Two Sinners

Chapter I. The

chill, black darkness of a January morning hung over Oxford. One after another the college bells struck five. Their want of unanimity had a curious effect of seeming to insist on the weird hour, which, coming as it did between night and day, was not truly either. And beneath the vibrations they made upon the unfriendly air, it was strange to picture all those forms of young men lying asleep, all their poten tialities of genius and folly brought to one harmless level. From their point of view, Oxford existed solely on their account ; they were in no way con cerned to think of the odd thousands of insignificant inhabitants who, doubtless, had lived there before their names figured on the rolls of the University. Under the shadow of the graceful spire, below Avhich the Virgin Mother still stands holding her Child in her arms, in an ancient gabled house, Roger Tadworth lay and dreamed.

He was startled out of sleep by a sudden knock at his door. " What is it ? Come in ! " he called out, with the alertness of a person well used to being awakened at unexpected moments. B The door being opened admitted the light of a candle, which lit up the face of a hobbledehoy lad, Avho was the doctor's devoted factotum. "It's Mrs. Wetherell from the 'Crossways,' sir; she wants to see you very bad. She's waiting down in the surgery." " All right ; light the gas-stove, and tell her I'll be down in a minute." Before the door was closed, Roger was already out of bed and pulling on his clothes. As he stood for a moment before the glass, it reflected a man of middle height and considerable breadth across the shoulders. His hair was very dark, and he wore a short pointed beard and moustache. His face Avas of a clear brown pallor, his eyes gray, so deep set under the thick eyebroAvs that they looked darker than they really Avere, except when a strong light shone upon them.

The room was furnished with a crude simplicity. There Avas only a narrow iron bedstead standing on a bare Avhite floor ; one rug represented the carpet. All the rest of the furniture Avas of corresponding scantiness, and limited to absolute necessaries only. An anchorite might have slept there with a clear conscience. The snow was falling softly, like feathers, against the window-pane as he looked out for an instant into the darkness before going downstairs. As he entered the surgery, a tall, elderly woman got up to meet him. "What is the matter, Mrs. Wetherell?" asked Roger kindly. " Oh, could you come back Avith me, sir ? " was the answering question. " I am in dreadful trouble. My niece, Mary Power, see.ns to be dying, and I don't know what to do." The tears burst forth in a torrent over the worn, white features.

Mrs. Wetherell sank into the chair from which she had risen, and Avas fairly convulsed with grief. " Mary Power ? " Roger suddenly remembered the story. " I've got the cart outside, sir, if you wouldn't mind coming back with me now," said Mrs. Wetherell brokenly, wiping her tears hastily away. " I was that desperate, I didn't know Avhat to do. I've done all I know for her, but " " All right," said Roger, taking a mackintosh down from a peg ; " I'll come." In a moment he Avas ready to start, and five minutes later the cart was wending its way along the winding road which led from Oxford to the solitary house that Mary Power had chosen for her refuge. It was three miles from the town, and in the heavy state of the road it now seemed much further, as they jolted along between the ruts behind the old white horse, whose rough coat looked a dingy yellow beside the new-fallen snow, where it lay on the bushes by the roadside.

Roger was driving in a kind of drowsy reverie, when Mrs. Wetherell broke the silence. " She wouldn't let me send for any one, bacause she said I knew quite well what to do with all my experience of nursing, or else I wouldn't have waited till now, sir. But she seems to be sinking, and I couldn't bear to leave a stone unturned. The baby is dead. It never breathed at all, though I did all I could." E "You didn't leave her alone, did you," asked Roger, " when you came away ? " " Oh, no, sir ; Mrs. Ewling's a kind soul, and I asked her, as she lives close by, just to sit with Mary while I went for you. She's had a deal of trouble herself, and she isn't so hard as some of them that haven't had it." There was a trembling bitterness in Mrs. Wethe rell's voice as she spoke. Roger remembered Mrs. Ewling, for the simple reason that he had once managed to save her life, in spite of a drunken husband.

He nodded without speaking, and his silence was curiously comforting to the sad woman sitting beside him, who now poured out all the miserable story into his ears, in her simple dramatic language, as naturally as though he were her own son or brother. " You see, sir, I'm the only creature she has to turn to, now her own mother has cast her off, though she is my own sister, and I should never have thought it of her. Her father Avas allers a hard man, and though it's a wicked thing to say, I'm glad he's dead and buried, and will never know the truth. She came to me — Mary, I mean — a fortnight ago. Before that she'd been up in London Avith a cousin that was always a friend of hers, but of course she couldn't stay there. And I was the only creature she had to come to. To think that she, the best girl I ever knew, should come to this !

It almost shakes my faith in Providence, sir, though it's wrong to say so." Roger smiled under the hood of his mackintosh, but said nothing. " Won't Mrs. Crellin help in any way ? " he asked, Avhile Mrs. Wetherell wiped her eyes. " She is generally very kind." "Help? If you could see the letter she Avrote Mary about disgracing her house after all her kind ness to her, you Avould not ask, sir ! I never read such a cruel letter in my life. I took it away from the girl and kept it myself." " Yet, after all," said Roger thoughtfully, " if it happened in her house, she might have been partly responsible. How old is your niece ? " " Twenty, but she looks younger, because she always had a round face and rosy cheeks — till now. God knows they're white enough now ! . . . I think Mrs. Crellin was angry, partly because Mary would never tell her who it was " (" Oh, they always stand out about that the first time," thought Roger.)

" Has she told you ? " he said aloud. " No, sir, not one word, though I begged her to over and over again. You see, as the baby is dead, of course she won't have to support it." " He's got off pretty easily, whoever he is ! " remarked Roger cynically, touching up the horse. His hands were too numb with cold to feel the reins. " Haven't you the slightest idea who it can be yourself? " " She used to write to me sometimes while she was at Crellin Court, but not very often, and she was so tied to the children that she very seldom came to see me. She never mentioned the names of the visitors there, I think, except Lady Margaret Kingsmere, and she was so kind to Mary that TWO SINNERS the girl took to worshipping her in a sort of way, sir. They say she's a fine-looking young lady, too." " Yes," replied Roger abstractedly.

"Was Mary nurse to the children ? " ''Well, sir, they called her the lady-nurse, because she Avasn't like the rest of the servants, and she had a nursemaid under her. You knoAv, Mary had had a deal more schooling than we ever had in my young days, and she always used to read queer, learned sort of books if she could get them out of the shop when her father was alive, and she'd sit by herself for hours, not like other children. I think noAv it was a great mistake that she should have had to mix like that with gentlefolks away from the station she was born in, for it do make it harder for a girl afterwards ; and then — perhaps this Avould never have happened if she had kept to the place where she was born." " Then you think it must have been some man staying in the Crellins' house ? " inquired Roger.

" I don't know, I can't tell. She always was obstinate and a little contrary, even when she was a little girl, and lately, whenever I have begged her to tell me, she would just begin to cry miserable like, fit to break your heart ; but not one single word would she say." After that there was a long silence, Avhich lasted until the cart drew up before the porch of a whitewashed house. A solitary light was burning in one of the windoAvs. Roger shook the sncw off his mackintosh, and hung it up in the passage. " Shall I go upstairs ? " he asked in that quiet, businesslike manner which is so reassuring in men of his profession. " If you don't mind, sir," answered Mrs. Wethe rell, and she led the Avay up the short flight of stairs to the bedroom. She opened the door, and Roger entered behind her.

A candle stood on a chest of draAvers by the bedside. Above it hung a print of a familiar picture, under which Avas the sentence : " Qui sine peccato est vestrum. . . ." Roger's eye fell absently on it, but it was not till afterwards that he remembered seeing it. Mrs. EAvling got up Avith a Avhispered greeting to the dcctor, and softly left the room. Roger Avent up to the bed, and bent over the motionless figure under the coarse counterpane. It Avas such a child-like face lying with closed eyes upon the pillow, that he felt a sudden thrill of pity. The dark eyelashes lay in a thick fringe on the whiteness of the cheeks. The soft brown hair was pushed up roughly from the low forehead. " Is the child here ? " asked Roger, looking round the poorly-furnished room. " I should like to see it." Two chairs had been placed together to form a little impromptu bed, with a shawl folded over them.

Mrs. Wetherell dreAv aside a covering, and moved the candle so as to throw the light upon the little figure underneath. Roger stood looking thoughtfully down at it. The tiny features had a strange, statuesque look in TWO SINNERS the dim light. After a few moments' rapid in spection, he turned once more towards the bed. What there was to be done did not take very long, for Mrs. Wetherell prided herself on her nursing in such cases as this, and was sympatheti cally ready to carry out every direction almost before it could be uttered. When all was finished, Roger bent over the face on the pillow once more, and a pair of large dark eyes opened and gazed up into his own Avith a curious and pathetic look. " You Avill get well," he said gently, " but you must do your best to help." A very long sigh Avas the only answer, and the eyes closed wearily once more.

"Will she really get over it, do you think?" whispered Mrs. Wetherell, wiping her eyes as she Avent downstairs with Roger. "Yes, I think so. It partly depends on herself; you Avill have to be A'ery careful." Long and detailed directions followed, after which Roger looked at his watch. " I am very sleepy," he said simply. " I'll just curl up somewhere here, if you don't mind, and sleep till it is light enough to Avalk back to Oxford." He looked at the kindly face of his hostess with a smile for the first time since they had left his house together. There was a horsehair sofa in the parlour, which Mrs. Wetherell hastily put at his disposal, and drawing a shawl over himself, Roger settled down there, and Avas sound asleep in a moment. Mrs. Wetherell, watching by the bed upstairs, came down once to look at him, and found him still lying in the same easy attitude asleep.

It seemed wonderful to her simple mind that he, who carried with him that terrible beneficent power for life or death, should sleep there as sweetly and carelessly as a little child, or a labourer after his long day's Avork. At half-past eight in the gray morning she brought him a cup of tea. He sat up, and shook himself with a sleepy smile. " Now I must be off," he said, after he had drunk the tea. Cutting short all thanks, after a brief look at the sick girl, he started to walk back to Oxford, and as the keen air struck him on the face, and the sun shone out more and more clearly through the mist, the impressions of the previous night faded completely out of his mind, and Mary Power and her troubles were forgotten like a dream. All the intense vitality of his nature centred itself in the expectation of a letter from a woman.

As he neared his own house, the sight of the post man leaving the door drove the blood from his heart. The episode of the past night was but an in terruption to a passionate mood of racking, torturing suspense into which her behaviour of late had flung him. That he could really lose her seemed to him impossible by the force of its sheer hideousness. Past experience had taught him that women were to be AA'on. Why should this purest soul among Avomen be the exception ? All his belief in her centred itself in the certainty that she loved him as deeply and truly, though not so passionately, as he loved her. He kneAv women well, but she Avas set starrily above the others he had known, and the thought of her braving opposition for his sake made him feel certain thrills of shame sor the past. The old wildly spent youth with its mad joys and sorrows gave him stings of remorse, when he reflected that she had once told him that her father Avas her ideal of a man.

She was to rehabilitate his ancient boyish faith in womanhood, which had strangely fallen away from him in his later dealings with the sex. He deeply despised them, but when once he had knoAvn Marcia Merton, he thought he had discovered that one among them could be pure and yet unbend to love. At first he had laughed at himself for loving her Avhen he could not tell himself that she was beautiful ; and then, after all, he had been filled with joy to realise that he could love pure goodness in a woman, and she in the class of which he had most despaired in his championship of the outcasts of humanity. He flattered himself that he alone among men under stood her, and that she alone among women could understand and help him. He was scarcely con scious that it was his very latent doubt of her strength to stand by him now that made his hand tremble as it picked up her long-expected letter.

He carried it slowly into the surgery, and locked the door behind him Avithout being conscious that he did so. The letter was sealed with the little feminine seal that Marcia always used, and he had put it half-way up to his lips instinctively before he took it away from them with a curious sinking of the heart. When he had read the letter through, he re-read it carefully, and then he seated himself at his desk. Any one Avho was acquainted with his habits would have seen nothing remarkable in the way that he did so, except that his face under its clear broAvn hue had turned to an ashen Avhite, and his hand, as it rested on the edge of the desk, was trembling like a leaf. Then he leaned back in his chair and laughed once, passing his hand over the back of his head ; but the laugh had an unnatural sound.

"You are a coward, Marcia — after all! "he ex claimed under his breath, between his teeth. This was her letter : " I do not know how to tell you what I feel now has to be said, because it gives me such pain to have to hurt you. It is no use fighting any more against the inevitable. We never could have married. I see it now quite distinctly, and I wonder that you and I ever thought it possible from the beginning. I am not the right woman to make you happy. I do not think I shall ever make any one happy. Please try to think as little hardly of me as you can. I have done what I could, and now all the ground is taken away from under my feet. My position at home has long been too intolerable to bear, and my endurance has come to an end at last. My mother would never consent to my marrying you, as you know, and I cannot, after all she has done for me, break her heart.

I owe her some thing for all her love. You could find some better woman, better suited to be your wife than I could ever be. Try to forgive me, for I could not suffer more than I do in writing you this letter. " Marcia. "I will send you all your letters. I need not ask you for mine." Her letters ! He unlocked a drawer and spread the sheets of paper out before him on the table. There they were; he could count them easily enough, and as he re-read them, it struck him for the first time how thin and passionless their tone had been throughout. The regular trained lines of the writing showed so little trace of emotion, that he wondered now how the sight of them could ever have sent the blood beating through his veins at such a fiery pace Avhen he received them. And she wanted these sent back to her !

He laughed again with savage irony at the idea that she could possibly fear he should ever wish to expose the proofs of such a tepid passion as they displayed. In another drawer of this same desk there were other letters written with burning heart's-blood by comparison ; the thought of them was a biting mockery of the present, not to be endured if he would still be sane. For a moment, if Marcia had been there, he felt he could have strangled her, and been happy in the deed. He had forgotten the time, when he was startled by a knock at the door and the rattling of the handle. " Roger, are you here ? Breakfast is ready. The bell has rung twice." A moment later he looked into the dining-room on his AA'ay upstairs to say he had been out all night, and Avould have breakfast later by himself. His sister looked up from the table.

" Oh, Roger, did you hear it ? I have a letter from Mrs. Merton. Marcia is engaged to the Master of St. Briavels." Her face was a startled inquiry ; he did not wait to hear more, before he Avas gone.

Chapter II

" It is quite wonderful hoAv young the Master looks on horseback still ! " exclaimed Mrs. Merton, looking out of the wide French Avindow up the drive now dim in the early winter twilight. It was the afternoon before Roger's visit to the " Crossways." " Yes — from the back view ! " retorted Marcia sarcastically, as she gave her deerhound a biscuit from the tea-table. " I have been watching the way you managed him ever since lunch with positive admiration, Marcia," remarked her sister, Mrs. Crellin. " You are much cleverer than I thought you were ! " She drew on a sable cloak and stood up. " Mother, I must really go home. Tom doesn't like that horse to be kept waiting in the cold." Marcia helped her on with the cloak Avith an absent, automatic movement. The married sister was far the prettier of the two, although she was the elder, and the mother of two children.

Marcia, on the contrary, looked fully her thirty-two years, and there Avas visible in her face that slightly pinched, restrained look Avhich is often to be seen in the faces of unmarried women. In figure she and Mrs. Crellin Avere much alike, both being so conven tionally modelled on the traditions of an old family maid, that from behind they might easily be taken for each other, though Marcia was rather the thinner of the two. Mrs. Merton had settled her stout little person comfortably in a deep chair by the logs on the open hearth, and taking up her charitable knitting, looked benevolently first at the deerhound, and then at her daughters. The firelight gleamed cosily on the beautiful Georgian silver on the tea-table, and the harmonious decorations of the long, low room. " The Master must be about my age, of course," thought the old lady, picking up a dropped stitch, " but still — after all — at Marcia's age, girls " " Good-bye, mummy," said Mrs. Crellin brightly, tripping up to her mother and bestoAving an affection ate little kiss on the kindly old face uplifted over the knitting needles.

" I shall bring Margot and Justin over to see you one day next week." " Yes, my dear, do ! And of course, you can have Turnbull to help at any time you Avant him, you know." " Oh, yes — thanks much. I am arranging some thing for every day during their stay, because I think such an eligible, handsome pair ought not to be wasted. I shall expect a vote of thanks from the county for importing them." As she reached the further end of the room with Marcia, Agatha Avhispered : "Don't be silly, will you, or Aveak about— Roger ? You have the Avhole thing entirely in your own hands now. Mother would be so happy in every way ; it would be such a good thing — if you married the Master. He is perfectly devoted to you. Mother will never hear of the other, I know, so " " Oh, I am so sick of it all ! " broke in Marcia, with an impatient gesture.

" It seems so easy for you who are outside it all. You are never just — never have been just — to Roger. You none of you understand him. However " she stopped. Agatha pressed her hand as they entered the hall. " Be a sensible woman, Maisie, that's all ! You can't live on like this for ever, and if dear mother should die . . . after all, a woman should marry, and in her own position, if she means to be happy. Well, good-bye." She got lightly into the gig, and was driven rapidly away over the frosty gravel. Marcia returned to the drawing-room, where a servant was busy lighting the lamps. Mrs. Merton was dozing gently with her head resting against the back of the arm-chair. The light fell softly through the tinted shade of the lamp on to the homely, in distinct features, and revealed the legible history of a placidly prosperous, harmless life.

Even widow hood had not deepened the lines round the mouth and closed eyes to furrows of sadness or bitterness. Mrs. Merton had loved her dead husband with a wifely, even affection, which had paled to a tolerant friendship during the many years of invalid suffering Avhich had ended with his death. Her last duties towards him had been lightened by an excellent and expensive nurse, to whom she felt a sincere gratitude and even affection. A photograph of Mr. Merton stood in a silver frame on the little table which Avas beside her arm-chair, and though she did not often look at it in reality, she always felt calmly glad, when her eye did happen to fall upon the fine melancholy features, that they were duly represented there in their proper place. She felt that she owed it to the twenty-five years of peaceful life which she had spent with him, to have the portrait there as a witness to the Avorld.

Marriage had given her all she demanded of it. Whether it had given her husband likewise all he demanded, she had never asked. He never spoke of his inner intellectual life to her, and until illness had laid him low, had lived entirely wrapt up in his books. He had a remarkably fine collection. A private fortune enabled him to devote himself to the kind of life that suited his fastidious tastes. It was not the fashion in the days Avhen he took a plump, rosy-cheeked girl to be his wife, for women to be their husband's companions, and the possibility never occurred to him that he might have married a different woman. He had a beautiful melancholy smile which made people who were half afraid of him love him, although they never ventured to talk to him. Marcia loved him better than any one else in the world, and Avas never afraid of him.

After his death she and her mother drifted even further apart. She had expected Mrs. Merton to feel his death as much as she did herself. The fact that everything in the quiet, luxurious household seemed to go on just as smoothly and comfortably as ever when the c library was empty of its owner, filled her with cynical sorrow. She never mentioned her father any more to her mother after the first sad days, and Mrs. Merton gently thought her rather unfeeling, Avithout saying so, or disturbing the outer current of their decorous life in any way. Marcia sat down in a chair near the fire and looked at her mother. The butler softly closed the door, and the curtain fell across it silently. The logs on the hearth made the only sound in the room except the deep, regular breathing of the dog. " She never loved father much," thought Marcia, " and Agatha doesn't love Tom.

Is it a family failing of ours ? Do Avomen ever love the men they marry after the first illusion is gone ? Perhaps love like that never lasts ..." Suddenly before her mind's inner eye rose the vision of a pale, dark face Avith two burning eyes under drawn brows. She drew her breath in with a little shudder, and put the vision away from her as one hides a treasure out of sight because it tempts one too sorely to be safely contemplated. And then her mother Avoke up. " Dear me, have I been asleep ? And are the tea-things gone ? I think I should like a little more tea. I thought the Master ought not to ride back to Oxford in this bitter cold without having some thing first, although it was very early for tea. Would you ring, my dear ? " The order for another supply of tea having bean given, Mrs. Merton spread out her hands to the fire.

"It really was a most charming lunch, wasn't it? He is so entertaining always, and does tell a story so well." Marcia Avas not in the least deceived by the cherubic innocence of her mother's manner. She made no reply for a moment, and then she said abruptly : " Mother, you had a letter from Roger Tadworth this morning. What did he say ? I should like to see it." It Avas rather curious, if an observer had been present, to see that while Marcia said this she turned pale, and her mother blushed. " The letter was to me, dear," replied Mrs. Merton, patting her black silk knee a little nervously with one hand. " I don't think he could ha\'e in tended me to show it to any one else." " Considering it must have been about me," said Marcia, " I think I may have some claim to know Avhat he said. At least, tell me the substance of it.

I am not a child, you know." " It is for that very reason," replied Mrs. Merton, with just a dash of malice, "that I think you ought to have too much Avisdom to persist in a very foolish — entanglement, Marcia. You are too old noAv to have undesirable people dangling after you. Dr. Tadworth's letter " "What do you mean by undesirable, please?" interrupted Marcia sharply. " That is just one of those Arague Avords which can be twisted to mean Avhatever one likes. I should like to have it defined, mother." Mrs. Merton paused to admit the butler with the tea, regarding him for the moment as a minor inc strument of Providence which gave her time to parry Marcia's question. As the door closed, she observed : "Well, Marcia, I think I need scarcely point out how unsuitable Dr. Tadworth would be as a match for you, after what the Master said even to-day.