Chapter VI: Part IV (3)

For the girl had scarcely caught the sense of his words, so absorbed was she in those of the short, all too short, but terrible letter she had just read--the letter addressed to herself, which began "Daisy, my Daisy, for the last time," and ended abruptly with the simple signature, "Arthur Lingard".

She gazed up at her father--her white face all drawn, and as it were, withered with that minute's agony--her eyes dulled and yet wild. Never was there such a metamorphosis from the happy, laughing girl who had hurried in with some pretty excuse for her unpunctuality.

"Daisy, my child! Daisy," her father repeated, repenting already of his hasty remarks, "don't take it so seriously." "Margaret," to his wife, "speak to her."

And Mrs. Trevannion, as pale almost as her daughter, drew the sheet of note-paper from the girl's unresisting hands, while her husband held out to her his own letter.

"Some complete mistake," she said, "some misplaced quixotry. Daisy, my own darling, do not take it so seriously. Your father will see him--you will, will you not, Hugh?" detecting the proud hesitation in her husband's face. "It is not as if we did not know him well, and all about him. Your father will find out, Daisy, and make it all right."

Mr. Trevannion did not contradict her, but murmured some consolatory words, and then the mother led Daisy away, and to a certain extent the girl allowed herself to be reassured.

"I will consult Keir if necessary," said the father when out of hearing of his daughter. "He is the natural person, both as our own connection and because he introduced Lingard, and thinks so highly of him. But first I will see Arthur alone. The fewer mixed up in such a case the better."

Mrs. Trevannion agreed. She was constitutionally sanguine, but a painful idea struck her as her husband spoke.

"Hugh," she said hesitatingly, "you don't think--it surely is not possible that his--that Arthur's brain is affected?"

"His brain--tut, nonsense! What a woman's idea!" replied Mr. Trevannion irritably. "Why, he is receiving compliments on every side, from the very highest quarters, too, on that article of his on the Capricorn Islands. Brain affected, indeed!"

And to a whisper of, "I was thinking of over-work," which followed him apologetically, he vouchsafed no reply.

Some intensely trying days passed. Mr. Trevannion's interview with his recalcitrant son-in-law-to-be, proved a complete failure. Nothing, absolutely nothing was to be "got out of the fellow," he told his wife in mingled anger and wretchedness, for the poor man was a devoted father. Arthur was gentleness itself, respectful, deferential even, to the man whose peculiarly disagreeable position he felt for inexpressibly. But he was as firm, as hard in his decision that all should be, must be, over between Miss Trevannion and himself, as if his own heart had suddenly turned to iron, as if he possessed no feelings at all. He grew white to the lips, with a terrible death-like whiteness, when he named her; he said with a quiet, deliberate emphasis, more impressive by far than any passionate declaration, that never, never while he lived, would he forgive himself for the trouble he had brought into her young life, but that he was powerless to do otherwise, he was absolutely without a choice. As to the reason for the breaking off of the engagement to be given to the world, he left it entirely in the Trevannions' own hands; he would contradict nothing they thought it best to say; but, if possible, he grew still whiter when his visitor from under his shaggy eyebrows glanced at him with a look of contempt while he replied cuttingly that he had no love of falsehood. For his part he would tell the truth, and in the end he believed it would be best for Daisy that all the world should know the way in which she had been treated.

"Best for her and worst for you," he repeated.

And Arthur only said:--

"I hope so. It must be as you think well."

Then Trevannion softened again a little.

"I shall say nothing to any one at present," he went on. "I must see Keir; possibly he may understand you better than I can."

But, "No, it will be no use," the young man repeated coldly, though his very heart was wrung for the father, crushing down his own pride while he thought he saw still the ghost of a hope. "It will be no use. No one can do anything."

"And you adhere to your determination not to see my--not to see Daisy again?"

Lingard bowed his head.

And Mr. Trevannion left him.

Philip Keir was no blood relation of the Trevannions, but a cousin by marriage and a very intimate friend. He was some years older than Mr. Lingard, and it was through him that the acquaintance resulting in Daisy's engagement had begun. He was a reserved man, with a frank and cordial manner. Daisy thought she knew him well, but as to this she was in some directions entirely mistaken.

He was away from home when Mr. Trevannion called on him, driving straight to his chambers from the fruitless interview with Lingard. Philip did not return for a couple of days, and had left no address. Hence ensued the painful interval of suspense alluded to.

But on the third evening a hansom dashed up to the Trevannions' door, and Mr. Keir jumped out. It was late, but there was no hesitation as to admitting him.

"I found your note," he said, as he grasped his host's hand, "and came straight on. I have only just got back. What is the matter? Tell me at once."

He was a self-controlled man, but his agitation was evident. "Daisy?" he added hastily.

"Yes," replied the father. The two were alone in his study. "Poor Daisy!" And then he told the story.

Keir listened, though not altogether in silence, for broken exclamations, which he seemed unable to repress, broke out from him more than once.

"Impossible----inconceivable!" he muttered, "Lingard, of all men, to behave like a----" he stopped short, at a loss for a comparison.

"Then you can throw no light upon it--none whatever?" said Mr. Trevannion. "We had hoped--foolishly, perhaps--I had somehow hoped that you might have helped us. You know him well, you see, you have been so much together, your acquaintance is of old date, and you must understand any peculiarities of his character."

His tone still sounded as if he could not bring himself finally to accept the position. Keir was inexpressibly sorry for him.

"I know of none," he said. "Frankly, I know of nothing about him that is not estimable. And, as you say, we have been much and most intimately associated. We have travelled together half over the world, we have been dependent on each other for months at a time, and the more I have seen of him the more I have admired and--yes--loved him. If I had to pick a fault in him I would say it is a curious spice of obstinacy--I have seen it very strongly now and then. Once," and his face grew grave, "once, we nearly quarrelled because he would not give in on a certain point. It was in Siberia, not long ago," and here Philip gave a sort of shiver, "it was very horrible--no need to go into details. He, Arthur, got it into his head that a particular course of action was called for, and there was no moving him. However it ended all right. I had almost forgotten it. But he was determined."

Mr. Trevannion listened, but vaguely. Keir's remarks scarcely seemed to the point.

"Obstinate!" he repeated. "Yes, but that doesn't explain things. There was no question of giving in. They had had no quarrel. Daisy was perfectly happy. The only thing she can say on looking back over the last week or two closely, is that Arthur had seemed depressed now and then, and when she taxed him with it he evaded a reply. You don't think, Philip, that there is anything of that kind--melancholia, you know--in his family?"

"Bless you, no, my dear sir. He comes of the healthiest stock possible. People one knows all about for generations. No, no, it's nothing of that kind," Keir replied. "And--what man ever had such happy prospects?"

"Then what in heaven's name is it?" said Mr. Trevannion, bringing his hand down violently on the table beside which they were sitting. "Can you get it out of him, if you can do nothing else for us, Philip? It is our right to know; it is--it is due to my child, it is----" he stopped, his face working with emotion. "He won't see her, you know," he added disconnectedly.

"I will try," said Philip. "It is indeed the least I can do. If--if I could get him to see her--Daisy; surely that would be the best chance."

Mr. Trevannion looked at him sharply, scrutinisingly.

"You--you are satisfied then--entirely satisfied that there is nothing we need dread her being mixed up in, so to say? Nothing wrong--nothing to shock a girl like her? You see," half apologetically, "his refusing to see her makes one afraid----"

"I am as sure of him as of myself--surer," said Philip earnestly. "There is nothing in his past to explain it--nothing."

"An early secret marriage; a wife he thought dead turning up again," suggested the father. "It sounds absurd, sensational--but after all--there must be some reason."

"Not that," said Keir, getting up as he spoke. "Well then, I will see him first thing in the morning, and communicate with you as soon as possible after I have done so. You will tell Mrs. Trevannion and--and Daisy that I will do my best?"

"My wife is still in the drawing-room. Will you not see her to-night?"

Philip shook his head.

"It is late," he said, "and I am dusty and unpresentable. Besides, there is really nothing to say. To-morrow it shall be as you all think best. I will see Mrs. Trevannion--and Daisy," here he flushed a little, but his host did not observe it, "if you like and if she wishes it. Heaven send I may have better news than I expect."

And with a warm pressure of his old friend's hand, Mr. Keir left him.

The two younger men met the next morning. There was no difficulty about it, for Lingard, knowing by instinct that the interview must take place, had determined to face it. So of the two he was the more prepared, the more forearmed.

The conversation was long--an hour, two hours passed before poor Philip could make up his mind to accept the ultimatum contained in the few hard words with which Arthur Lingard first greeted him.

"I know what you have come about. I knew you must come. You could not help yourself. But, Philip, it will save you pain--I don't mind for myself; nothing can matter now--if you will at once take my word for it that nothing you can say will do the least shadow of good. No, don't shake hands with me. I would rather you didn't."

And he put his right arm behind his back and stood there, leaning against the mantelpiece, facing his friend.

Philip looked up at him grimly.

"No," he said, "I've given my word to--to these poor dear people, and I'll stick to it. You've got to make up your mind to a cross-examination, Lingard."

But through or below the grimness was a terrible pity. Philip's heart was very tender for the man whose inexplicable conduct was yet filling him with indignation past words. Arthur was so changed--the last week or two had done the work of years--all the youthfulness, the almost boyish brightness, which had been one of his charms, was gone, dead. He was pale with a strange indescribable pallor, that told of days, and worse still, of nights of agony; the lines of his face were hardened; the lips spoke of unalterable determination. Only once had Philip seen him look thus, and then it was but in expression--the likeness and the contrast struck him curiously. The other time it had been resolution temporarily hardening a youthful face; now--what did it remind him of? A monk who had gone through a life-time of spiritual struggle alone, unaided by human sympathy? A martyr--no, there was no enthusiasm. It was all dull, dead anguish of unalterable resolve.

There was silence for a moment. Keir was choking down an uncomfortable something in his throat, and bracing himself to the inquisitorial torture before him to perform.

"Well," said Arthur, at last.

And Philip looked up at him again.

How queer his eyes were--they used to be so deeply blue. Daisy had often laughed at his changeable eyes, as she called them--blue in the daytime, almost black at night, but always lustrous and liquid. Now, they were glassy, almost filmy. What was it? A sudden thought struck Philip.

"Arthur!" he exclaimed, "Arthur, old fellow, are you going blind? Is that the mystery? If it is that, good Lord, how little you know her, if you think that----"

Arthur's pale lips grew visibly paler. He had been unprepared for attack in this direction, and for the moment he quailed before it.

"No," he whispered hoarsely, "it is not that. Would to God it were!"

But almost instantly he had mastered himself, and from that moment throughout the interview not even the mention of Daisy's name had power to stir him.

And Philip, annoyed with his own impulsiveness, stiffened again.

"You are determined not to reveal your secret," he began, "but I want to come to an understanding with you on one point. If I guess it, if I put my finger on it, will you give me the satisfaction of owning that I have done so."

Lingard hesitated.

"Yes," he said, "I will do so on one condition--your word of honour, your oath, never to tell it to any human being."

"Not to--her--Daisy?"

"Least of all."

Philip groaned. This did not look very promising for the meeting with Daisy, which at the bottom of his heart he believed in as his last--his trump card.

Still, he had gained something.

"Then, my first question seems, in the face of that, almost a mockery. I was going to ask you," and he half gasped--"it is nothing--nothing about her that is at the root of all this misery? No fancy," again the gasp, "that--that she doesn't care for you, or love you enough? No nonsense about your not being suited to each other, or that you couldn't make a girl of her sensitive, high-strung nature happy?"

"No," said Arthur, and the word seemed to ring through the room. "No, I know she loves me as I love her. Oh, no, not quite like that, I trust," and his voice was firm through all the tragedy of the last sentence. "And I believe I could have made her very happy. Leave her name out of it now, Phil, once for all. It has nothing to do personally with the woman who is, and always will be, to me my perfect ideal of sweetness and excellence and truth and beauty."

"Then it has to do with yourself," murmured Keir. "Come, the radius is narrowing. I flew out at poor Trevannion when he suggested it, but all the same, it's nothing in your past you're ashamed of that's come to light, is it? The best fellows in the world make fools of themselves sometimes, you know. Don't mind my asking."

"I don't mind," said Arthur wearily, "but it's no use. No, it's nothing like that. I have done nothing I am ashamed of. I am not secretly married, nor have I committed forgery," with a very ghastly attempt at a smile.

"Then," said Philip, "is it something about your family. Have you found out that there's a strain of insanity in the Lingards perhaps? People exaggerate that kind of thing now-a-days. There's a touch of it in us all, I take it."

"No," said Arthur, again "my family's all right. I've no very near relations except my sister, but you know her, and you know all about us. We're not adventurers in any sense of the word."

"Far from it," agreed Philip warmly. Then for a moment or two he relapsed into silence. "Does your sister--does Lady West know about--about this mysterious affair?" he asked abruptly, after some pondering.

"Nothing whatever. I, of course, was bound by every consideration not to tell her--to tell no one anything till it was understood by--the Trevannions. And I had no reason for consulting her or--any friend," Arthur replied.

He spoke jerkily and with effort, as if he were putting force on himself to endure what yet he was convinced was absolutely useless torture.

But his words gave Keir a new opening, which he was quick to seize.

"That's just it," he exclaimed eagerly. "That's just where it strikes me you've gone wrong. You should have consulted some one--not myself, not your sister even; I don't say whom, but some one sensible and trustworthy. I believe your mind has got warped. You've been thinking over this trouble, whatever it is, till you can't see it rightly. You've exaggerated it out of all proportion, and you shouldn't trust your own morbid judgment."

Lingard did not answer. He stood motionless, his eyes fixed upon the ground. For an instant a wild hope dashed through Philip that at last he had made some impression. But as Arthur slowly raised his dim, worn eyes, and looked him in the face, it faded again, even before the young man spoke.

"To satisfy you, I will tell you this much. I have consulted one person--a man whom you would allow was trustworthy and wise and good. From him I have hidden nothing whatever, and he agrees with me that I have no choice--that duty points unmistakably to the course I am pursuing."

Again a flash of suggestion struck his hearer.

"One person--a man," he repeated. "Arthur, is it some priest? Have they been converting or perverting you, my boy? Are you going over to Rome, fancying yourself called to be a Trappist, or a--those fellows at the Grande Chartreuse, you remember?"

For the second time during the interview, Arthur smiled, and his smile was a trifle less ghastly this time.

"No, again," he said. "You're quite on a wrong tack. I have not the slightest inclination that way. I--I wish I had. No, my adviser is no priest. But he's one of the best of men, all the same, and one of the wisest."

"You won't tell me who he is?"

"I cannot."

"And"--Philip was reluctant to try his last hope, and felt conscious that he would do it clumsily--"Arthur," he burst out, "you will see her--Daisy--once more? She has a right to it. You are putting enough upon her without refusing this one request of hers."

He stood up as he spoke. He himself had grown strangely pale, and seeing this, as he glanced at him, Lingard's own face became ashen.

He shook his head.

"Good God!" he said, "I think this might have been spared me. No, I will not see her again. The only thing I can do for her is to refuse this last request. Tell her so, Philip--tell her what I say. And now leave me. Don't shake hands with me. I don't wish it, and I daresay you don't. If--if we never meet again, you and I--and who knows?--if this is our goodbye, thank you, old fellow, thank you for all you have tried to do. Perhaps I know the cost of it to you better than you imagine. Good-bye, Phil!"

Keir turned towards the door. But he looked back ere he reached it. Arthur was standing as he had been--motionless.

"You're not thinking of killing yourself, are you?" he said quietly.

Arthur looked at him. His eyes had a different expression now--or was it that something was gleaming softly in them that had not been there before?

"No, no--I am not going to be false to my colours. I--I don't care to talk much about it, but--I am a Christian, Phil."

"At least I can put that horrid idea out of the poor child's head, then," thought Keir to himself. Though to Arthur he did not reply, save by a bend of his head.

* * * * *

Time passed. And in his wings there was healing.

At twenty-four, Daisy Trevannion, though her face bore traces of suffering of no common order, was yet a sweet and serene woman. To some extent she had outlived the strange tragedy of her earlier girlhood.

It had never been explained. The one person who might naturally have been looked to, to throw some light on the mystery, Lingard's sister, Lady West, was, as her brother had stated, completely in the dark. At first she had been disposed to blame Daisy, or her family; and though afterwards convinced that in so doing she was entirely mistaken, she never became in any sense confidential with them on the matter. And after a few months they met no more. For her husband was sent abroad, and detained there on an important diplomatic mission.

Now and then, in the earlier days of her broken engagement, Daisy would ask Philip to "try to find out if Mary West knows where he is". And to please her he did so. But all he learnt was--what indeed was all the sister had to tell--that Arthur was off again on his old travels--to the Capricorn Islands or to the moon, it was not clear which.

"He has promised that I shall hear from him once a year--as near my birthday as he can manage. That is all I can tell you," she said, trying to make light of it.

And whether this promise was kept or no, one thing was certain--Arthur Lingard had entirely disappeared from London society.

At twenty-five, Daisy married Philip. He had always loved her, though he had never allowed her to suspect it; and knowing herself and her history as he did, he was satisfied with the true affection she could give him--satisfied, that is to say, in the hope and belief that his own devotion would kindle ever-increasing response on her side. And his hopes were not disappointed. They were very happy.

Now for the sequel to the story--such sequel, that is to say, as there is to give--a suggestion of explanation rather than any positive _denoument_ of the mystery.

They--Philip and Daisy--had been married for two or three years when one evening it chanced to them to dine at the house of a rather well-known literary man with whom they were but slightly acquainted. They had been invited for a special reason; their hosts were pleasant and genial people who liked to get those about them with interests in common. And Keir, though his wings were now so happily clipt, still held his position as a traveller who had seen and noted much in his former wanderings.

"We think your husband may enjoy a talk with Sir Abel Maynard, who is with us for a few days," Mrs. Thorncroft had said in her note.

And Sir Abel, not being of the surly order of lions who refuse to roar when they know that their audience is eager to hear them, made himself most agreeable. He appreciated Mr. Keir's intelligence and sympathy, and was by no means indifferent to Mrs. Keir's beauty, though "evidently," he thought to himself, "she is not over fond of reminiscences of her husband's travels. Perhaps she is afraid of his taking flight again."

During dinner the conversation turned, not unnaturally, on a subject just at that moment much to the fore. For it was about the time of the heroic Damien's death.

"No," said Sir Abel, in answer to some inquiry, "I never visited his place. But I have seen lepers--to perfection. By-the-by," he went on suddenly, "I came across a queer, a very queer, story a while ago. I wonder, Keir, if you can throw any light upon it?"

But at that moment Mrs. Thorncroft gave the magic signal and the women left the room.

By degrees the men came straggling upstairs after them, then a little music followed, but it was not till much later in the evening than was usual with him that Philip made his appearance in the drawing-room, preceded by Sir Abel Maynard. Philip looked tired and rather "distrait," thought Daisy, whose eyes were keen with the quick discernment of perfect affection, and she was not sorry when, before very long, he whispered to her that it was getting late, might they not leave soon? Nor was she sorry that during the interval before her husband made this suggestion, Sir Abel, who had been devoting himself to her, had avoided all mention of his travels, and had been amusing her with his criticism of a popular novel instead. She could never succeed altogether in banishing the painful association of Arthur Lingard from allusion to her husband's old wanderings.

Poor Arthur! Where was he now?

"Philip, dear," she said, slipping her hand into his when they found themselves alone, and with a longish drive before them, in their own little brougham, "there is something the matter. You have heard something? Tell me what it is."

Keir hesitated.

"Yes," he said, "I suppose it is best to tell you. It is the strange story Sir Abel alluded to before you left the room."

"About--about Arthur? Is it about Arthur?" whispered she, shivering a little.

Philip put his arm round her.

"I can't say. We shall perhaps never know certainly," he replied. "But it looks very like it. Listen, dear. Some little time ago--two or three years ago--Maynard spent some days at one of those awful leper settlements--never mind where. I would just as soon you did not know. There, to his amazement, among the most devoted of the attendants upon the poor creatures he found an Englishman, young still, at least by his own account, though to judge by his appearance it would have been impossible to say. For he was himself far gone, very far gone in some ways, in the disease. But he was, or had been, a man of strong constitution and enormous determination. Ill as he was, he yet managed to tend others with indescribable devotion. They looked upon him as a saint. Maynard did not like to inquire what had brought him to such a pass--he, the poor fellow, was a perfect gentleman. But the day Sir Abel was leaving, the Englishman took him to some extent into his confidence, and asked him to do him a service. This was his story. Some years before, in quite a different part of the world, the young man had nursed a leper--a dying leper--for some hours. He believed for long that he had escaped all danger, in fact he never thought of it; but it was not so. There must have been an unhealed wound of some kind--a slight scratch would do it--on his hand. No need to go into the details of his first misgivings, of the horror of the awful certainty at last. It came upon him in the midst of the greatest happiness; he was going to be married to a girl he adored."

"Oh, Philip, Philip, why did he not tell?" Daisy wailed.

"He consulted the best and greatest physician, who--as a friend, he said--approved of the course he had mapped out for himself. He decided to tell no one, to break off his engagement, and die out of her--the girl's--life; not once, after he was sure, did he see her again. He would not even risk touching her hand. And he believed that telling would only have brought worse agony upon her in the end than the agony he was forced to inflict. For he was a doomed man, though they gave him a few years to live. And he did the only thing he could do with those years. He set off to the settlement in question. Maynard was to call there some months later on his way home, and the young man knew he would be dead then, and so he was. But he showed Maynard a letter explaining all, that he had got ready--all but the address--_that_, he would not add till he was in the act of dying. There must be no risk of her knowing till he was dead. And this letter Maynard was to fetch on his return. He did so, but--there had been no time to add the address--death had come suddenly. All sorts of precautions had been ordered by the poor fellow as to disinfecting the letter and so on. But it did not seem to Maynard that these had been taken. So he contented himself by spreading out the paper on the sea-shore and learning it by heart, and then leaving it. The sum total of it was what I have told you, but not one name was named."

Daisy was sobbing quietly.

"Was it he?" she said.

"Yes, I feel sure of it," Philip replied. "For I can supply the missing link. The one time I really quarrelled with Arthur was when we were in Siberia. He _would_ spend a night in a dying leper's hut. I would have done it myself, I believe and hope, had it been necessary. But by riding on a few miles we could have got help for the poor creature--which indeed I did--and more efficient help than ours. But Lingard was determined, and no ill seemed to come of it. I had almost forgotten the circumstance. I never associated it with the mystery that caused you such anguish, my poor darling."

"It was he," whispered Daisy. "Philip, he was a hero after all."

"Not even you can feel that, as I do," Keir replied.

Then they were silent.

* * * * *

A few weeks afterwards came a letter from Lady West, in her far-off South American home. Daisy had not heard from her for years.

"By circuitous ways, I need not explain the details," she wrote, "I have learnt that my darling brother is dead. I thought I had better tell you. I am sure his most earnest wish was that you should live to be happy, dear Daisy, as I trust you are. And I know you have long forgiven him the sorrow he caused you--it was worse still for him."

"I wonder," said Daisy, "if she knows more?"

But the letter seemed to add certainty to their own conviction.

THE CLOCK THAT STRUCK THIRTEEN.

"You misunderstand me wilfully, Helen. I neither said nor inferred anything of the kind."

"What did you mean then, for if words to you bear a different interpretation from what they do to me, I must trouble you to speak in _my_ language when addressing me," angrily retorted a young girl, with what nature had intended to be a very pretty face with a charming expression, but which at the present moment was far from deserving the latter part of the description. Eyes flashing, cheeks burning and hands clenched in the excess of her indignation, stood Helen Beaumont by the window of her pretty little sitting-room, or "studio" as she loved to call it, presenting a striking contrast to the peaceful scene without; where a carefully tended garden still looked bright with the remaining flowers of late September. Her companion, standing in the attitude invariably assumed now-a-days by novelists' heroes, namely, leaning against the mantelpiece, was a young man of equally prepossessing appearance with her own. At first glance no one would have suspected him of sharing any of the young lady's excitement, for his expression was so calm as almost to merit the description of sleepy. Looking more closely, however, the signs of some unusual disturbance or annoyance were to be descried, for his face was slightly flushed and his blue eyes had lost the look of sweet temper evidently their ordinary expression.

"What I meant to say, Helen, was not, as you choose to misinterpret it, that I blame you for proper womanly courage and spirit, than which, I consider few things more admirable, nor as you are well aware do I admire the sweetly silly and affectedly timid order of young ladies. But this I do mean and repeat, that I think your persistence in this foolish scheme a piece of sheer bravado and foolhardiness, totally unworthy of any sensible person's approval, and what is more----"

"Thank you, Malcolm, or rather Mr. Willoughby, I have heard quite enough,"--and as she spoke, Helen turned from the window out of which she had been gazing while Malcolm spoke, with, it must be confessed, very little interest in the varied tints of the dahlias blooming in all their rich brilliance on the terrace,--"I have heard quite enough, and think myself exceedingly fortunate in having heard it now before it is too late. You may imagine," she continued, "that I am speaking in temper, but it is not so. I have for some time suspected, and now feel convinced, that we are not suited to each other. Your own words bear witness to your opinion of me, 'self-willed, foolhardy, unwomanly,' and I know not what other pretty expressions you have applied to me, and for my part I tell you simply that I cannot and will not marry a man whose opinion of what a woman should be is like yours; and who insults me constantly as you do, by telling me how far short I fall of his ideal. Marry your ideal, Malcolm Willoughby, and I shall wish you joy of her. Some silly little fool who dares not move a step alone in her bewitching helplessness. But do not think to convert _me_ into such a piece of contemptible inanity," and so saying she turned towards the door.

"Helen," said Malcolm quietly, so quietly that Helen was arrested in spite of herself, "you are unjust, unreasonable and ungenerous. You know that I never cared for any woman but you, you know that nothing pleases me more than to witness your superiority in numberless particulars to the general run of girls, and you know too the pride and pleasure I take in your skill as an artist; but blinded by self-will you will not see the perfect reasonableness of my request that you will abandon this absurd expedition. If not for your own sake, at least do so for Edith's, who is as you know left in your special charge by Leonard."

The first part of this speech seemed, to judge by Helen's transparent countenance, likely to soften and move her, but the unlucky word "absurd" and the tone in which Malcolm spoke, as if it was necessary to remind her of her duty, effectually did away with any good result that his remonstrance might have worked. She turned, with her hand on the door, and saying, "I have told you my decision, Mr. Willoughby, and I wish you good-evening," left the room. Malcolm remained behind, lost in thought of no pleasurable nature. At last he too left the little sitting-room, after first ringing the bell and ordering his horse to be brought round. Making his way to the front entrance he there "mounted and rode away," his spirits, poor fellow, by no means the better for his visit.

It is time, I think, to explain the cause of the lovers' quarrel above described. Helen and Edith Beaumont were orphans, left to the guardianship of their brother Leonard, in whose house we have seen the former. Delicacy, induced by a severe illness some months previously, had obliged Mr. Beaumont, accompanied by his wife, to go for the autumn and winter months to the south of France, leaving his sisters at home under the nominal chaperonage of an elderly aunt, who performed her duty to the perfect satisfaction of her nieces by letting them do exactly as they liked. More correctly speaking, perhaps, exactly as Helen liked, for the younger of the two, Edith, a girl of seventeen and four years her sister's junior, could hardly be said to have likes or dislikes distinct from those of Helen. Possibly Mr. Beaumont might not have left the two to their own devices with so easy a mind, had he not quitted home happy in the knowledge of Helen's engagement to his friend and neighbour Malcolm Willoughby. The gentleman in question lived within a few miles of our heroine's home, having succeeded some years before to his father's property. His only sister, Mrs. Lindsay, was at this time living with him for a few months while awaiting her husband's return from India, and though some years older, was, next to her sister, Helen's most valued friend and companion. Malcolm Willoughby was a man of high character, peculiarly fitted, by his unusual amount of sterling good sense, to be the guide of an impulsive, enthusiastic girl like pretty Helen Beaumont, whom to know was to love, and who would have been altogether charming but for her inordinate amount of self-will and inveterate dislike to being, as she expressed it, "ordered" to do or not to do whatever came into her head. She and her sister had real talent as artists, and their spirited and well-executed landscapes bore but little resemblance to the insipid productions of most young lady painters. To improving herself in this direction Helen had devoted much time and labour. Unfortunately, it had so absorbed her thoughts and desires that in its pursuance she was inclined sometimes to forget what were for her more important avocations. Helen's fortunate engagement to Mr. Willoughby had for some time past corrected these only objectionable tendencies in her character, and all had gone smoothly and happily till the date at which our story commences, when, unluckily, some artist friends had filled her head with their descriptions of the exquisite autumn scenery, "effects of foliage," etc., to be seen in a mountainous and hitherto little explored part of Wales. Her imagination, and through her that of her sister Edith, ran wild on the subject, and now nothing would satisfy her but a journey to the spot in question, by themselves, in order that they might enjoy their freedom to the utmost, and revel in the delight of painting some of the wonderful Welsh scenery described to them. The idea had at first been mooted half in joke, but an impolitic expression of strong disapprobation on the part of Mr. Willoughby had done more to determine Helen on carrying it out than all the anticipated artistic enjoyment.

"It will be just the opportunity I wanted," thought the foolish girl, "of showing him that I do not intend to be a silly nonentity of a wife with no opinion of my own, and hedged in by all the absurd old-fashioned conventionalities which will not allow a woman to have an existence of her own or give her opportunity to cultivate what talents she may possess."

And once determined, Miss Helen remained inflexible. In vain Mr. Willoughby remonstrated, in vain even their indulgent old aunt expressed her horror at the idea of "two young girls scouring the country by themselves," her own feebleness rendering her accompanying them out of the question. Go to Wales Helen and Edith must, and go they would, till at last the discussion with her _fiance_ terminated in the disastrous manner above recorded.

I will not undertake to describe Helen's feelings, when, in the solitude of her own room, she thought over what she had done. Had she herself been obliged to put them into words, I believe she would have repeated that she had not acted in temper and that the stand she had made for her womanly freedom, as she would have expressed it, had been an act of supreme heroism and devotion to the cause of right. She said all this to herself and tried hard, very hard to believe it; and to stifle the little voice at the very bottom of her heart which whispered that she had behaved like a silly, self-willed, petted child, and shown herself undeserving of so good a gift as the love of a man like Malcolm Willoughby. The little voice was smothered for the time by exaggerated anticipations of the delights of their tour and attempted self-congratulations at her newly regained liberty to do as she chose; for Malcolm did not come near her again, and it took all her pride to hide from herself and others the shock she felt through all her being when, in the course of a few days, she heard accidentally that Mr. Willoughby was leaving home for an uncertain length of time.

"He has taken me at my word," thought she, "but of course I meant him to do so," and she hurried on the preparations for their journey which they were now on the eve of.

"You will at least take Maxwell," said Aunt Fanny timidly.

"Maxwell, aunt! No, thank you," said Helen ironically; "she would be crying for her spring mattress the first night and thinking she was going to die if she heard the wind howl. No, thank you, I mean to be independent for once in my life, and so does Edith."

Other twenty-four hours saw our two young ladies on their way. Unaccustomed as they were to travelling alone they got on very well for the greater part of their journey, till they arrived at a certain railway station in Wales, of name unpronounceable by civilised tongue, but which sounded to them like that of the place where they were to leave the railway. Never doubting but what they were right in so doing Helen and Edith calmly descended from their carriage, watched the train disappear in the tunnel hard by, and then began to make inquiries for a conveyance to transport themselves and their luggage, white umbrellas, easels and all, the five or six miles which they imagined were all that divided them from their destination. A colloquy ensued with the most intelligible of two or three fly-drivers, carmen, or whatever these personages are called in Wales; but what was Helen's consternation on learning that fifteen miles at least remained to be traversed; they having left the railway at Llanfar, two stations too soon, instead of remaining in it till they reached Llanfair, the point nearest to the farm-house where lodgings had been taken for them. No chance of a train to Llanfair till to-morrow morning, for the line was a new one, and the traffic as yet but small. No prospect of a night's accommodation where they were. Nothing for it but to trust to the driver's assurance that he and his unpromising-looking horse could easily convey them to the farm-house, with the inevitably unpronounceable name. With some unconfessed misgivings Helen and Edith mounted the vehicle awaiting them, and drove off along a muddy, jolting lane into the quickly gathering gloom.

Shivering on her uncomfortable seat, did Helen wish herself at home again in her own little sitting-room, with Aunt Fanny peacefully knitting, Edith kneeling on the hearth-rug, and Malcolm's face bright with the reflection of the ruddy log fire so welcome in autumn evenings; all together as was their wont, enjoying "blind man's holiday"?

I think we had better not press the question too closely. However, "it's a long lane that has no ending," and even this dreary journey gradually drew to a close. They passed but few houses of any kind, one or two straggling hamlets were left behind, and for some two or three miles the road had been perfectly solitary, when they suddenly heard wheels advancing to meet them, and in a few minutes a car like their own drove towards them, and being hailed by their driver, drew up at their side. A jabbering ensued of directions asked and given, and they again drove on.

"Are you sure you know the way?" said Helen timidly.

"Oh yes, miss," the driver answered confidently, and further informed them that the car they had met, had just returned from their own destination (being translated), the Black Nest Farm, having there deposited a traveller who had taken the middle course of leaving the railway at the intermediate stoppage between Llanfar and Llanfair. Other three-quarters of an hour and they pulled up at last before a house which the darkness prevented their seeing more of than that it was long and low. They stumbled up the rough garden path, and in answer to their knock, the door was opened by a tidy, clean-looking old woman, with a flickering candle in her hand, evidently surprised at their appearance. She had, she said, quite given up thoughts of their coming that night, and feared the fire in the sitting-room was out. Thankful to have reached the Black Nest at last, a chilly room seemed a smaller evil than the two girls would have considered it at home; and after all, things were not so bad, for the fire in the little farmhouse parlour, to which their landlady conducted them, was not quite out, and a little judicious coaxing soon brought it round.

Their hostess's and their own first idea was of course _tea_. What a blessing, by the way, it is that British womankind in general, high and low, rich and poor, old and young, have this _one_ taste in common! Refreshed by the homely meal speedily set before them, Helen and Edith proceeded, under the guidance of the old woman (apparently the only inhabitant of the house), and the flickering candle, to inspect their sleeping apartment. The result was not eminently satisfactory, for it struck them as gloomy, ill-ventilated, and a long way from their parlour, though but few rooms appeared to intervene between the two. This puzzled them at the time, but was afterwards explained by the fact that Black Nest Farm-house had originally consisted of two one-storeyed cottages standing at some yards distance from each other, and which, on becoming the property of one owner, had been united by a long passage; which arrangement was looked upon in the neighbourhood as a triumph of architectural ingenuity. On returning to their sitting-room Helen's eye fell on a door beside their own which she had not before noticed, and she inquired if that was a bedroom. To which the old woman replied in the affirmative, but added that they could not have it, as it and a small sitting-room opening out of it were engaged by a "strange gentleman". And besides this, she added, the bedroom was not so desirable for ladies, having a second, or rather third door to the outside of the house. The only other room they could have was so small that she did not think they would like it, but they should see for themselves, and so saying she turned towards a recess in the passage. Helen followed her, but the flickering candle suddenly throwing light in a new direction, she gave a little exclamation of alarm at what appeared at the first moment to be a very ugly grinning portrait high up on the wall.

"It's only the clock, miss," said the old woman. "Though, to be sure, it is quare," and as she spoke she threw the light more fully upon the object that had startled Helen, which she now perceived to be a very antique clock, standing high in a dark wooden case, and with the face she had seen, peeping at you as it were from behind the dial-plate. An ugly, coarsely painted face, with a disagreeably mocking expression it seemed to Helen; nor was it the only repulsive feature in this very remarkable clock, for the artist appeared to have outdone himself in the grotesquely hideous devices at the bottom of the dial. Death's heads, cross-bones, and other equally unpleasant objects of various kinds, curiously intermingled with a condensed solar system, in which sun, moon and stars appeared jumbled together haphazard. The general object of the whole evidently being to bring before the spectator the ghastly side of his future, and to read him a wholesome, but certainly not attractive, homily on the shortness of life, and the speed with which time was ticking away. Helen felt half fascinated by its hideousness.

"Dear me, what a very curious clock!" she ejaculated, and the old woman repeated, with a little inward chuckle at what she evidently considered the admiration drawn forth by her heirloom:--

"Yes, sure it _is_ quare."

An uncanny object it certainly was, and Helen felt relieved that the room in its immediate vicinity was so small as to be out of the question for the accommodation of her sister and herself. Re-entering the sitting-room she found poor Edith looking so utterly worn-out that she proposed that they should at once go to bed; which they accordingly did, followed by the old woman with offers of assistance. Passing the door of "the strange gentleman's" room, they heard sounds of some one moving inside, and Edith sleepily remarked that she wondered what could have brought a gentleman to an outlandish place like the Black Nest, unless, like themselves, he came to take views in the neighbourhood. Helen pricked up her ears at this and inquired of Mrs. Jones if their fellow-lodger was an artist. Mrs. Jones thought not, but seemed unwilling to pursue the topic of the strange gentleman further. In rather a forced manner she changed the subject by inquiring if the young ladies would like to hire her pony while there, as it was rough walking, and her grandson Griffith, the only other inhabitant of the cottage, a little lad of twelve, could lead it for them, and show them the way whenever they chose. Helen gladly closed with the offer.

"Dear me, Mrs. Jones," she exclaimed "how very lonely you must be living here with no one but a little boy. Have you no near neighbours?"

"None nearer than three miles ma'am, for the farm-men live at a distance, save old Thomas in the last cottage you passed, but he is bed-ridden. My widow daughter, Griffith's mother, was with me till she took ill, two winters ago, and died before the doctor could get to her. Yes, it is lonesome like in winter to be sure. It's not often that gentry like you, miss, care to be in these parts so late in the year."

Further inquiries elicited that the nearest church was a good five miles off, that there was no doctor nearer than Llanfar, that the butcher only came in the winter once a fortnight and that irregularly; in consequence of which the Black Nesters had often to depend upon their own scanty resources, the roads being almost impassable in stormy weather.

"Don't you think it feels rather dreary, Helen?" said Edith, as she was falling asleep.

"_Eerie_, rather, I should say," replied her sister, "but that, you know, is the beauty of it. In the morning, I daresay, it will look bright enough, but I confess I do not like that clock. Listen, can't you hear its ticking, faintly, even here, at the end of that long passage?"

"What clock do you mean? I saw no clock," said Edith, but almost before Helen could answer, her soft regular breathing told that she was asleep. Helen however, could not so quickly compose herself. She felt excited and vaguely uneasy; and when she at last fell asleep, it was only to have her discomfort increased, by absurd, yet alarming dreams. With them all the ugly clock was grotesquely intermingled. Sometimes it was herself, sometimes Edith, and once Malcolm, whom she fancied in some position of terrible peril, always associated with the clock, and at last she awoke with a half-smothered scream of horror at the most frightful dream of all; in which the "strange gentleman," their fellow-lodger, was pursuing her with a veil over his face, which just as he caught her fell off, and disclosed, horrible to relate, the face on the clock.

Edith started up as Helen convulsively clutched her, and exclaiming, "What in the world is the matter?" really thought Helen was going out of her mind when she replied, "That horrible clock;" and as she spoke, as if invoked, the clock began to strike: "One, two, three, four," and so on. "Is it never going to stop?" said Helen. Poor Edith, half asleep still, listened with her.

"Edith, I am almost certain that clock struck _thirteen_," said Helen in an awe-struck voice; and then they heard a door shut at the end of the passage.

"Helen, you have been dreaming, and you are only half awake now," said Edith. "It is not like you to waken me in this frightening way, please let me go to sleep."

"I am very sorry," said Helen penitently, and she too closed her eyes and tried hard to go to sleep, which of course she did, as soon as she left off trying, and had made up her mind to lie awake till daylight.

The morning broke clear and fresh; and, as Helen had said, things in general bore a very different aspect to that of the night before. Indoors, the quaint old house now looked simply picturesque, and Mrs. Jones the _beau ideal_ of a cheery old hostess. Even the face of the clock, when Helen pointed it out to Edith, seemed to have lost its mocking grin, and to be merely bidding them good-morning, with a comical smile at the consternation it had awakened the night before.