The Altar of the Dead [13]
presently answered. "What's changed, as you say, is that on making the discovery I find he never has had it. That makes MY attitude" - she paused as thinking how to express it, then said simply - "all wrong."
"Come once again," he pleaded.
"Will you give him his candle?" she asked.
He waited, but only because it would sound ungracious; not because of a doubt of his feeling. "I can't do that!" he declared at last.
"Then good-bye." And she gave him her hand again.
He had got his dismissal; besides which, in the agitation of everything that had opened out to him, he felt the need to recover himself as he could only do in solitude. Yet he lingered - lingered to see if she had no compromise to express, no attenuation to propose. But he only met her great lamenting eyes, in which indeed he read that she was as sorry for him as for any one else. This made him say: "At least, in any case, I may see you here."
"Oh yes, come if you like. But I don't think it will do."
He looked round the room once more, knowing how little he was sure it would do. He felt also stricken and more and more cold, and his chill was like an ague in which he had to make an effort not to shake. Then he made doleful reply: "I must try on my side - if you can't try on yours." She came out with him to the hall and into the doorway, and here he put her the question he held he could least answer from his own wit. "Why have you never let me come before?"
"Because my aunt would have seen you, and I should have had to tell her how I came to know you."
"And what would have been the objection to that?"
"It would have entailed other explanations; there would at any rate have been that danger."
"Surely she knew you went every day to church," Stransom objected.
"She didn't know what I went for."
"Of me then she never even heard?"
"You'll think I was deceitful. But I didn't need to be!"
He was now on the lower door-step, and his hostess held the door half-closed behind him. Through what remained of the opening he saw her framed face. He made a supreme appeal. "What DID he do to you?"
"It would have come out - SHE would have told you. That fear at my heart - that was my reason!" And she closed the door, shutting him out.
CHAPTER VIII.
HE had ruthlessly abandoned her - that of course was what he had done. Stransom made it all out in solitude, at leisure, fitting the unmatched pieces gradually together and dealing one by one with a hundred obscure points. She had known Hague only after her present friend's relations with him had wholly terminated; obviously indeed a good while after; and it was natural enough that of his previous life she should have ascertained only what he had judged good to communicate. There were passages it was quite conceivable that even in moments of the tenderest expansion he should have withheld. Of many facts in the career of a man so in the eye of the world there was of course a common knowledge; but this lady lived apart from public affairs, and the only time perfectly clear to her would have been the time following the dawn of her own drama. A man in her place would have "looked up" the past - would even have consulted old newspapers. It remained remarkable indeed that in her long contact with the partner of her retrospect no accident had lighted a train; but there was no arguing about that; the accident had in fact come: it had simply been that security had prevailed. She had taken what Hague had given her, and her blankness in respect of his other connexions was only a touch in the picture of that plasticity Stransom had supreme reason to know so great a master could have been trusted to produce.
This picture was for a while all our friend saw: he caught his breath again and again as it came over him that the woman with whom he had had for years so fine a point of contact was a woman whom Acton Hague, of all men in the world, had more or less fashioned. Such as she sat there to-day she was ineffaceably
"Come once again," he pleaded.
"Will you give him his candle?" she asked.
He waited, but only because it would sound ungracious; not because of a doubt of his feeling. "I can't do that!" he declared at last.
"Then good-bye." And she gave him her hand again.
He had got his dismissal; besides which, in the agitation of everything that had opened out to him, he felt the need to recover himself as he could only do in solitude. Yet he lingered - lingered to see if she had no compromise to express, no attenuation to propose. But he only met her great lamenting eyes, in which indeed he read that she was as sorry for him as for any one else. This made him say: "At least, in any case, I may see you here."
"Oh yes, come if you like. But I don't think it will do."
He looked round the room once more, knowing how little he was sure it would do. He felt also stricken and more and more cold, and his chill was like an ague in which he had to make an effort not to shake. Then he made doleful reply: "I must try on my side - if you can't try on yours." She came out with him to the hall and into the doorway, and here he put her the question he held he could least answer from his own wit. "Why have you never let me come before?"
"Because my aunt would have seen you, and I should have had to tell her how I came to know you."
"And what would have been the objection to that?"
"It would have entailed other explanations; there would at any rate have been that danger."
"Surely she knew you went every day to church," Stransom objected.
"She didn't know what I went for."
"Of me then she never even heard?"
"You'll think I was deceitful. But I didn't need to be!"
He was now on the lower door-step, and his hostess held the door half-closed behind him. Through what remained of the opening he saw her framed face. He made a supreme appeal. "What DID he do to you?"
"It would have come out - SHE would have told you. That fear at my heart - that was my reason!" And she closed the door, shutting him out.
CHAPTER VIII.
HE had ruthlessly abandoned her - that of course was what he had done. Stransom made it all out in solitude, at leisure, fitting the unmatched pieces gradually together and dealing one by one with a hundred obscure points. She had known Hague only after her present friend's relations with him had wholly terminated; obviously indeed a good while after; and it was natural enough that of his previous life she should have ascertained only what he had judged good to communicate. There were passages it was quite conceivable that even in moments of the tenderest expansion he should have withheld. Of many facts in the career of a man so in the eye of the world there was of course a common knowledge; but this lady lived apart from public affairs, and the only time perfectly clear to her would have been the time following the dawn of her own drama. A man in her place would have "looked up" the past - would even have consulted old newspapers. It remained remarkable indeed that in her long contact with the partner of her retrospect no accident had lighted a train; but there was no arguing about that; the accident had in fact come: it had simply been that security had prevailed. She had taken what Hague had given her, and her blankness in respect of his other connexions was only a touch in the picture of that plasticity Stransom had supreme reason to know so great a master could have been trusted to produce.
This picture was for a while all our friend saw: he caught his breath again and again as it came over him that the woman with whom he had had for years so fine a point of contact was a woman whom Acton Hague, of all men in the world, had more or less fashioned. Such as she sat there to-day she was ineffaceably