Born in Exile Part 61

'What can I tell you,' he said, 'that you don't know, or that you can't conjecture?'

'But you wrote that there was so much I could not be expected to understand. And I can't, can't understand you. It still seems impossible. Why did you hide the truth from me?'

'Because if I had begun by telling it, I should never have won a kind look or a kind thought from you.'

Sidwell reflected.

'But what did you care for me then--when it began?'

'Not so much as I do now, but enough to overthrow all the results of my life up to that time. Before I met you in this house I had seen you twice, and had learned who you were. I was sitting in the Cathedral when you came there with your sister and Miss Moorhouse--do you remember? I heard f.a.n.n.y call you by your name, and that brought to my mind a young girl whom I had known in a slight way years before. And the next day I again saw you there, at the service; I waited about the entrance only to see you. I cared enough for you then to conceive a design which for a long time seemed too hateful really to be carried out, but--at last it was, you see.

Sidwell breathed quickly. Nothing he could have urged for himself would have affected her more deeply than this. To date back and extend the period of his love for her was a flattery more subtle than Peak imagined.

'Why didn't you tell me that the day before yesterday?' she asked, with tremulous bosom.

'I had no wish to remind myself of baseness in the midst of a pure joy.'

She was silent, then exclaimed, in accents of pain:

'Why should you have thought it necessary to be other than yourself?

Couldn't you see, at first meeting with us, that we were not bigoted people? Didn't you know that Buckland had accustomed us to understand how common it is nowadays for people to throw off the old religion?

Would father have looked coldly on you if he had known that you followed where so many good and thoughtful men were leading?'

He regarded her anxiously.

'I had heard from Buckland that your father was strongly prejudiced; that you also were quite out of sympathy with the new thought.'

'He exaggerated--even then.'

'Exaggerated? But on what plea could I have come to live in this neighbourhood? How could I have kept you in sight--tried to win your interest? I had no means, no position. The very thought of encouraging my love for you demanded some extraordinary step. What course was open to me?'

Sidwell let her head droop.

'I don't know. You might perhaps have discovered a way.'

'But what was the use, when the mere fact of my heresy would have forbidden hope from the outset?'

'Why should it have done so?'

'Why? You know very well that you could never even have been friendly with the man who wrote that thing in the review.'

'But here is the proof how much better it is to behave truthfully! In this last year I have changed so much that I find it difficult to understand the strength of my former prejudices. What is it to me now that you speak scornfully of attempts to reconcile things that can't be reconciled? I understand the new thought, and how natural it is for you to accept it. If only I could have come to know you well, your opinions would not have stood between us.'

Peak made a slight gesture, and smiled incredulously.

'You think so now.'

'And I have such good reason for my thought,' rejoined Sidwell, earnestly, 'that when you said you loved me, my only regret in looking to the future was--that you had resolved to be a clergyman.'

He leaned back in the chair, and let a hand fall on his knee. The gesture seemed to signify a weary relinquishment of concern in what they were discussing.

'How could I foresee that?' he uttered, in a corresponding tone.

Sidwell was made uneasy by the course upon which she had entered. To what did her words tend? If only to a demonstration that fate had used him as the plaything of its irony--if, after all, she had nothing to say to him but 'See how your own folly has ruined you', then she had better have kept silence. She not only appeared to be offering him encouragement, but was in truth doing so. She wished him to understand that his way of thinking was no obstacle to her love, and with that purpose she was even guilty of a slight misrepresentation. For it was only since the shock of this disaster that she had clearly recognised the change in her own mind. True, the regret of which she spoke had for an instant visited her, but it represented a mundane solicitude rather than an intellectual scruple. It had occurred to her how much brighter would be their prospect if Peak were but an active man of the world, with a career before him distinctly suited to his powers.

His contention was undeniably just. The influence to which she had from the first submitted was the same that her father felt so strongly.

G.o.dwin interested her as a self-reliant champion of the old faiths, and his personal characteristics would never have awakened such sympathy in her but for that initial recommendation. Natural prejudice would have prevented her from perceiving the points of kindred between his temperament and her own. His low origin, the ridiculous stories connected with his youth--why had she, in spite of likelihood, been able to disregard these things? Only because of what she then deemed his spiritual value.

But for the dishonourable part he had played, this bond of love would never have been formed between them. The thought was a new apology for his transgression; she could not but defy her conscience, and look indulgently on the evil which had borne such fruit.

G.o.dwin had begun to speak again.

'This is quite in keeping with the tenor of my whole life. Whatever I undertake ends in frustration at a point where success seems to have just come within my reach. Great things and trifles--it's all the same.

My course at College was broken off at the moment when I might have a.s.sured my future. Later, I made many an effort to succeed in literature, and when at length something of mine was printed in a leading review, I could not even sign it, and had no profit from the attention it excited. Now--well, you see. Laughable, isn't it?'

Sidwell scarcely withheld herself from bending forward and giving him her hand.

'What shall you do?' she asked.

'Oh, I am not afraid. I have still enough money left to support me until I can find some occupation of the old kind. Fortunately, I am not one of those men whose brains have no marketable value.'

'If you knew how it pains me to hear you!'

'If I didn't believe that, I couldn't speak to you like this. I never thought you would let me see you again, and if you hadn't asked me to come, I could never have brought myself to face you. But it would have been a miserable thing to go off without even knowing what you thought of me.'

'Should you never have written to me?'

'I think not. You find it hard to imagine that I have any pride, no doubt; but it is there, explain it how one may.'

'It would have been wrong to leave me in such uncertainty.'

'Uncertainty?'

'About you--about your future.'

'Did you quite mean that? Hadn't your brother made you doubt whether I loved you at all?'

'Yes. But no, I didn't doubt. Indeed, indeed, I didn't doubt! But I felt such a need of hearing from your own lips that--Oh, I can't explain myself!'

G.o.dwin smiled sadly.

'I think I understand. But there was every reason for my believing that _your_ love could not bear such a test. You must regard me as quite a different man--one utterly unknown to you.'

He had resolved to speak not a word that could sound like an appeal to her emotions. When he entered the room he felt a sincere indifference as to what would result from the interview, for to his mind the story was ended, and he had only to retire with the dignity still possible to a dishonoured man. To touch the note of pathos would be unworthy; to exert what influence might be left to him, a wanton cruelty. But he had heard such unexpected things, that it was not easy for him to remember how complete had seemed the severance between him and Sidwell. The charm of her presence was rea.s.serting itself, and when avowal of continued love appeared so unmistakably in her troubled countenance, her broken words, he could not control the answering fervour. He spoke in a changed voice, and allowed his eyes to dwell longingly upon hers.

'I felt so at first,' she answered. 'And it would be wrong to pretend that I can still regard you as I did before.'

It cost her a great effort to add these words. When they were spoken, she was at once glad and fearful.