppard clapped her hands together in a sudden access of impatience. "A man for whom you have not the smallest respect or affection! A man of intemperate habits who took advantage of a weak moment to marry you, who has made you utterly miserable, and deserves nothing from you but the utmost contempt! My dear Maud, I always thought that you were proud and fastidious. Didn't Charlie always call you his queen rose? How can you--how can you--regard that farcical marriage of yours as binding? How can you contemplate ruining your own life and Charlie's also now that another chance has been given you? It is sheer wilful folly. It is madness. Or is it that you are just--afraid?"

Maud shook her head. "I don't suppose you would ever really understand, Mother," she said. "Anyhow I don't know how to explain. But I can't do it--now. I thought I could. I came back because I thought I could. But now I am here--now I have seen Jake--I find I can't."

"That is because you are afraid," declared Mrs. Sheppard, "He has terrorized you. But, oh, my dear, do try to break away from that! Do think of yourself--and of Charlie who has loved you all these years! One great effort--only one--and you will be free from this horrible, unnatural bond. I know that Charlie will be true to you. You are the one woman so far as he is concerned. And he--he is the one man, dear, isn't he? You can't--surely you can't--bear to disappoint him now! Think of the years to come! Think of the life-happiness waiting for you if you only muster the strength now to grasp it! Maud, my darling, my own girlie, can't you be brave just this once when so much hangs upon it? He will take you away in his yacht, and you will be all in all to each other. You will find all the good things you have missed till now; and this dreadful year will fade away like a dream. Oh, darling, surely you will make this one great effort to gain so much! The chance will never come again to you. It is the one chance of your life,--the last. How can you bear to throw it away?"

"And what of Jake?" Maud spoke the words as though uttering her thought aloud. She was gazing downwards at the steaming kettle and the red-hot glow of the fire.

"Jake!" Mrs. Sheppard's reply was instant and contemptuous. "He will marry a girl in his own station who will satisfy all his desires. You can't honestly imagine that you have done that, that he regards his marriage with you as a success! He may be annoyed at your preference, but he will be as glad as you are to be rid of his bargain. It will be the greatest kindness you can do him--if you want to be kind. You know you hate him from the bottom of your heart."

"Mother! You're wrong!" Sharply--as though stung to action--Maud turned. "I don't hate Jake. He--he is too good a man--too upright a man--to hate. It is true I haven't been happy with him, but that has not been his fault. Our ideas of happiness are not the same, that's all."

Mrs. Sheppard stared in momentary discomfiture at this sudden display of strength. She had not expected serious resistance in this quarter. But she was quick to rally her forces.

"Oh, I don't blame him entirely," she said. "As you say, you are utterly unsuited to each other. But it is sheer nonsense to call him a good man. I know that he is often the worse for drink. I have seen him myself flogging his horses down on the beach as no man in his sober senses would dream of doing. He is an utter brute at heart. There is no getting away from that fact. He may not be a wholly bad man. I have not said that he is. But he is a man of violent impulses. He knows nothing of the refinements of life. He is a brute."

Mrs. Sheppard paused. Maud was standing mute and motionless with tragic eyes fixed before her.

After a moment or two to give her words time to sink in, Mrs. Sheppard continued on a note of pathos.

"You may say to me that I have made exactly the same mistake myself. But then, I did it for you children. And it was not the whole of my life that I had to offer. But you,--you are young. Your good time is yet to come. And think, dear, think how much depends upon you! If Charlie dies unmarried, there will be no one to succeed him. He is the last of the Burchesters. And if he doesn't marry you, I am sure he will never marry any other woman. He loves you so devotedly. Through all his peccadilloes, he has always remembered you, come back to you. Are you going to let him be lonely always because of his love for you? He has laid the greatest gift in the world at your feet, dear. Oh, grasp it while you can! Don't let the whole of his manhood, your womanhood, be one long and fruitless regret!"

It was the climax of her pleading. The tears were running down her face as she reached it, and she did not check them too readily though she knew that she had made an impression. Victory would not come at once, she fully realized. The stony immobility of Maud's attitude told her that. But she had laid her plans with craft. She believed that by the exercise of extreme patience victory might ultimately be achieved.

"There, darling! You're very tired," she said, as she slowly dried her eyes; "much too tired to see anything in its proper light to-night. You must go to bed and sleep. You will see things much more clearly in the morning. And shall I tell you a secret?" She smiled, a wistful, loving smile. "Charlie will be at the Castle to-morrow afternoon."

"How do you know, Mother?" Maud spoke quickly as one suddenly awakened.

"How do I know? But everyone knows," Mrs. Sheppard answered vaguely. "The yacht is in the harbour, and they are getting her ready for a trip. Darling, the kettle is boiling at last. Mind how you take it off! Oh dear, I'm very tired. I hope I shan't end my days in the workhouse. So trying to have to make one's bed every day. Good night, darling! No tea for me, thank you. I haven't the heart to drink it. There's a bed made up in the room next to this. I hope you will find it comfortable. Good night, dear! Good night!"

The words went into a deep sigh. Mrs. Sheppard sank down upon her pillow. And Maud turned with a set face, and prepared to leave her for the night.

Yes, her mother's words had made an impression upon her. They had voiced all the doubt and turmoil in her own sad heart. But they had not blotted out that vision of the precipice, the rocks, and the black, black whirlpool that awaited her at the end of the downward path.

Neither had they wholly taken from her the memory of a man's eyes, straight and honest and strangely appealing, that had looked into hers only a couple of hours before.

Above her mother's warnings, above all the trouble and the tumult of her soul, she heard a voice within, clear, insistent, indomitable: "Love is only gained by love. We must pour out all we have to win it, purge our hearts of all selfish desire, sanctify ourselves by the complete renunciation of self, before the perfect gift can be ours."

The perfect gift! The perfect gift! She had almost ceased to believe in it. But that night she dreamed that she had it in her grasp.