It would seem sometimes that Life has a way of keeping the balance between joy and pain, by making that which is a source of deepest sorrow to one the unlooked-for instrument of great joy to another.
It was so with the sorrow that came down like a cloud upon Hal's spirit, while she was yet striving bravely not to allow herself to fret over Sir Edwin's perfidy.
It was not until after Hermon's arrival that the announcement of Lorraine's death was sent to the papers. After an anxious consultation, Hald and Denton had decided she would have expressly wished nothing to be done which might bring the news to Alymer before his case was over, and so, while making all preparations for the funeral, they refrained from any announcement in the home papers.
Directly he arrived, the notice was dispatched.
Ethel Hayward, returning from her holiday to the dreary, empty Holloway flat, read it in the train as she journeyed. Instantly her mind was ful of Hal. She felt that in losing the one great woman friend of her life Hal would seem to have lost mother, sister, and friend in one.
She went home to the emptiness of the flat, with her heart so full of aching sympathy that some of the bitterness of her own loss was softened. On her sitting-room table was a beautiful array of flowers.
She looked at them with soft eyes, believing Hal had sent them, and her tenderness made her long to hold the girl in her arms and try to bring her a little comfort.
After a restless, troubled half-hour, she decided to go to her. She remembered it was the evening Dudley usually spent at the Imperial Institute, and she thought it almost certain Hal would be alone.
She dreaded going if Dudley was likely to be there, as the constraint between them was a misery to her, but she believed he was obliged to be out, remembering how he had always been engaged on Fridays during his engagement, and she took her courage in her hands for Hal's sake, and went to the Bloomsbury rooms for the first time.
The maid who opened the door was just going out, and being somewhat hurried, did not trouble to note whether she asked for Mr. Pritchard or Miss Pritchard, merely standing for her to come in, and then showing her into the sitting-room without properly announcing her, she hastened away.
So Ethel unexpectedly found herself face to face with Dudley, alone.
He was so astonished, that for a moment he seemed unable to rise, merely gazing at her with incredulous eyes, as if he thought he must be dreaming.
For the past hour he had sat with a book on his knee, without having read a line, for all the time his thoughts had been with her. He knew she had returned that night to her empty, desolate home. He had sent the flowers up himself, to try and mitigate the emptiness and lack of welcome.
He had longed to go to the station to meet her, if only to look after her luggage and see her safely into a cab. He hated to think of her arriving alone, and departing alone to that empty flat. His utter helplessness to do anything for her, when al his soul ached to do al , tore at his heart, and thrust mercilessly upon him again and again his blindness and folly in the past.
And then suddenly, in the midst of it, without any warning, she stood there in the room, looking at him with startled, abashed eyes.
No wonder, with a sense of non-comprehension, joy leapt to his own, transforming the white, unhappy gravity of his face to swift, questioning eagerness; while at the same time he breathed tensely,
"Ethel!... you!"
It was the first time he had ever used her Christian name, and in spite of her confusion she could not fail to hear the ring of gladness, of intense, almost unbelievable joy.
It sent the blood rushing to her white cheeks, and made her heart beat wildly. She moved forward a little unsteadily.
"I saw about Miss Vivian's death to-day, and I was afraid Hal would be all alone fretting... so I came to see -"
She broke off. Something like a sudden appeal in his eyes was unnerving her.
Dudley only heard vaguely what she said.
As she came forward he had seen that she was rather overcome; he had seen the quick scarlet in her face, fol owed by a striking parlor, and the bewildered surprise in her eyes.
What was it Hal had said that evening before she left? He could not remember, but he knew it meant that she did not think Ethel indifferent to him as he believed.
He knew she had meant more, but he had not dared to dwell upon it.
He stood up, but did not move towards her. Instead, he just stood looking, looking into her eyes. Hers fell, and again the quick colour came and went.
"Hal is not here," he said simply; "she went to Miss Vivian last week."
"Oh, I am glad. I was afraid she had not had time. I thought, when I saw the flowers..." An idea seemed to strike her suddenly. She looked at him, and her eyes were full of a question she could not ask. "I thought only Hal knew I should be returning to-day."
"I knew," he said simply.
"Did you... did you..." she was at a loss to finish.
This hesitating nervousness was new to him. He had never seen her before other than calmly self-possessed. It cal ed, with swift-cal ing, to his natural masculine strength and masculine protectiveness. It enabled him to grow sure of himself, and strong.
"Yes, I sent the flowers," he answered. "I wanted badly to come to the station to meet you, but I was afraid you might think it an impertinence." He came a little nearer. "Sould you have thought so?"
He seemed to be waiting for an answer, and she said shyly:
"I should have thought it very kind of you."
"I am always wanting to do things for you," he said, "and I am always afraid I shal only vex you. And I wouldn't vex you for the world," in a low, fervent voice.
Again she gave him a swift, shy, questioning glance, and he grew bolder still.
He came closer, and stood beside her.
"Most of al , I want to tel you that I love you with al my heart and soul and strength, and, until this moment, I have been afraid that that would vex you too."
She raised her eyes then, swimming in sudden tears of gladness.
"But it doesn't?... " he said eagerly, "you... you... Oh, Ethel! is it possible you would like me to say it?"
"It has been possible a long time, Dudley, but I did not think it would ever be said."
He took her hands in his and kissed first one and then the other. For the moment he was too overwhelmed at the suddenness of his joy to understand it.
"I thought you despised me," he breathed. "It did not seem possible you could do anything else; but Hal said I was wrong."
She smiled faintly.
"Yes; Hal knew," she told him. "I think she has known some time."
Then she seemed to sway a little.
"You are tired out," he exclaimed in quick commiseration. "What a brute I am, letting you stand al this time, after your long journey too! I have told myself over and over how I would take care of you if I might, and this is how I begin! Forgive me -."
He gently pushed her towards his own big chair, and when she had sunk down in it, fetched a cushion and a footstool. She leaned back wearily, looking up at him with eyes that were ful of deep joy, if not yet emancipated from their long, long vigil of sorrow.
"Is this all true, or am I dreaming? Yesterday - an hour ago - I thought it could never happen at al ."
"I too."
He was kneeling on one knee beside her now, holding her hand against his face for the comfort of it.
"I was thinking of you when you came. I am always thinking of you. My whole life is like a long thought of you. I was afraid it would never become any more. Since I grew to know myself better, it has never seemed possible any one like you could care for such as I."
She gave him her other hand confidingly.
"I think I have always cared, Dudley. Beside Basil, there has never been any one else who counted very much at al ."
It was good to be sitting there together by a fireside. So good indeed that it swept everything away that had stood between them, with swift, generous sweeping. There had been nothing real in the barrier, scarcely anything that needed explaining, only the foolish imaginings of two hearts that had become imbued with wrong impressions.
"I thought I loved Doris," he told her, stil caressing her hand; "but afterwards it was like a pale fancy to my love for you."
"I was terrified lest she should wreck both your lives," She answered.
"She cared so much for money, and the things money can buy. Without it, she might have grown bitter and hard and reckless. With it, she wil grow kinder, I think. She felt Basil's death very much. She shed the most genuine tears she has ever shed in her life. Dudley, if Basil had known that this was coming, it would have been a great comfort to him."
"He did know."
"He knew!..." in surprise. "How could he?"
"I told him. I saw he was fretting very much about you, and I guessed what was in his mind. I told him I loved you better than my life; and he said: "Thank God, it wil all come right some day."
"Ah, I am glad that he knew. Dear Basil, dear Basil. If he had been less splendid, Dudley, I think I should have taken my own life when he died and left me alone. But in the face of courage like his, one could not be a coward."
Later Dudley took her home. At the door he asked her pleadingly:
"May I came in for a moment? I want to see the flat as it looks now."
She led the way, and they stood together in the little sitting-room where Basil had lived and died, and where Dudley's flowers now shed a fragrance of welcome.
She buried her face in the delicate petals, with memories, and thoughts, and feelings too deep for words.
"It feels almost as if his spirit were here with us now," he said softly. "He was so sure he was only going to a grander and wider life.
I think he must have been right; and that to-night he _knows_."
Tears were in her eyes again. The loss was so recent stil - the memory so painful. He drew her to him, and kissed them away.
"That night, Ethel, that first, terrible night when you were alone, it nearly kil ed me to have to go away and leave you, to feel I could not do anything at all. You must let me comfort you doubly now to make up for it. You must come to me quickly." She smiled softly, and he added: "It would have been Basil's wish, too. He hated the office as much as I do. Tell them to-morrow that you're not coming any more."
Her smile deepened at his boyishness.
"There are certain hard-and-fast rules to be observed about leaving.
I'm afraid they won't waive them for you."
"Well, tel them you are going to be married... You _are_ going to be married, aren't you?..." for a moment he was almost like Hal. "Wel , why don't you answer? I want to know."
"I haven't made up my mind sufficiently yet," with a low, happy laugh.
"Then I must make it up for you."
His manner changed again to one of wondering, absorbing tenderness.
Hal had been right, as usual. Under the man's surface-narrowness and superiority was a deep, true heart that had only been waiting the hour of its great emancipation. He took her in his arms and kissed her again and again.
"Child," he breathed, "haven't I waited long enough? Every hour of the last few months, since I knew, has been like a year. Don't make me leave you here alone one moment longer than is necessary."
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. .
So it happened that when Hal came back to a dreary, empty, joyless London, an unexpected gladness was waiting for her.
The last few days had almost broken her spirit. The pathos of that lonely, far-off grave, in the little alien churchyard, where they tenderly left the remains of the beautiful, brilliant woman who had been so much in her life for so long, seemed more than she could bear.
They three had stood together, representing her richness in friendship, her poverty in blood ties. The wire to her mother had only brought the reply from some one in London that she was travelling in the South of Italy, and could not possibly arrive in time.
Alymer still seemed almost stunned. He had scarcely spoken since Danton told him what had happened. At first Hal had declined to see him at al , but in the end Denton, with his shrewd common sense, had talked her into a kindlier mood.
When they came back from the churchyard she had gone to him in the little sitting-room, where he sat alone, with bowed head. He stood up when she came in, but he did not speak. He waited for her to say what she would, with a look of quiet misery in his eyes that touched her heart.
For the first time she saw how changed he was. There seemed nothing of the old boyishness left. Only a quiet, grave, deeply suffering man.
She had no conception that she, personally, added every hour and every moment to that suffering. She did not know he was enduring a bitter sense of having lost her for ever, as wel as the friend and benefactress he had undoubtedly loved very dearly, if not with the same passionate love that she had known for him.
But he only stood before her there, very straight and very stil , and with that old, quiet, ineradicable dignity which never failed him.
"Lorraine left a little written message for me," she said to him.
She paused a moment, and her eyes wandered away out to the little garden, with its last fading summer beauty yielding already to autumn.
And so she did not see the expression in his fine face when he ventured to look at her. She did not know that because of his hopeless love, and withal his quiet courage and quiet pain, at that moment he looked even more splendidly a man than perhaps he had ever done before.
Had life been kinder, he would have crossed the space between them in one step, and folded her in such an embrace as would have lost her slim form entirely in his enfolding bigness. He would have given her a love, and a lover, such as fal s to the lot of but few women.
And she stood there, with her head half turned away; with sad eyes and drooping lips that went to his heart; her mind full of her dead friend, and scarcely a glance for him.
"She said I was not to blame you for anything, and she told me to give you her dear, dear love."
He winced visibly, but stood his ground.
"Thank you," he said, in a very low voice.
Then, with a sudden, longing triumphing over all:
"I prefer to take the blame upon myself, but even then I hope some day you wil find it possible to forgive me."
"I shal never forget how much Lorraine loved you," was all the poor hope she gave him.
"Wil that make it possible for us to remain friends?"
"Yes; I hope so." She gave him her hand with an old-fashioned solemnity. "For Lorraine's sake," she said very simply, and then left him.
He turned with a stifled groan, and, leaning his elbows on the mantelpiece, buried his face in his hands.
Yet in that painful hour, out of al the tragic mistakes of her life, Lorraine might have gleaned this gladness. In that hour he was nearer than he had ever been before to the man she had striven to make him; for, merciful y for all mankind, there is a "power outside ourselves,"
which out of wrong, and weakness, and pain can bring forth good.
The sad trio returned to London the following day, and Hal wondered forlornly if Dudley would leave his office early to come and meet her.
When she stepped out on the platform he and Ethel were standing together, looking for her. Then they saw her, and Ethel came forward first, holding out both hands, with a subdued light in her face, that made Hal pause and wonder.
"How did you know? It was nice of you to come," she said, with another question in her eyes.
"Dudley told me, dear. I have been thinking of you so much."
Then Dudley stepped up to them, and in his face, too, was this subdued gladness.
Hal looked from one to the other.
"Have you?..." she began, and paused uncertainly.
"Yes, dear"; and Ethel blushed charmingly. "I am going to be your sister, so I thought you would let me begin at once, and come to meet you, and try to comfort you a little."
"Oh," said Hal, drawing a deep breath; "and I thought I was never going to be glad about anything again."