CHAPTER XIII: Eruption
The following two months were a period in Trent's life that he has neversince remembered without shuddering. He met Mrs. Manderson half a dozentimes, and each time her cool friendliness, a nicely calculated meanbetween mere acquaintance and the first stage of intimacy, baffled andmaddened him. At the opera he had found her, to his further amazement,with a certain Mrs. Wallace, a frisky matron whom he had known fromchildhood. Mrs. Manderson, it appeared, on her return from Italy, hadsomehow wandered into circles to which he belonged by nurture anddisposition. It came, she said, of her having pitched her tent in theirhunting-grounds; several of his friends were near neighbours. He hada dim but horrid recollection of having been on that occasion unlikehimself, ill at ease, burning in the face, talking with idiot loquacityof his adventures in the Baltic provinces, and finding from time to timethat he was addressing himself exclusively to Mrs. Wallace. The otherlady, when he joined them, had completely lost the slight appearanceof agitation with which she had stopped him in the vestibule. She hadspoken pleasantly to him of her travels, of her settlement in London,and of people whom they both knew.
During the last half of the opera, which he had stayed in the box tohear, he had been conscious of nothing, as he sat behind them, but theangle of her cheek and the mass of her hair, the lines of her shoulderand arm, her hand upon the cushion. The black hair had seemed at lasta forest, immeasurable, pathless and enchanted, luring him to a fataladventure.... At the end he had been pale and subdued, parting with themrather formally.
The next time he saw her--it was at a country house where both wereguests--and the subsequent times, he had had himself in hand. He hadmatched her manner and had acquitted himself, he thought, decently,considering--
Considering that he lived in an agony of bewilderment and remorse andlonging. He could make nothing, absolutely nothing, of her attitude.That she had read his manuscript and understood the suspicion indicatedin his last question to her at White Gables was beyond the possibilityof doubt. Then how could she treat him thus and frankly, as she treatedall the world of men who had done no injury?
For it had become clear to his intuitive sense, for all the absence ofany shade of differentiation in her outward manner, that an injury hadbeen done, and that she had felt it. Several times, on the rare andbrief occasions when they had talked apart, he had warning from the samesense that she was approaching this subject; and each time he had turnedthe conversation with the ingenuity born of fear. Two resolutions hemade. The first was that when he had completed a commissioned work whichtied him to London he would go away and stay away. The strain was toogreat. He no longer burned to know the truth; he wanted nothing toconfirm his fixed internal conviction by faith, that he had blundered,that he had misread the situation, misinterpreted her tears, writtenhimself down a slanderous fool. He speculated no more on Marlowe'smotive in the killing of Manderson. Mr. Cupples returned to London, andTrent asked him nothing. He knew now that he had been right in thosewords--Trent remembered them for the emphasis with which they werespoken--'So long as she considered herself bound to him... no power onearth could have persuaded her.' He met Mrs. Manderson at dinner at heruncle's large and tomb-like house in Bloomsbury, and there he conversedmost of the evening with a professor of archaeology from Berlin.
His other resolution was that he would not be with her alone.
But when, a few days after, she wrote asking him to come and see her onthe following afternoon, he made no attempt to excuse himself. This wasa formal challenge.
***
While she celebrated the rites of tea, and for some little timethereafter, she joined with such natural ease in his slightly feveredconversation on matters of the day that he began to hope she had changedwhat he could not doubt had been her resolve, to corner him and speak tohim gravely. She was to all appearance careless now, smiling so that herecalled, not for the first time since that night at the opera, what waswritten long ago of a Princess of Brunswick: 'Her mouth has ten thousandcharms that touch the soul.' She made a tour of the beautiful room whereshe had received him, singling out this treasure or that from the spoilsof a hundred bric-a-brac shops, laughing over her quests, discoveries,and bargainings. And when he asked if she would delight him again with afavourite piece of his which he had heard her play at another house, sheconsented at once.
She played with a perfection of execution and feeling that moved him nowas it had moved him before. 'You are a musician born,' he said quietlywhen she had finished, and the last tremor of the music had passed away.'I knew that before I first heard you.'
'I have played a great deal ever since I can remember. It has been agreat comfort to me,' she said simply, and half-turned to him smiling.'When did you first detect music in me? Oh, of course: I was at theopera. But that wouldn't prove much, would it?'
'No,' he said abstractedly, his sense still busy with the music thathad just ended. 'I think I knew it the first time I saw you.' Thenunderstanding of his own words came to him, and turned him rigid. Forthe first time the past had been invoked.
There was a short silence. Mrs. Manderson looked at Trent, then hastilylooked away. Colour began to rise in her cheeks, and she pursed her lipsas if for whistling. Then with a defiant gesture of the shoulders whichhe remembered she rose suddenly from the piano and placed herself in achair opposite to him.
'That speech of yours will do as well as anything,' she began slowly,looking at the point of her shoe, 'to bring us to what I wanted to say.I asked you here today on purpose, Mr. Trent, because I couldn't bear itany longer. Ever since the day you left me at White Gables I have beensaying to myself that it didn't matter what you thought of me in thataffair; that you were certainly not the kind of man to speak to othersof what you believed about me, after what you had told me of yourreasons for suppressing your manuscript. I asked myself how it couldmatter. But all the time, of course, I knew it did matter. It matteredhorribly. Because what you thought was not true.' She raised her eyesand met his gaze calmly. Trent, with a completely expressionless face,returned her look.
'Since I began to know you,' he said, 'I have ceased to think it.''Thank you,' said Mrs. Manderson; and blushed suddenly and deeply. Then,playing with a glove, she added, 'But I want you to know what was true.
'I did not know if I should ever see you again,' she went on in a lowervoice, 'but I felt that if I did I must speak to you about this. Ithought it would not be hard to do so, because you seemed to me anunderstanding person; and besides, a woman who has been married isn'texpected to have the same sort of difficulty as a young girl in speakingabout such things when it is necessary. And then we did meet again, andI discovered that it was very difficult indeed. You made it difficult.'
'How?' he asked quietly.
'I don't know,' said the lady. 'But yes--I do know. It was just becauseyou treated me exactly as if you had never thought or imagined anythingof that sort about me. I had always supposed that if I saw you again youwould turn on me that hard, horrible sort of look you had when you askedme that last question--do you remember?--at White Gables. Instead ofthat you were just like any other acquaintance. You were just'--shehesitated and spread out her hands--'nice. You know. After that firsttime at the opera when I spoke to you I went home positively wonderingif you had really recognized me. I mean, I thought you might haverecognized my face without remembering who it was.'
A short laugh broke from Trent in spite of himself, but he said nothing.
She smiled deprecatingly. 'Well, I couldn't remember if you had spokenmy name; and I thought it might be so. But the next time, at theIretons', you did speak it, so I knew; and a dozen times during thosefew days I almost brought myself to tell you, but never quite. I beganto feel that you wouldn't let me, that you would slip away from thesubject if I approached it. Wasn't I right? Tell me, please.' He nodded.'But why?' He remained silent.
'Well,' she said, 'I will finish what I had to say, and then youwill tell me, I hope, why you had to make it so hard. When I began tounde
rstand that you wouldn't let me talk of the matter to you, it mademe more determined than ever. I suppose you didn't realize that I wouldinsist on speaking even if you were quite discouraging. I dare say Icouldn't have done it if I had been guilty, as you thought. You walkedinto my parlour today, never thinking I should dare. Well, now you see.'
Mrs. Manderson had lost all her air of hesitancy. She had, as she waswont to say, talked herself enthusiastic, and in the ardour of herpurpose to annihilate the misunderstanding that had troubled her so longshe felt herself mistress of the situation.
'I am going to tell you the story of the mistake you made,' shecontinued, as Trent, his hands clasped between his knees, still lookedat her enigmatically. 'You will have to believe it, Mr. Trent; itis utterly true to life, with its confusions and hidden things andcross-purposes and perfectly natural mistakes that nobody thinks twiceabout taking for facts. Please understand that I don't blame you in theleast, and never did, for jumping to the conclusion you did. You knewthat I was estranged from my husband, and you knew what that so oftenmeans. You knew before I told you, I expect, that he had taken up aninjured attitude towards me; and I was silly enough to try and explainit away. I gave you the explanation of it that I had given myselfat first, before I realized the wretched truth; I told you he wasdisappointed in me because I couldn't take a brilliant lead in society.Well, that was true; he was so. But I could see you weren't convinced.You had guessed what it took me much longer to see, because I knew howirrational it was. Yes; my husband was jealous of John Marlowe; youdivined that.
'Then I behaved like a fool when you let me see you had divined it; itwas such a blow, you understand, when I had supposed all the humiliationand strain was at an end, and that his delusion had died with him. Youpractically asked me if my husband's secretary was not my lover, MrTrent--I have to say it, because I want you to understand why I brokedown and made a scene. You took that for a confession; you thought I wasguilty of that, and I think you even thought I might be a party tothe crime, that I had consented.... That did hurt me; but perhaps youcouldn't have thought anything else--I don't know.'
Trent, who had not hitherto taken his eyes from her face, hung his headat the words. He did not raise it again as she continued. 'But really itwas simple shock and distress that made me give way, and the memory ofall the misery that mad suspicion had meant to me. And when I pulledmyself together again you had gone.'
She rose and went to an escritoire beside the window, unlocked a drawer,and drew out a long, sealed envelope.
'This is the manuscript you left with me,' she said. 'I have read itthrough again and again. I have always wondered, as everybody does, atyour cleverness in things of this kind.' A faintly mischievous smileflashed upon her face, and was gone. 'I thought it was splendid, MrTrent--I almost forgot that the story was my own, I was so interested.And I want to say now, while I have this in my hand, how much I thankyou for your generous, chivalrous act in sacrificing this triumph ofyours rather than put a woman's reputation in peril. If all had been asyou supposed, the facts must have come out when the police took up thecase you put in their hands. Believe me, I understood just what you haddone, and I never ceased to be grateful even when I felt most crushed byyour suspicion.'
As she spoke her thanks her voice shook a little, and her eyes werebright. Trent perceived nothing of this. His head was still bent. Hedid not seem to hear. She put the envelope into his hand as it lay open,palm upwards, on his knee. There was a touch of gentleness about the actwhich made him look up.
'Can you--' he began slowly.
She raised her hand as she stood before him. 'No, Mr. Trent; let mefinish before you say anything. It is such an unspeakable relief to meto have broken the ice at last, and I want to end the story while I amstill feeling the triumph of beginning it.' She sank down into the sofafrom which she had first risen. 'I am telling you a thing that nobodyelse knows. Everybody knew, I suppose, that something had come betweenus, though I did everything in my power to hide it. But I don't thinkany one in the world ever guessed what my husband's notion was. Peoplewho know me don't think that sort of thing about me, I believe. And hisfancy was so ridiculously opposed to the facts. I will tell you what thesituation was. Mr. Marlowe and I had been friendly enough since he cameto us. For all his cleverness--my husband said he had a keener brainthan any man he knew--I looked upon him as practically a boy. You knowI am a little older than he is, and he had a sort of amiable lack ofambition that made me feel it the more. One day my husband asked me whatI thought was the best thing about Marlowe, and not thinking much aboutit I said, "His manners." He surprised me very much by looking black atthat, and after a silence he said, "Yes, Marlowe is a gentleman; that'sso", not looking at me.
'Nothing was ever said about that again until about a year ago, whenI found that Mr. Marlowe had done what I always expected he woulddo--fallen desperately in love with an American girl. But to my disgusthe had picked out the most worthless girl, I do believe, of all thosewhom we used to meet. She was the daughter of wealthy parents, and shedid as she liked with them; very beautiful, well educated, very good atgames--what they call a woman-athlete--and caring for nothing on earthbut her own amusement. She was one of the most unprincipled flirts Iever knew, and quite the cleverest. Every one knew it, and Mr. Marlowemust have heard it; but she made a complete fool of him, brain and all.I don't know how she managed it, but I can imagine. She liked him, ofcourse; but it was quite plain to me that she was playing with him. Thewhole affair was so idiotic, I got perfectly furious. One day I askedhim to row me in a boat on the lake--all this happened at our house byLake George. We had never been alone together for any length of timebefore. In the boat I talked to him. I was very kind about it, I think,and he took it admirably, but he didn't believe me a bit. He had theimpudence to tell me that I misunderstood Alice's nature. When I hintedat his prospects--I knew he had scarcely anything of his own--he saidthat if she loved him he could make himself a position in the world. Idare say that was true, with his abilities and his friends--he is ratherwell connected, you know, as well as popular. But his enlightenment camevery soon after that.
'My husband helped me out of the boat when we got back. He joked withMr. Marlowe about something, I remember; for through all that followed henever once changed in his manner to him, and that was one reason why Itook so long to realize what he thought about him and myself. But tome he was reserved and silent that evening--not angry. He was alwaysperfectly cold and expressionless to me after he took this idea into hishead. After dinner he only spoke to me once. Mr. Marlowe was telling himabout some horse he had bought for the farm in Kentucky, and my husbandlooked at me and said, "Marlowe may be a gentleman, but he seldom quitsloser in a horse-trade." I was surprised at that, but at that time--andeven on the next occasion when he found us together--I didn't understandwhat was in his mind. That next time was the morning when MrMarlowe received a sweet little note from the girl asking for hiscongratulations on her engagement. It was in our New York house.He looked so wretched at breakfast that I thought he was ill, andafterwards I went to the room where he worked, and asked what was thematter. He didn't say anything, but just handed me the note, and turnedaway to the window. I was very glad that was all over, but terriblysorry for him too, of course. I don't remember what I said, but Iremember putting my hand on his arm as he stood there staring out onthe garden and just then my husband appeared at the open door with somepapers. He just glanced at us, and then turned and walked quietly backto his study. I thought that he might have heard what I was saying tocomfort Mr. Marlowe, and that it was rather nice of him to slip away.Mr. Marlowe neither saw nor heard him. My husband left the house thatmorning for the West while I was out. Even then I did not understand. Heused often to go off suddenly like that, if some business project calledhim.
'It was not until he returned a week later that I grasped the situation.He was looking white and strange, and as soon as he saw me he askedme where Mr. Marlowe was. Somehow the tone of his question told meeverythin
g in a flash.
'I almost gasped; I was wild with indignation. You know, Mr. Trent,I don't think I should have minded at all if any one had thought mecapable of openly breaking with my husband and leaving him for somebodyelse. I dare say I might have done that. But that coarse suspicion...a man whom he trusted... and the notion of concealment. It made me seescarlet. Every shred of pride in me was strung up till I quivered, and Iswore to myself on the spot that I would never show by any word or signthat I was conscious of his having such a thought about me. I wouldbehave exactly as I always had behaved, I determined--and that I did, upto the very last. Though I knew that a wall had been made between us nowthat could never be broken down--even if he asked my pardon and obtainedit--I never once showed that I noticed any change.
'And so it went on. I never could go through such a time again. Myhusband showed silent and cold politeness to me always when we werealone--and that was only when it was unavoidable. He never once alludedto what was in his mind; but I felt it, and he knew that I felt it. Bothof us were stubborn in our different attitudes. To Mr. Marlowe he wasmore friendly, if anything, than before--Heaven only knows why. Ifancied he was planning some sort of revenge; but that was only a fancy.Certainly Mr. Marlowe never knew what was suspected of him. He and Iremained good friends, though we never spoke of anything intimate afterthat disappointment of his; but I made a point of seeing no less of himthan I had always done. Then we came to England and to White Gables, andafter that followed--my husband's dreadful end.'
She threw out her right hand in a gesture of finality. 'You know aboutthe rest--so much more than any other man,' she added, and glanced up athim with a quaint expression.
Trent wondered at that look, but the wonder was only a passing shadow onhis thought. Inwardly his whole being was possessed by thankfulness. Allthe vivacity had returned to his face. Long before the lady had endedher story he had recognized the certainty of its truth, as from thefirst days of their renewed acquaintance he had doubted the story thathis imagination had built up at White Gables, upon foundations thatseemed so good to him.
He said, 'I don't know how to begin the apologies I have to make. Thereare no words to tell you how ashamed and disgraced I feel when I realizewhat a crude, cock-sure blundering at a conclusion my suspicion was.Yes, I suspected--you! I had almost forgotten that I was ever sucha fool. Almost--not quite. Sometimes when I have been alone I haveremembered that folly, and poured contempt on it. I have tried toimagine what the facts were. I have tried to excuse myself.'
She interrupted him quickly. 'What nonsense! Do be sensible, Mr. Trent.You had only seen me on two occasions in your life before you came to mewith your solution of the mystery.' Again the quaint expression came andwas gone. 'If you talk of folly, it really is folly for a man like youto pretend to a woman like me that I had innocence written all overme in large letters--so large that you couldn't believe very strongevidence against me after seeing me twice.'
'What do you mean by "a man like me"?' he demanded with a sort offierceness. 'Do you take me for a person without any normal instincts?I don't say you impress people as a simple, transparent sort ofcharacter--what Mr. Calvin Bunner calls a case of open-work; I don't saya stranger might not think you capable of wickedness, if there was goodevidence for it: but I say that a man who, after seeing you and beingin your atmosphere, could associate you with the particular kind ofabomination I imagined, is a fool--the kind of fool who is afraid totrust his senses.... As for my making it hard for you to approachthe subject, as you say, it is true. It was simply moral cowardice. Iunderstood that you wished to clear the matter up; and I was revolted atthe notion of my injurious blunder being discussed. I tried to show youby my actions that it was as if it had never been. I hoped you wouldpardon me without any words. I can't forgive myself, and I never shall.And yet if you could know--' He stopped short, and then added quietly,'Well, will you accept all that as an apology? The very scrubbiestsackcloth made, and the grittiest ashes on the heap.... I didn't mean toget worked up,' he ended lamely.
Mrs. Manderson laughed, and her laugh carried him away with it. He knewwell by this time that sudden rush of cascading notes of mirth, theperfect expression of enjoyment; he had many times tried to amuse hermerely for his delight in the sound of it.
'But I love to see you worked up,' she said. 'The bump with which youalways come down as soon as you realize that you are up in the airat all is quite delightful. Oh, we're actually both laughing. What atriumphant end to our explanations, after all my dread of the time whenI should have it out with you. And now it's all over, and you know; andwe'll never speak of it any more.'
'I hope not,' Trent said in sincere relief. 'If you're resolved to be sokind as this about it, I am not high-principled enough to insist on yourblasting me with your lightnings. And now, Mrs. Manderson, I hadbetter go. Changing the subject after this would be like playingpuss-in-the-corner after an earthquake.' He rose to his feet.
'You are right,' she said. 'But no! Wait. There is another thing--partof the same subject; and we ought to pick up all the pieces now while weare about it. Please sit down.' She took the envelope containing Trent'smanuscript dispatch from the table where he had laid it. 'I want tospeak about this.'
His brows bent, and he looked at her questioningly. 'So do I, if youdo,' he said slowly. 'I want very much to know one thing.'
'Tell me.'
'Since my reason for suppressing that information was all a fantasy,why did you never make any use of it? When I began to realize that I hadbeen wrong about you, I explained your silence to myself by saying thatyou could not bring yourself to do a thing that would put a rope rounda man's neck, whatever he might have done. I can quite understand thatfeeling. Was that what it was? Another possibility I thought of wasthat you knew of something that was by way of justifying or excusingMarlowe's act. Or I thought you might have a simple horror, quite apartfrom humanitarian scruples, of appearing publicly in connection witha murder trial. Many important witnesses in such cases have to bepractically forced into giving their evidence. They feel there isdefilement even in the shadow of the scaffold.'
Mrs. Manderson tapped her lips with the envelope without quite concealinga smile. 'You didn't think of another possibility, I suppose, Mr. Trent,'she said.
'No.' He looked puzzled.
'I mean the possibility of your having been wrong about Mr. Marlowe aswell as about me. No, no; you needn't tell me that the chain of evidenceis complete. I know it is. But evidence of what? Of Mr. Marlowe havingimpersonated my husband that night, and having escaped by way of mywindow, and built up an alibi. I have read your dispatch again andagain, Mr. Trent, and I don't see that those things can be doubted.'
Trent gazed at her with narrowed eyes. He said nothing to fill the briefpause that followed. Mrs. Manderson smoothed her skirt with a preoccupiedair, as one collecting her ideas.
'I did not make any use of the facts found out by you,' she slowly saidat last, 'because it seemed to me very likely that they would be fatalto Mr. Marlowe.'
'I agree with you,' Trent remarked in a colourless tone.
'And,' pursued the lady, looking up at him with a mild reasonableness inher eyes, 'as I knew that he was innocent I was not going to expose himto that risk.'
There was another little pause. Trent rubbed his chin, with anaffectation of turning over the idea. Inwardly he was telling himself,somewhat feebly, that this was very right and proper; that it was quitefeminine, and that he liked her to be feminine. It was permitted toher--more than permitted--to set her loyal belief in the character of afriend above the clearest demonstrations of the intellect. Nevertheless,it chafed him. He would have had her declaration of faith a little lesspositive in form. It was too irrational to say she 'knew'. In fact(he put it to himself bluntly), it was quite unlike her. If to beunreasonable when reason led to the unpleasant was a specially femininetrait, and if Mrs. Manderson had it, she was accustomed to wrap it upbetter than any woman he had known.
'You suggest,' he said at
length, 'that Marlowe constructed an alibi forhimself, by means which only a desperate man would have attempted,to clear himself of a crime he did not commit. Did he tell you he wasinnocent?'
She uttered a little laugh of impatience. 'So you think he has beentalking me round. No, that is not so. I am merely sure he did not do it.Ah! I see you think that absurd. But see how unreasonable you are, MrTrent! Just now you were explaining to me quite sincerely that it wasfoolishness in you to have a certain suspicion of me after seeing me andbeing in my atmosphere, as you said.' Trent started in his chair. Sheglanced at him, and went on: 'Now, I and my atmosphere are much obligedto you, but we must stand up for the rights of other atmospheres. I knowa great deal more about Mr. Marlowe's atmosphere than you know about mineeven now. I saw him constantly for several years. I don't pretend toknow all about him; but I do know that he is incapable of a crime ofbloodshed. The idea of his planning a murder is as unthinkable to me asthe idea of your picking a poor woman's pocket, Mr. Trent. I can imagineyou killing a man, you know... if the man deserved it and had anequal chance of killing you. I could kill a person myself in somecircumstances. But Mr. Marlowe was incapable of doing it, I don't carewhat the provocation might be. He had a temper that nothing could shake,and he looked upon human nature with a sort of cold magnanimity thatwould find excuses for absolutely anything. It wasn't a pose; you couldsee it was a part of him. He never put it forward, but it was therealways. It was quite irritating at times.... Now and then in America, Iremember, I have heard people talking about lynching, for instance, whenhe was there. He would sit quite silent and expressionless, appearingnot to listen; but you could feel disgust coming from him in waves. Hereally loathed and hated physical violence. He was a very strange man insome ways, Mr. Trent. He gave one a feeling that he might do unexpectedthings--do you know that feeling one has about some people? What parthe really played in the events of that night I have never been able toguess. But nobody who knew anything about him could possibly believe inhis deliberately taking a man's life.' Again the movement of her headexpressed finality, and she leaned back in the sofa, calmly regardinghim.
'Then,' said Trent, who had followed this with earnest attention, 'weare forced back on two other possibilities, which I had not thoughtworth much consideration until this moment. Accepting what you say, hemight still conceivably have killed in self-defence; or he might havedone so by accident.'
The lady nodded. 'Of course I thought of those two explanations when Iread your manuscript.'
'And I suppose you felt, as I did myself, that in either of those casesthe natural thing, and obviously the safest thing, for him to do was tomake a public statement of the truth, instead of setting up a series ofdeceptions which would certainly stamp him as guilty in the eyes of thelaw, if anything went wrong with them.'
'Yes,' she said wearily, 'I thought over all that until my head ached.And I thought somebody else might have done it, and that he was somehowscreening the guilty person. But that seemed wild. I could see no lightin the mystery, and after a while I simply let it alone. All I was clearabout was that Mr. Marlowe was not a murderer, and that if I told whatyou had found out, the judge and jury would probably think he was. Ipromised myself that I would speak to you about it if we should meetagain; and now I've kept my promise.'
Trent, his chin resting on his hand, was staring at the carpet. Theexcitement of the hunt for the truth was steadily rising in him. Hehad not in his own mind accepted Mrs. Manderson's account of Marlowe'scharacter as unquestionable. But she had spoken forcibly; he could by nomeans set it aside, and his theory was much shaken.
'There is only one thing for it,' he said, looking up. 'I must seeMarlowe. It worries me too much to have the thing left like this. I willget at the truth. Can you tell me,' he broke off, 'how he behaved afterthe day I left White Gables?'
'I never saw him after that,' said Mrs. Manderson simply. 'For some daysafter you went away I was ill, and didn't go out of my room. When I gotdown he had left and was in London, settling things with the lawyers. Hedid not come down to the funeral. Immediately after that I went abroad.After some weeks a letter from him reached me, saying he had concludedhis business and given the solicitors all the assistance in his power.He thanked me very nicely for what he called all my kindness, and saidgoodbye. There was nothing in it about his plans for the future, andI thought it particularly strange that he said not a word about myhusband's death. I didn't answer. Knowing what I knew, I couldn't. Inthose days I shuddered whenever I thought of that masquerade in thenight. I never wanted to see or hear of him again.'
'Then you don't know what has become of him?'
'No, but I dare say Uncle Burton--Mr. Cupples, you know--could tell you.Some time ago he told me that he had met Mr. Marlowe in London, and hadsome talk with him. I changed the conversation.' She paused and smiledwith a trace of mischief. 'I rather wonder what you supposed hadhappened to Mr. Marlowe after you withdrew from the scene of the dramathat you had put together so much to your satisfaction.'
Trent flushed. 'Do you really want to know?' he said.
'I ask you,' she retorted quietly.
'You ask me to humiliate myself again, Mrs. Manderson. Very well. I willtell you what I thought I should most likely find when I returned toLondon after my travels: that you had married Marlowe to live abroad.'
She heard him with unmoved composure. 'We certainly couldn't havelived very comfortably in England on his money and mine,' she observedthoughtfully. 'He had practically nothing then.'
He stared at her--'gaped', she told him some time afterwards. At themoment she laughed with a little embarrassment.
'Dear me, Mr. Trent! Have I said anything dreadful? You surely mustknow.... I thought everybody understood by now.... I'm sure I've had toexplain it often enough... if I marry again I lose everything that myhusband left me.'
The effect of this speech upon Trent was curious. For an instant hisface was flooded with the emotion of surprise. As this passed away hegradually drew himself together, as he sat, into a tense attitude. Helooked, she thought as she saw his knuckles grow white on the arms ofthe chair, like a man prepared for pain under the hand of the surgeon.But all he said, in a voice lower than his usual tone, was, 'I had noidea of it.'
'It is so,' she said calmly, trifling with a ring on her finger.'Really, Mr. Trent, it is not such a very unusual thing. I think I amglad of it. For one thing, it has secured me--at least since it becamegenerally known--from a good many attentions of a kind that a woman inmy position has to put up with as a rule.'
'No doubt,' he said gravely. 'And... the other kind?'
She looked at him questioningly. 'Ah!' she laughed. 'The other kindtrouble me even less. I have not yet met a man silly enough to wantto marry a widow with a selfish disposition, and luxurious habits andtastes, and nothing but the little my father left me.'
She shook her head, and something in the gesture shattered the lastremnants of Trent's self-possession.
'Haven't you, by Heaven!' he exclaimed, rising with a violent movementand advancing a step towards her. 'Then I am going to show you thathuman passion is not always stifled by the smell of money. I am goingto end the business--my business. I am going to tell you what I daresay scores of better men have wanted to tell you, but couldn't summon upwhat I have summoned up--the infernal cheek to do it. They were afraidof making fools of themselves. I am not. You have accustomed me to thefeeling this afternoon.' He laughed aloud in his rush of words, andspread out his hands. 'Look at me! It is the sight of the century! Itis one who says he loves you, and would ask you to give up very greatwealth to stand at his side.'
She was hiding her face in her hands. He heard her say brokenly,'Please... don't speak in that way.'
He answered: 'It will make a great difference to me if you will allow meto say all I have to say before I leave you. Perhaps it is in badtaste, but I will risk that; I want to relieve my soul; it needs openconfession. This is the truth. You have troubled me ever since the firsttime I saw you--and you
did not know it--as you sat under the edge ofthe cliff at Marlstone, and held out your arms to the sea. It was onlyyour beauty that filled my mind then. As I passed by you it seemed as ifall the life in the place were crying out a song about you in the windand the sunshine. And the song stayed in my ears; but even your beautywould be no more than an empty memory to me by now if that had been all.It was when I led you from the hotel there to your house, with yourhand on my arm, that--what was it that happened? I only knew that yourstronger magic had struck home, and that I never should forget that day,whatever the love of my life should be. Till that day I had admired asI should admire the loveliness of a still lake; but that day I feltthe spell of the divinity of the lake. And next morning the waterswere troubled, and she rose--the morning when I came to you with myquestions, tired out with doubts that were as bitter as pain, and when Isaw you without your pale, sweet mask of composure--when I saw you movedand glowing, with your eyes and your hands alive, and when you made meunderstand that for such a creature as you there had been emptiness andthe mere waste of yourself for so long. Madness rose in me then, andmy spirit was clamouring to say what I say at last now: that life wouldnever seem a full thing again because you could not love me, that I wastaken for ever in the nets of your black hair and by the incantation ofyour voice--'
'Oh, stop!' she cried, suddenly throwing back her head, her face flamingand her hands clutching the cushions beside her. She spoke fast anddisjointedly, her breath coming quick. 'You shall not talk me intoforgetting common sense. What does all this mean? Oh, I do not recognizeyou at all--you seem another man. We are not children; have youforgotten that? You speak like a boy in love for the first time. It isfoolish, unreal--I know that if you do not. I will not hear it. What hashappened to you?' She was half sobbing. 'How can these sentimentalitiescome from a man like you? Where is your self-restraint?'
'Gone!' exclaimed Trent, with an abrupt laugh. 'It has got right away. Iam going after it in a minute.' He looked gravely down into her eyes.'I don't care so much now. I never could declare myself to you underthe cloud of your great fortune. It was too heavy. There's nothingcreditable in that feeling, as I look at it; as a matter of simplefact it was a form of cowardice--fear of what you would think, and verylikely say--fear of the world's comment too, I suppose. But the cloudbeing rolled away, I have spoken, and I don't care so much. I can facethings with a quiet mind now that I have told you the truth in its ownterms. You may call it sentimentality or any other nickname you like. Itis quite true that it was not intended for a scientific statement. Sinceit annoys you, let it be extinguished. But please believe that it wasserious to me if it was comedy to you. I have said that I love you, andhonour you, and would hold you dearest of all the world. Now give meleave to go.'
But she held out her hands to him.
Trent's Last Case Page 14
