The Way of the Spirit

THE WAY OF THE SPIRIT

She held up her hand, and he left the sentence unfinished. “Don’t speak that which you might regret and I might remember, Dick; but since you force me to it, listen for a moment to me, and then let us say good-night, or good-bye, as you wish. I have been faithful to that old, silly promise, wrung from me as a girl. For you I have lost opportunity after opportunity, hoping that you would mend, imploring you to mend, and you, you know well how you have treated me, and what you are to-day, a discredited man, the toady of Lord Devene, living on his bounty because you are useful to him. Yet I clung to you who am a fool, and only this morning I made up my mind to reject Rupert also. Then you played that trick at the shooting; you pretended not to see that I was hurt, you pretended that you did not fire the shot, because you are mean and were afraid of Rupert. I tell you that as I sat upon the ground there and understood, in a flash I saw you as you are, and I had done with you. Compare yourself with him and you too will under-

stand. And now, move away from that door and let me go.”

“I understand perfectly well that Rupert is the heir to a peerage, and I am not,” he answered, who saw that, being defenceless, his only safety lay in attack. “You have sold yourself, Edith, sold yourself to a man you don’t care that for,” and he snapped his fingers. “Oh, don’t take the trouble to lie to me, you know you don’t, and you know that I know it too. You have just made a fool of him to suit yourself, as you can with most men when you please, and though I don’t like the infernal, pious prig, I tell you I am sorry for him, poor beggar.”

“Have you done?” asked Edith calmly.

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“No, not yet. You sneer at me and turn up your eyes – yes, you – because I am not a kind of saint fit to go in double harness with this Rupert, and because, not being the next heir to great rank and fortune, I haven’t been plastered over with decorations like he has for shooting savages in the Soudan; because, too, as I must live somehow, I do so out of Devene. Well, my most immaculate Edith, and how do you live yourself? Who paid for that pretty dress upon your back, and those pearls? Not Rupert as yet, I suppose? Where did you get the money from with which you helped me once? I wish you would tell me, because I have never seen you work, and I would like to have the secret of plenty for nothing.”

“What is the good of asking questions of which you perfectly well know the answer, Dick? Of course George has helped me. Why shouldn’t he, as he can quite well afford to, and is the head of the family? Now I am going to help myself in the only way a woman can, by prudent and respectable marriage, entered on, I will tell you in confidence, with the approval, or rather by the especial wish of George himself.”

“Good Lord!” said Dick, with a bitter laugh. “What a grudge he must have against the man to set you on to marry him! Now I am certain there is something in all that old talk about the saint in his boyhood and the lovely and lamented Clara. No; just spare me three minutes longer. It would be a pity to spoil this conversation. Has it ever occurred to you, most virtuous Edith, that whatever I am – and I don’t set up for much – it is you who are responsible for me; you who led me on and threw me off by fits, just as it suited you; you who for your own

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worldly reasons never would marry, or even become openly engaged to me, although you said you loved me – “

“I never said that,” broke in Edith, rousing herself from her attitude of affected indifference to this tirade. “I never said I loved you, and for a very good reason, because I don’t, and never did, you or any other man. I can’t – as yet, but one day perhaps I shall, and then – I may have said that you attracted me – me, who stand before you, not my heart, which is quite a different matter, as men like you should know well enough.”

“Men like me can only judge of emotions by the manner of their expression. Even when they do not believe what she says, they take it for granted that a woman means what she does. Well, to return, I say that you are responsible, you and no other. If you had let me, I would have married you and changed my ways, but though you were ‘attracted,’ this you would never do because we should have been poor. So you sent me off to others, and then, when it amused you, drew me back again and thus sank me deeper into the mud, until you ruined me.”

“Did I not tell you that you are a coward, Dick, though I never thought that you would prove it out of your own mouth within five minutes. Only cowards put the burden of their own wrong-doing upon the heads of others. So far from ruining you, I tried to save you. You say that I played with you; it is not the truth. The truth is, that from time to time I associated with you again, hoping against hope that you might have reformed. Could I have believed that you meant to turn over a new leaf, I think that I would have risked all and married you, but, thank God! I was saved from that. And now I have done with you. Go your way, and let me go mine.”

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“Done with me? Not quite, I think, for perhaps the old ‘attraction’ still remains, and with most women that means repulsion from other men. Let me see now,” and suddenly, without giving her a single hint of his intention, he caught her in his arms and kissed her passionately. “There,” he said, as he let her go; “perhaps you will forgive an old lover – although you are engaged to a new one?”

“Dick,” she said, in a low voice, “listen to me and remember this. If you touch me like that again, I will go straight to Rupert, and I think he would kill you. As I am not strong enough to protect myself from insult, I must find one who is. More, you talk as though I had been in the habit of allowing you to embrace me, perhaps to pave the way for demands of blackmail. What are the facts? Eight or nine years ago, when I made that foolish promise, you kissed me once, and never again from that hour to this. Dick, you coward! I am indeed grateful that I never felt more than a passing attraction for you. Now open that door, or I ring the bell and send for Colonel Ullershaw.”

So Dick opened it, and without another word she swept past him.

Edith reached her room so thoroughly upset that she did what she had not done since her mother’s death – sat down and cried. Like other people, she had her good points, and when she seemed to be worst, it was not really of her own will, but because circumstances overwhelmed her. She could not help it if she liked, or, as she put it, had been “attracted” by Dick, with whom she was brought up, and whose ingrained natural weakness appealed to that sense of protection which is

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so common among women, and finds its last expression in the joys and fears of motherhood.

Every word she had spoken to him was true. Before she was out of her teens, overborne by his passionate attack, she had made some conditional promise that she would marry him at an undefined date in the future, and it was then for the first and – until this night – the last time that he had kissed her. She had done her best to keep him straight, an utterly impossible task, for his ways were congenially crooked, and during those periods when he seemed to mend, had received him back into her favour. Only that day she had at last convinced herself that he was beyond hope, with the results which we know. And now he had behaved thus, insulting her in a dozen directions with the gibes of his bitter tongue, and at last most grossly by taking advantage of his strength and opportunity to do what he had done.

The worst of it was that she could not be as angry with him as she ought, perhaps because she knew that his outrageous talk and behaviour sprang from the one true and permanent thing in the fickle constitution of Dick’s character – his love for her. That love, indeed, was of the most unsatisfactory kind. For instance, it did not urge him on to honest effort, or suffice to keep him straight, in any sense. Yet it existed, and must be reckoned with, nor was she upon whom it was outpoured the person likely to take too harsh a view even of its excesses. She could ruin Dick if she liked. A word to Lord Devene, and another to Rupert, would be sufficient to turn him out to starve upon the world, so that within six months he might be sought for and found upon the box of a hansom cab, or in the bunk of

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a Salvation Army shelter. Yet she knew that she would never speak those words, and that he knew it also. Alas! even those insolent kisses of his had angered rather than outraged her; after them she did not rub her face with her handkerchief as she had done once that day.

Again, it was not her fault if she shrank from Rupert, whom she ought to, and theoretically did, adore. It was in her blood, and she was not mistress of her blood; for all her strength and will she was but a feather blown by the wind, and as yet she could find no weight to enable her to stand against that wind. Still, her resolution never wavered; she had made up her mind to marry Rupert – yes, and to make him as good a wife as she could be, and marry him she would. Now there were dangers ahead of her. Someone might have seen her go into the library with Dick at near one o’clock in the morning. Dick himself might drop hints; he was capable of it, or worse. She must take her precautions. For a moment Edith thought, then going to a table, took a piece of paper and wrote upon it:

“1st January. 2 A. M.

“To Rupert, – A promise for the New Year, and a remembrance of the old, from her who loves him best of all upon the earth.

“E.”

Then she directed an envelope, and on the top of it she wrote that it was to be delivered to Colonel Ullershaw before he left, and took from her breast the lilies she had worn, which she was sure he would know again, purposing to enclose them in the letter, only to find that in her efforts to free herself from Dick, they had been crushed to a shapeless mass. Almost did

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CHAPTER IX

RUPERT ACCEPTS A MISSION

The interval between the 1st of January and the 13th of April, the day of Rupert’s marriage, may be briefly passed over. All the actors are on the scene, except those who have to arrive out of the Soudanese desert; their characters and objects are known, and it remains only to follow the development of the human forces which have been set in motion to their inevitable end, whatever that may be.

The choosing of this date, the 13th, which chanced to be a Friday, was one of the grim little jokes of Lord Devene, from whose house the marriage was to take place; a public protest against the prevalence of vulgar superstitions by one who held all such folly in contempt. To these Rupert, a plain-sailing man who believed his days to be directed from above, was certainly less open than most, although even he, by choice, would have avoided anything that might suggest unpleasant thoughts. Edith, however, neglectful as she was of any form of religion, still felt such ancient and obscure influences, and protested, but in vain. The date suited him, said her cousin. There were reasons why the marriage could not take place before, and on Saturday, the 14th, he had to go away for a fortnight to

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be present in Lancashire at an arbitration which would be lengthy, and held in situ, as to legal matters connected with his coal-mines. So she yielded, and the invitations were issued for Friday, the 13th of April.

Meanwhile things went on much as might be expected. Rupert sat in Edith’s pocket and beamed on her all day, never guessing, poor, blind man, that at times he bored her almost to madness. Still she played her part faithfully and well, paying him back word for word and smile for smile, if not always tenderness for tenderness. Mrs. Ullershaw, having shaken off her preliminary fears and doubts, was cheerful in her demeanour, and being happy in the happiness of her son, proclaimed on every occasion her complete contentment with the match. Lord Devene appeared pleased also, as indeed he was, and lost no opportunity of holding up Rupert as a model lover, while that unfortunate man writhed beneath his sarcasms.

Thus once – it was after one of those Grosvenor Square dinners which Rupert hated so heartily, he found a chance of pointing a moral in his best manner. Rupert, as usual, had planted himself by Edith in a corner of the room, whence, much as she wished it, she could not escape, making of her and himself the object of the amused attention of the company.

“Look at them,” said Lord Devene, who had unexpectedly entered, with a smile and a wave of the hand that made everybody laugh, especially Dick, who found their aspect absurd.

“Rupert, do get up,” said Edith; “they are laughing at us.” “Then let them laugh,” he grumbled, as he obeyed, follow-

ing her sheepishly to the centre of the room.

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While they advanced, some new sally which they could not hear provoked a fresh outburst of merriment.

“What is it that amuses you?” asked Rupert crossly.

“Ach, Rupert,” said Lady Devene, “they laugh at you because you do like to sit alone with your betrothed; but I do not laugh, I think it is quite proper.”

“Tabitha puts it too roughly,” broke in Lord Devene. “We are not making fun of beauty and valour completing each other so charmingly in that far corner, we are paying them our tribute of joyous and respectful admiration. I confess that it delights me, who am getting old and cynical, to see people so enraptured by mere companionship. That, my dear Rupert, is what comes of not being blasé. With the excellent Frenchman, you can say: ‘J’aime erdument et pour tourjours car je n’ai jamais éparpillé mon couer; le parfait amour c’est la couronne de la vertu.’ Now you reap the rich reward of a youth which I believe to have been immaculate. Happy is the man who, thrusting aside, or being thrust aside of opportunity, reserves his first great passion for his wife.»

A renewed titter greeted this very elaborate sarcasm, for so everyone felt it to be, especially Rupert, who coloured violently. Only Lady Devene came to his aid and tried to cover his confusion.

«Bah!» she said, «your wit, George, seems to smell of the lamp and to have a nasty sting in its tail. Why should you mock at these young people because they are honest enough to show that they are fond of each other, as they ought to be? Pay no attention and go back to your corner, my dears, and I will come and sit in front of you; or at least tell them they should be sorry

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