A SOBBING wind and a weeping rain beat round the walls of Arranstoun, and the great gray turrets and towers made a grim picture against the November sky, darkening toward late afternoon, as its master came through the postern gate and across the lawn to his private rooms. He had been tramping the moorland beyond the park without Binko or a gun, his thoughts too tempestuous to bear with even them. For the letter to Messrs. McDonald and Malden had gone, and the first act of the tragedy of his freedom had been begun.
It was a colossal price to pay for honor and friendship, but while they had been brigands and robbers for hundreds of years, the Arranstouns had not been dishonorable men, and had once or twice in their history done a great and generous thing.
Michael was not of the character which lauded itself, indeed he was never introspective nor thought of himself at all. He was just strong and living and breathing, his actions governed by an inherited sense of the fitness of things for a gentleman's code, which, unless it was swamped, as on one occasion it had been by violent passion, very seldom led him wrong.
Now he determined never to look ahead or picture the blankness of his days as they must become with no hope of ever seeing Sabine. He supposed vaguely that the pain would grow less in time. He should have to play a lot of games, and take tremendous interest in his tenants and his property and perhaps presently go into Parliament. And if all that failed, he could make some expedition into the wilds again. He was too healthy and wellbalanced to have even in this moment of deep suffering any morbid ideas.
When he had changed his soaking garments, he came back into his sitting-room and pulled Binko upon his knees. The dog and his fat wrinkles seemed some kind of comfort to him.
"She remembered you, Binko, old man," he said, caressing the creature's ears. "She is the sweetest little darling in all the world. You would have loved her soft brown hair and her round dimpled cheek. And she loves your master, Binko, just as he loves her; she has forgiven him for everything of long ago—and if she could, she would come back here, and live with us and make us divinely happy—as we believed she was going to do once when we were young."
And then he thought suddenly of Henry's home—the stately Elizabethan house amidst luxuriant, peaceful scenery—not grim and strong like Arranstoun—though she preferred gaunt castles, evidently, since she had bought Héronac for her own. But the thought of Henry's home and her adorning it brought too intimate pictures to his imagination; they galled him so that at last he could not bear it and started to his feet.
It was possible to part from her and go away, but it was not possible to contemplate calmly the fact of her being the wife of another man. Material things came always more vividly to Michael than spiritual ones, and the vision he had conjured up was one of Sabine encircled by Henry's arms. This was unbearable—and before he was aware of it he found he was clenching his fists in rage, and that Binko was sitting on his haunches, blinking at him, with his head on one side in his endeavors to understand.
Michael pulled himself together and laughed bitterly aloud.
"I must just never think of it, old man," he told the dog, "or I shall go mad."
Then he sat down again. With what poignant regret he looked back upon his original going to China! If only he had stayed and gone after her, that next day, and seized her again, and brought her back here to this room—they would have had five years of happiness. She was sweeter now far than she had been then, and he could have watched her developing, instead of her coming to perfection all alone. That under these circumstances she might never have acquired that polish of mind, and strange dignity and reserve of manner which was one of her greatest attractions, did not strike him—as it has been plainly said, he was not given to analysis in his judgment of things.
"I wish she had had a baby, Binko," he remarked, when once more seated in his chair. "Then she would have been obliged to return at once of her own accord."
Binko grunted and slobbered his acquiescence and sympathy, with his wise old fat head poked into his master's arm.
"You are trying to tell me that as I had gone off to China, she couldn't have done that in any case, you old scoundrel. And of course you are right. But she did not try to, you know. There was no letter from her among the hundreds which were waiting for me at Hong Kong—or here when I got back. She could have sent me a cable, and I would have returned like a shot from anywhere. But she did not want me then; she wanted to be free—and now, when she does, her hands are already tied. The whole cursed thing is her own fault, and that is what is the biggest pain, old dog."
Then his thoughts wandered back to their scene in Rose Forster's sitting-room—that was pleasure indeed! And he leaned back in his big chair and let himself dream. He could hear her words telling him that she loved him and could feel her soft lips pressed in passion to his own.
"My God! I can't bear it," he cried at last, once more clenching his hands. And so it went on through days and nights of anguish, the aspects of the case repeating themselves in endless persistence, until with all his will and his strong health and love of sport and vigorous work, the agony of desire for Sabine grew into an obsession.
Whatever sins he had committed in his life, indeed his punishment had come.
Sabine, for her part, found the days not worth living. Nothing in life or nature stays at a standstill; if stagnation sets in, then death comes—and so it was that her emotions for Michael did not remain the same, but grew and augmented more and more as the certainty that they were parted for ever forced itself upon her brain.
They had not been back in London a day when Mr. Parsons announced to her that at last all was going well. Mr. Arranstoun had put the matter in train and soon she would be free. And, shrewd American that he was, he wondered why she should get so pale. The news did not appear to be such a very great pleasure to her after all! Her greatest concern seemed to be that he should arrange that there should be no notice of anything in the papers.
"I particularly do not wish Lord Fordyce ever to know that my name was Arranstoun," she said. "I will pay anything if it is necessary to stop reports—and if such things are possible to do in this country?"
But Mr. Parsons could hold out no really encouraging hopes of this. No details would probably be known, but that Michael Arranstoun had married a Sabine Delburg and now divorced her would certainly be announced in the Scotch journals, where the Arranstouns and their Castle were of such interest to the public.
"If only I had been called Mary Smith!" Sabine almost moaned. "If Lord Fordyce sees this he must realize that, although he knows me as Sabine Howard, I was probably Sabine Delburg."
"I should think you had better inform his lordship yourself at once. There is no disgrace in the matter. Arranstoun is a very splendid name," Mr. Parsons ventured to remind her.
But Sabine shut her firm mouth. Not until it became absolutely necessary would she do this thing.
Henry's company now had no longer power to soothe her; she found herself crushing down sudden inclinations to be capricious to him or even unkind—and then she would feel full of remorse and regret when she saw the pain in his fond eyes. She was thankful that they were returning to Paris, and then she meant to go straight to Héronac, telling him he must see her no more until she was free. It was the month of the greatest storms there; it would suit her exactly and it was her very own. She need not act for only Madame Imogen and Père Anselme. But when she thought of this latter a sensation of discomfort came. How could she read in peace with the dear old man, who was so keen and so subtle he would certainly divine that all was not well? And ever his sentence recurred to her: "Remember always, my daughter, that le Bon Dieu settles things for us mortals if we leave it all to Him, but if we take the helm in the direction of our own affairs, it may be that He will let circumstance draw us into rough waters." And then, that as she had taken the helm she must abide by her word. Bitterness and regret were her portion—in a far greater degree than after that other crisis of her life, when its realities had come to her, and she knew she must bear them alone. She had been too young then to understand half the possibilities of mental pain, and also there was no finality about anything—all might develop into sunshine again. Now she had the most cruel torture of all, the knowledge that she herself by her wilfulness and pride had pulled down the blinds and brought herself into darkness, and that there was not anything to be done.
Nothing could have been more unhappy than was the state of these two young people in their separate homes. In the old days when she used to try and banish the too lenient thoughts of Michael, she had always the picture of his selfishness and violent passion to call up to her aid—but that was blotted out now, and in its place there was the memory that it was he, not she, who had behaved nobly and decided to sacrifice all happiness to be true to his friend. Sometimes when she first got back to Héronac she, too, allowed herself to dream of their good-bye, and the cruel sweetness of that brief moment of bliss, and she would go through strange thrills and quivers and stretch out her arms in the firelight and whisper his name aloud—"Michael—my dear love!"
She could not even bear the watching, affectionate eyes of Madame Imogen and sent her to Paris on a month's holiday. The Père Anselme had been away when she arrived, at the deathbed of an old sister at Versailles, so she was utterly alone in her grim castle, with only the waves.
The once looked-for letters from Henry were a dreaded tie now. She would have to answer them!—and as his grew more tender and loving, so hers unconsciously became more cold, with a note of bitterness in them sometimes of which she was unaware.
And Henry, in Paris with Moravia, wondered and grieved, and grew sick at heart as the days went on. He had let his political ambitions slide, and lingered there as being nearer his adored one, instead of going home.
Now love was playing his sad pranks with all of them, and the Princess Torniloni was receiving her share. The constant companionship of Henry had not made her feelings more calm. She was really in love with him with all that was best and greatest in her sweet nature, and it was changing her every idea. She was even getting a little vicarious happiness out of being a sympathetic friend, and as he grew sad and restless, so she became more gentle and tender, and watched over him like a fond mother with a child. She would not look ahead or face the fact that he had grown too dear; she was living her Indian summer, she told herself, and would not see its end.
"How awfully good you are to me, Princess," he told her one afternoon, as they walked together in the bright frosty air about a week after Sabine had left them. "I never have known so kind a woman. You seem to think of gentle and sympathetic things to say before one even asks for your sympathy. How greatly I misjudged your nation before I knew you and Sabine!"
"No, I don't think you did misjudge us in general," she replied. "Lots of us are horrid when we are on the make, and those are the sorts you generally meet in England. We would not go there, you see, if it was not to get something. We can have everything material as good, if not better, in our own country, only we can't get your repose, or your atmosphere, and we are growing so much cleverer and richer every year that we hate to think there is something we can't buy, and so we come over to England and set to work to grab it from you!"
"How delightful you are!"
"I am only echoing Sabine, who has all the quaint ideas. In that pretty young baby's head she thinks out evolution, and cause and effect, and heredity, and every sort of deep tiresome thing!"
"Have you heard from her to-day, Princess?" Henry's voice was a little anxious. She had not written to him.
"Yes."
"She seems to be in rather a queer mood. What has caused it, do you know, dear friend?"
"I have not the slightest idea—it has puzzled me, too," and Moravia's voice was perplexed. "Ever since the ball at your sister's she has been changed in some way. Had you any quarrel or—jar, or difference of opinion? Don't think I am asking from curiosity—I am really concerned."
Henry's distinguished face grew pinched-looking; it cut like a knife to have his vague unadmitted fears put into words.
"We had no discussions of any kind. She was particularly sweet, and spent nearly the whole evening with me, as you know. Is it something about her husband, do you think, which is troubling her? But it cannot be that, because in her letter of two days ago she said the proceedings had been started and she would be free perhaps by Christmastime, as all was being hurried through."
Moravia gave an exclamation of surprise.
"Sabine is certainly very strange. Can you believe it? She has never mentioned the matter to me since we returned, and once when I spoke of it, she put the subject aside. She did not 'wish to remember it,' she said."
"It is evidently that, then, and we must have patience with the dear little girl. The husband must have been an unmitigated wretch to have left such a deep scar upon her life."
"But she never saw him from the day after she was married!" Moravia exclaimed; and then pulled herself up short, glancing at Henry furtively. What had Sabine told him? Probably no more than she had told her—she felt the subject was dangerous ground, and it would be wiser to avoid further discussion upon the matter. So she remarked casually:
"No, after all, I do not believe it has anything to do with the husband; it is just a mood. She has always had moods for years. I know she is looking forward awfully to our all going to her for Christmas. Then you will be able to clear away all your clouds."
But this conversation left Henry very troubled, and Père Anselme's words about the cinders still being red kept recurring to him with increasing pain.
Sabine had been at Héronac for ten days when the old priest got back to his flock. It was toward the end of November, and the weather was one raging storm of rain and wind. The surf boiled round the base of the Castle and the waves rose as giant foes ready to attack. It comforted the mistress of it to stand upon the causeway bridge and get soaking wet—or to sit in one of the mullioned windows of her great sitting-room and watch the angry water thundering beneath. And here the Père Anselme found her on the morning after his return.
She rose quickly in gladness to meet him, and they sat down together again.
She spoke her sympathy for this bereavement which had caused his absence, but he said with grave peace:
"She is well, my sister—a martyr in life, she has paid her debt. I have no grief."
So they talked about the garden, and of the fisher-folk, and their winter needs. There had been a wreck of a fishing boat, and a wife and children would be hungry but for the kindness of their Dame d'Héronac.
Then there was a pause—not one of those calm, happy pauses of other days, when each one dreamed, but a pause wrought with unease. The Curé's old black eyes had a questioning expression, and then he asked:
"And what is it, my daughter? Your heart is not at rest."
But Sabine could not answer him. Her long-controlled anguish won the day and, as once before, she burst into a passion of tears.
The Père Anselme did not seek to comfort her; he knew women well—she would be calmer presently, and would tell him what her sorrow was. He only murmured some words in Latin and looked out on the sea.
Presently the sobs ceased and the Dame d'Héronac rose quickly and left the room; and when she had mastered her emotion, she came back again.
"My father," she said, sitting on a low stool at his knees, "I have been very foolish and very wicked—but I cannot talk about it. Let us begin to read."