Lady Fitz Rewes had determined to prevent the marriage of Lord Reckage with Agnes Carillon. She could not forget the dreadful scene with Sara when that poor girl was endeavouring to reconcile herself to the Duke of Marshire's proposal. Pensee had studied each person concerned in the possible tragedy. She saw that Agnes was by no means serene, that the portrait by Rennes somehow made no progress, that Reckage was feverish and excitable. His bearing toward Sara during the lunch confirmed Pensee's suspicion that the love which had existed between them as boy and girl was still unextinguished on either side. He would have been less than mortal, she thought, if he had not felt, with all the bitterness of a conscious fool, that he had missed his true destiny. Sara possessed the warmth and wealth of heart which were the complements his own bleak nature required. Agnes Carillon, with her accurate, invariable beauty, had a prim disposition, wholesome enough for a man of strange, dark humours like David Rennes, but perilous always in its effect on any frigid or calculating mind. And Reckage was known to be supremely selfish. It seemed to Pensee that Sara had behaved very naturally, very touchingly, through the trying conversation on the subject of rising men and their marriages. Her demeanour had been unsurpassable. But it was not in nature that a woman who understood a man could look on, inactive and indifferent, while he fettered himself with some damaging influence. Perhaps her ladyship felt the situation the more keenly, because, much as she loved Mrs. Parflete, she could not bring herself to think that she was the wife for Robert. She had spent many weeks refusing admittance to this thought, yet prudence was prudence, and, by virtue of its stability, it prevailed. The union, even viewed in the most favourable light, had always seemed imprudent. It was too hurried. Shocking, mortifying as the possibility of its being illegal was, Pensee's conviction that Almighty God ordered all things for the best seemed less a faith and more a matter of pure reason than was usual in the ordinary run of hard cases which made demands upon her piety. "Two diamonds do not easily form cup and socket," was an old saying in her home circle. The more she had seen of Brigit Parflete the more she had been struck with her--struck with her moodiness, struck with her contempt for received opinions, her vigour and independence of will. Was she the wife to further the advance of a man of extraordinary ability, already much handicapped on the world's course by a proud spirit, a reckless, impetuous disdain of creatures generally considered the pink of human excellence? He was passionately in love, and the strength of this sentiment carried, for the time, every thought of his being along with it. But love was not unalterable. The change would surely come. The fever and folly, the exaltation and ardours would fade into a sacred affection--an instinctive tenderness; yet other interests, as vital, and in their season more absorbing, would flock into his life. What then?
Pensee and Reckage did not exchange many words till they found themselves alone, face to face, in the railway carriage bound for Dover. Then they looked with wonder at each other, stupefied at the errand on which they were bound, and the strangeness of the whole proceeding. Reckage noticed that his companion was attired so correctly and with such discretion that no one could have told she was a pretty woman. Her veil was not unusually thick, yet it disguised every charm of expression and feature. He had bought her a novel, some papers, and a few magazines; she turned these over listlessly, and murmured, as the train sped along--
"Of course, I had to come. No one will say a word when the circumstances are known. I hope poor Renshaw is comfortable in the next carriage."
Reckage replied--
"You have behaved like an angel!"
He probably but half understood Pensee's character: he underrated her intellect, and he misconstrued her friendship for Orange into a weak infatuation. Agnes Carillon shared his view on this point, for, as he and his future bride could never be confidential with each other, they managed an appearance of intimacy by discussing with great freedom the private affairs of their friends. Agnes, in the fervour of godliness, had even seen much that was reprehensible in Lady Fitz Rewes's devotion to a man who had no idea of marrying her. She had declared that she could not understand it--an attitude pleasing to her fancy and gratifying to her pride. Reckage had thought it was not quite clear that the danger was immediate. Such was his feeling now toward Pensee, although he was conscious of a certain curiosity with regard to her motive in taking Brigit's part with such magnificent self-effacement. This seemed to him unnatural; and although she had impressed him with the highest opinion of her kindness, he could not believe that a woman of genuinely tender sensibilities could have approached such an altruistic height. She was an excellent creature--as creatures went, he thought, but hard in a feeble way. Then he closed his eyes and called up the elusive image of Sara de Treverell--very dark, very handsome, with her superb black hair reaching to her knees--as he had often seen it when she was a little girl--her blue eyes shining with a strange light, her lips smiling, her white arms held out....
"Sara may not be a happy girl," said Pensee suddenly, "but she is a clever one."
Reckage started from his reverie.
"How odd!" he exclaimed, surprised into candour. "I was thinking of her at that very moment."
Pensee had read as much on his face, but she did not tell him so.
"I feel for her very much," she observed instead. "She must be the greatest possible comfort to her father, although he may not realise it. Yet he is forcing on the engagement to Marshire. She keeps up in the most courageous way, but she has ideals, and no persuasion will induce her to change them."
He turned red, and said, looking out of the window--
"Ideals do no harm when, for some reason or other, we are unable to carry them out."
"I cannot imagine what she will do, or how she will bear her life if things continue as they are."
"What things?"
"She is like a slave to Lord Garrow. She is with him constantly, reading to him, and doing everything for him. She will be a cruel loss to his home when she marries."
"I rather revel at the thought of the dismay which will attend her final capture of Marshire."
"I used to hope that you perhaps----"
He glanced up and smiled with an air of satisfaction.
"I don't like the appearance of measuring myself against Marshire.... But--but he certainly seems, in character, the culminating point of mediocrity! In fact, Mr. Disraeli, whom I seldom quote, so described him."
"What a husband for that brilliant, affectionate girl! She likes all that is simple and grand. A real love--if it were a happy one--would make her even more charming, and if it caused her suffering, it would make her even more noble. But failing this, there will be a frightful void in her life."
Reckage, whose imagination began to play round this thought, replied with unusual seriousness--
"I should be horribly grieved to see any declension from her better nature. I think I am getting to think less of mere social power. I feel more than I used to do that, if one could literally live one's theories on moral strength, it would be a complete refutation of these ideas about the influence of money or a big accidental position. Old Harding was right when he said at luncheon to-day that disinterestedness counted very highly in the popular vote. The point about Henry Fox's elopement with Caroline Lennox was sound."
"It would not have been sound," said Pensee, "if Caroline Lennox had been a third-rate woman. A man can be desperate so long as his choice, on the whole, justifies, either by her beauty, or her talents, or something uncommon, an extreme measure. Now, Robert may not have made a wise choice, but it is certainly a distinguished one. It can be understood and it commands respect."
"Oh, yes, his is a thorough-going emotion, and one couldn't find a fault with its object. A strong man is always a man who feels strongly and who can carry his feeling into action. Robert, with all his mysticism, is never subject to the deep depressions of spirit which usually afflict men of his gifts. He does not know what it is to be languid; or to have invincible indecisions. He will die game--even if he does know German metaphysic backwards!"
She was astonished.
"How well you understand him!"
He leant forward a little and adopted a more confidential tone--
"Sara spoke of him at lunch. Her judgment of men and affairs--for so young a woman--is nothing short of amazing. I attribute it to the Asiatic streak on her mother's side. It is a kind of second-sight. What a wife for a Prime Minister! And Marshire, a fellow of middling ability and no experience, has had the sense to perceive her qualities!... My feelings can't be easily defined, nor, indeed, is it necessary they should.... I have gone so far that I cannot see anything for it but to go on."
"You mean--in your own marriage?"
He sighed profoundly, remained for several minutes silent, and finally roused himself with a painful effort.
"There are some griefs which can defy any consolation save that of time. Time ultimately cures everything. It is a matter of history that I was once very much attached to Sara."
"I know," murmured Pensee. "I know."
He covered his eyes with one hand and looked through his fingers at her face, asking himself by what transition he could best arrive at a frank exposition of his embarrassed sentiments. It seemed to him that she was intelligent as well as trustworthy, and he felt impelled to call in her assistance, being sure that, in any cause where love could be pleaded, she would show a judicious leniency.
"If you have not observed that I am still--too interested, you have not observed with your usual sagacity," said he.
"I think--if I may say so--that time seems only to deepen a sorrow of that kind."
"Particularly when it is associated--as in this case--with a certain self-reproach. In times of trial my pen is my refuge. I could not write for a year after I had decided--irrevocably as I believed--that Sara and I could not make each other happy."
"Then you never actually proposed to her? There was never any tacit understanding?"
"Never. And if there be any part of my conduct in life upon which I can look with entire satisfaction, it is my behaviour with regard to Sara. I did not mislead her in any way. I was even over-scrupulous, and purposely avoided opportunities of meeting. I say this in order that you may know how very determined a man's will must be--if he does not wish to be selfish. A course of struggling is miserable indeed. I spared her any knowledge of my misery."
"She might have been happier had she known of it! Last year she remained entirely alone; and solitude is full of bad things--it is very dangerous, however much one is accustomed to it."
"Poor girl! But I could not, in honour, suffer a false impression to be formed. As a matter of fact, my family wouldn't hear of the match. There is no denying that they were set on my marrying Agnes."
At last he had been able to mention her. He leant back and relied on his companion's tact to elaborate the theme.
Pensee murmured--
"Dear Agnes! If there are storms, they won't come from her side. She is of a very elevated spirit----"
He winced, but she continued--
"Generous, sternly honest, greatly esteemed by every one. Neither pique nor passion nor petty feelings could ever influence her mind. She is the most angelic, good woman I ever met--she is one to whom one may complain, and be a bore. She has such utter patience!"
"You would not be impressed by professions, nor am I very clever at making them," said he, "but you know, by sympathy, that my affection for her is--is the heroic feeling of devotion which has also a kind of exclusiveness----"
He could not finish the sentence.
"It leads you to imagine that you could never survive her loss," said Pensee gravely. "But need you lose her--as a friend?" Something in his countenance encouraged her to pursue this train of thought. "Agnes has the deepest admiration for your qualities. No doubt, you truly realise the high standard of character which she would hope for in one to whom she gave her love. You have proved yourself worthy to call out her best feelings."
Reckage was very touched by this tribute.
"And her best feelings," said he, "ought to make us--at our best--very humble."
Pensee lifted her veil just above her eyes, clasped her hands tightly together, and kept her earnest glance full upon his.
"I believe," she continued, "that if it were in man, or woman, to command the heart, you would have her entire affection. I believe she is unhappy. During the last week she has had many ups and downs. She has passed with astonishing rapidity from the lowest despair to the height of joy. She has tried to distract her mind by incessant occupation. But you know her manner--it is transparent near the surface, difficult to sound in its depths."
"Yes, she has a childlike openness--up to a certain point."
"I can only tell you, therefore, what I think, judging as a woman, by outward signs. I seem to detect a sort of self-doubt--as though she feared making some error. She has become of late strangely intense and vivid--she is fascinated by books, and drawn to music, as she never was before. Perhaps she sees that you give her a priceless, beautiful friendship which must indeed be flattering. Yet--yet in marriage friendship is not enough. So she is acquiring a stock of interests which are impersonal."
Loyalty to Agnes forbade any reference to David Rennes. She had no intention of giving the least hint of her own private conviction on the subject. She desired merely that Reckage should learn how the engagement might be broken off without giving unimaginable grief to the young lady. The move under this aspect was skilful and successful. Reckage received her words as a subtle appeal to his honour and kindness.
He said at once--
"I am glad you have told me this. I could bear my own mistakes. I could not bear hers. Let me look at the step which I have taken! The choice is for life. Agnes is inflexibly conscientious and self-denying. Several years of attachment have tried us both. She knows my faults; I know where her"--he paused for a moment--"her qualities might clash with mine. We spoke of this together; we considered every circumstance that could, by any remote chance, weigh against our common happiness."
Pensee shook her head.
"Of course, that was right," she said doubtfully.
"It is no easy matter to get a promise from Agnes," he went on; "but when once given it is inviolate. This throws a grisly responsibility upon me. I must risk everything, if I am to do anything. You have expressed a dread which I have been endeavouring to stifle. I am making her wretched."
"I don't say that you are making her wretched; I say she seems disturbed and unsettled when she ought to be full of the brightest hopes."
"Quite so. I fear the unsettlement is exceedingly great. A neutrality on your part is all I could in reason expect; but your counsel in such a grave matter----"
Pensee summoned all her energy, and breathed a little prayer for the well-being of the two women whose lives were at stake.
"I saw Agnes this morning," she said, speaking at a rapid pace; "she came up for some shopping, and she returned home directly after tea."
"She ought to have told me that she was in town," he exclaimed.
"My dear Beauclerk, you know her sweetness! She said, 'I don't wish to take up his time; an engagement ought not to be a servitude.' That is the reason why she did not tell you."
"She ought to have told me," he repeated. "Such extreme delicacy was most uncalled for. It wasn't even friendly. When we were old friends, and nothing more, she would have told me."
"Yes, when you were friends."
"I think she gave me a nasty rap in so acting; I do, indeed. One would infer that I had failed in some ordinary attentiveness. It is a distinct reprimand."
"You are quite wrong. She meant it in the noblest way."
"Then it is a desperately near thing between noble conduct and a downright snub. I can't help lashing out about it."
In Pensee's own private perception this outburst of temper was no bad sign. It convinced her, at least, of the sincerity of his feelings towards Agnes and his genuine desire to behave well at every point in their relationship.
"Don't you understand," she said, "that Agnes dares not love you. This being the case, I cannot see that she could go on in what might be called a natural way. Will you bear with me, and, if I am indiscreet, forgive me? She wants all the sympathy and support she can get. She is suffering very much from want of courage. She trusts, perhaps, in her friends' prayers. It seems as though something very momentous were going on, but that she has nothing to do but to wait for it. I think there may be a way out still; God may overrule people's hearts."
She had never intended to say so much, and she trembled with an excitement which she could not subdue.
"I must admit," said Reckage, "that for some time I have had a conviction, weaker or stronger, but, on the whole, constantly growing, that Agnes and I are unsuited to each other. I am too much accustomed to this idea to feel pain at it."
"O, it makes my heart ache--I mean so much painfulness for every one concerned!"
"This conviction must, sooner or later, lead me to action. The world is indulgent to the impetuous, because they appear strong; and it is most severe to those who hesitate, because hesitation is taken for a sign of weakness. Lookers-on have no patience with moral combats--and least of all in affairs of this kind. But no opinion will force me to do what I do not think right. If our engagement is a mistake, I don't intend to 'lump it,' as they say. We must mend the evil. And, thank God, it is not too late. The merciful part is that in relieving my own mind I shall also greatly relieve hers. It is clear she doesn't love me. This last act proves the fact conclusively."
Pensee did not agree with this, but she remained silent, fearing lest a rash word should spoil her good work.
"For a long, long time," he continued, "my constant question has been, 'Can this last? is it a delusion?' But I do not shut my eyes now. I knew they were all wrong at home when they made out that she was in love with me, and expected me to propose. We are both the victims of an impertinent, if well-meant, interference--what Robert calls 'the jabbering of the damned.' Poor Robert, we are forgetting him. I am ashamed to talk so much about myself."
"In his case, I see no help but resignation to the will of God," said Pensee.
"But that resignation is an awful thing," said Reckage. "It is a shade better than the atheism of despair; yet only a shade better."
By degrees Pensee was learning why Robert had such a strong, tenacious attachment to this man. He was always faithful to his mood. All he did and all he said represented accurately all he thought and all he felt. Some live a dual life--he lived but one; and, with his faults, peculiarities, and egoism, there was never the least dissimulation. It was true that, if occasion required, he could hold his tongue; but he abhorred tact and hated doctrines of expediency--everything, in fact, which put any restraint upon the "development of his inclinations."
The train was now approaching Dover. He decided to put his own troubles aside, and, out of mere decency, concentrate his thoughts on the severe trial in store for Orange.
"This business about Parflete," said he, "is a great blow. One becomes indifferent to what is said of, or done to, one's self; but that all this uncommon, saddening, sickening trouble should come upon Robert is too bad. It seems a kind of hacking and hacking, bit by bit."
"You are certainly very fond of him," said Pensee.
"Yes, I am. He's so dependable."
Pensee engaged a private cabin for the crossing, and she retired there with her maid. Too tired and over-strung to sleep, she lay down, closed her eyes, and lived again through the many fatiguing, agitating moments of that day. Her affection for Orange had been so steeped in hopelessness from the hour, months before, when he told her of his love for Brigit, that the wedding of these two had been a relief rather than a final anguish. The agonising possibilities which had sometimes darted into her mind would never again surprise her: the questions which she had always striven to prohibit were no longer even in existence. He had taken the unredeemable step: he was married. Jealousy had no part in her suffering. Robert had never given her the smallest right to feel slighted, or neglected, or abandoned. Some women are jealous by temperament, but the greater number are jealous only when their trust is insulted or their dignity brought down to the humiliating struggle for a lost empire. Empire over Orange she had never possessed or claimed: she could feel no bitterness, therefore, at the thought of the small place she occupied in his destiny. The sorrow which cut and severed her heart was loneliness. She felt that, after the wedding, she could hardly do anything or take interest in anything. It seemed as if the waters were gathered in heaps on either side; things, she thought, could not be better, or worse. God was with her still, and her children--her dear children--were with her still, but she could not disguise the greatness of the loss. Her single wish, as far as she dared have a wish, had been to benefit Robert and to win his confidence. She had seen his mind working in various directions, and although she was not, in the faintest sense, his fit companion intellectually, she had a knowledge and experience of life which made her friendship valuable--a gift worth offering to any man. She had been able to advise him. Brigit now had even this privilege also. "I shall seem an intruder," thought Pensee, again and again.
It was altogether a terrible crisis. How she should struggle through all the parts of it, or what she should be when it was over, she could not trust herself to say. The world seemed too heavy a burden to be fought against. Yet with what thoughts and aspirations and earnest prayers she had stood by Brigit's side at the altar rails. She had been given a supernatural strength for the marriage ceremony. She was by nature and before all things, from first to last, unalterably a good friend, and at that moment of intensest difficulty the sight of Robert's happiness had made her oblivious to every other consideration. Glad tears had risen to her eyes. She had been swayed by one feeling--a deep, sincere thankfulness that his love-story, which had promised sorrow only from the very beginning, was ending, unexpectedly, so well. She might have feared that he was changing one form of unhappiness for another, but she knew his impatient spirit, and, knowing it, she could not imagine that any earthly pain could try him so sorely as a lifelong separation from the one woman he loved--loved to the pitch of madness.
And then--in one moment--the strange tidings came which drove her from the stupor of resignation to fevers of anxiety more consuming than any she had ever felt before. A great flame, successive flames, of terror swept over her, as she feigned placid sleep in the little cabin, at the thought of the news poor Reckage would have to break on the morrow. How would Robert bear it? That he would act a noble and true part she could not doubt. But at a certain degree of suffering, the strongest man can think of nothing except himself, and she felt already, in anticipation, the dumb torture she would have to endure in looking on, helpless and unnoticed, at an agony which she could neither share nor relieve. The fear of losing him had been dreadful, but it was even more dreadful to know that although she might have, after all, a certain right now to offer him sympathy, she could never make him happy, that she could never hope to learn the secret regrets, griefs, and torments, the unspoken broodings which would surely enough prey upon his spirit. She pictured herself sitting at his side, or walking with him, for hours--he absorbed in his own sorrowful thoughts, she striving vainly to distract him by a tinkling prattle on every topic except the one nearest his heart. Oh, how fearfully wide asunder they were! A sensation of the enormous distance which can exist between two souls in daily companionship filled her with a sickening, shivering heaviness. She thought she would have to cry out because of the slow fire which seemed to scorch her dry and aching eyes. Robert would never really need her, never really care about her. This new trouble would take him farther away than ever. He would burn all his ships, and any poor little tenderness he might have had in the past for her, with them. Some great revulsion would take place in his character; he would perhaps grow silent, reserved, enigmatic, his face would show to the world the terrible, false, unknowable peace which is the veil of the dead. It was useless to smooth her difficulties which existed. It was foolish and wrong to encourage herself in unreal ideas about him. It was best always to be straightforward and admit the truth--no matter how bitter. And yet he had been kind and helpful to her in a way in which scarce any one else could have been. She clung to the belief that she would be able to do something to make his hour of trial less severe. The hope which insinuates itself into every unrequited love still lingered. He could at least always talk to her about Brigit: that common memory would be a constant link between them. She had earned his esteem, and perhaps with his esteem an affection deeper than he himself realised. Under the pressure of a sudden and tragical necessity, he would turn to her with the certainty that she would not fail him. She was modest enough about her own powers. A remark she had once heard Reckage pass, to the effect that religious women of devoted lives were unhappily conspicuous, as a rule, for feebleness of mind and strength of prejudice, haunted her as a kind of doom from which there was no appeal. She knew, too, the verdict usually passed on those of either sex who have the courage to maintain an unselfish attitude whether toward God or some fellow-creature. But here she comforted herself by deciding that her utter isolation in this universe rested on the fact that she did not much deserve to be loved by anybody. This granted--not without a pang--she felt the signs of weariness in her heart, but none of wavering. She resolved to be foolish in the eyes of the self-satisfied.
Lord Reckage meanwhile was pacing the deck. His conversation with Pensee had cast a darkness over his spirit. He had made up his mind, weeks before, that the marriage years of his life would be the best, the most distinguished, and most useful. With the utmost pains he had chosen a wife. He had acted with the greatest caution in no weak or superficial, or haphazard, or fitful way. Nevertheless, the outlook was dismal. This first step in decline from his ideal caused him much pain and restlessness, and led him to think cynically of many doctrines to which, in serene moments, he had unconditionally subscribed. He compared his own case with Robert's. Robert, in his headstrong passion, had certainly rattled up sleeping lions, heedless of all consequences, and in defiance of every warning. He had now met, poor fellow, with an appalling chastisement, but could any one pretend that he had not brought it, to a great extent, upon himself? He (Reckage), however, had behaved, from first to last, in an unexceptionable manner. He had studiously avoided the one girl of whom he was inclined to be immoderately fond. It was true that he had practised this restraint less in her interest than his own. But this was because he feared--as every creature will fear by instinct its mortal enemy--the power of an ardent attachment. His mind had revolted in a panic at the thought of becoming dependent on a woman's humours. The noblest of the sex were capricious, and far and away the best course was to select a partner whose unavoidable nonsense would leave one, merely from indifference, undisturbed. Sara de Treverell, in the past, had been, by her vagaries, directly responsible for several sleepless nights, and a sleepless night was one of the few things he simply could not stand. Thoughts of her had seemed to unfit him for his work, to weaken his nerves, to act, in various ways, to his disadvantage. She had been exacting in her demands upon his nature. They were not uttered demands, or demands which he could formulate, but he had been conscious of them always. He had been obliged to pause and ask himself at every thought, at every step--"What would Sara say to this?"
It was a tyranny--if not a species of witchcraft. And so he had determined to see her no more. Following the usual, most correct method in such procedures, he went abroad. After a week of irritating meditations, furtive, all but unconquerable desires, after he had passed the day on which it had been his custom for months to call upon her, after he had learned how to discipline the hours he had used to spend riding with her in the Row, he felt as a convalescent after some exhausting malady--quiescent, dulled, possessed by a drowsy stupidity, inaccessible to any serious emotion. He was cured of his fancy, although no effort of will could protect the soreness of the bruise. He had persevered in his course of treatment--congratulating himself, at the end, on his escape from a dangerous obsession. The picture of Sara grew paler and paler before his eyes--indeed, it seemed to fade all too quickly, and, with the perversity of consistent egoism, he felt many twinges of sadness to think that he had forgotten her so soon. His vanity would have preferred a longer combat--for even the most shallow admit the romantic admirableness of an obstinate love. Still, what could he ask better than this triumph over a cruel, an obstructive memory? He had regained, so he believed, his old independence as the man of action, energetic, self-controlled, moved by one passion only, and that the finest of all--ambition. In surveying once more the great design of his career, he found it an effort to bring up--from the far recesses of his experience--the poor little sentimental episode, so insignificant and commonplace, which, in a kind of aberration, he had taken for an affair of the heart. He returned to England. He threw himself with vigour into the questions which were then disturbing Churchmen. He revived a touching acquaintance with Agnes Carillon, an acquaintance which was peculiarly soothing to his preoccupied mind. Here was a girl, he thought, who could be a fit helpmate. She asked for nothing, absorbed nothing, and gave a great deal of gentle, kind companionship when he wanted it.
When he did not want it, she understood perfectly--possessing, in an eminent degree, the rare domestic art of being able to make herself scarce--alike in his thoughts and his engagements. The truths did not occur to him that a woman in love could never have been so unnaturally prudent, or that a woman whom he loved could not have interested him so slightly. He took great pride in her perfect skin and hair and eyes, in her beautiful, graceful, and gracious manners, but his soul never kindled at her approach, his pulse beat no slower at her departure. He requited her agreeableness with respect. And so they had become engaged--to the unbounded gratification of all his relatives, amidst the congratulations of his friends. There seemed a certain shadowiness in his conception of their future existence together as man and wife: something which he recognised as an interior voice chimed in, from time to time, with provoking interrogations, mostly unanswerable. A plaintive need of happiness, melancholy, obscure, but recurrent, mixed in his fluctuating thoughts. Finally, it pursued him, haunted him, and caught him with the strange tenacity of an incorporeal grasp. Sara, now dethroned from her place of power, loomed in all his dreams. Irresistibly, he was drawn toward the forbidden recollection of her delightfulness. There seemed no longer any danger in these musings. He had entrusted his actual life to the safe-keeping of the nicest woman he had ever known. Where then was the harm in harking back, merely in reverie, to the frivolous, amusing phantom of a renounced sentiment? Yet, after a reverie of the kind, why did he often wonder how he and Agnes could look in one another's faces and pretend to any sort of real intimacy? Sara knew him better than he knew himself. Her sympathy ran into a hundred sinuosities--she understood his silence as well as his conversation. He was never conscious of the smallest strain, the least dissimulation, in her society. Beneath their curious disparities an identity seemed to unite them. There was an unrepenting quality in her conscience which braced and stimulated his moral courage.
Agnes, on the contrary, with her instinct of behaviour, made him over-cautious and encouraged the tendency to indecision which interfered with the comfortable balance of his soul. And he wished his faculties to work with astronomic punctuality. It is certain, however, that he would have accepted his choice as a thing settled beyond any readjustment, but for the news of the Duke of Marshire's proposal, and the sight of Sara herself on the fatal afternoon when he was feeling especially forlorn. She had thrown him a glance in which defiance, disdain, and an indistinct affection were blended in one provoking dart. He was a moralist who believed that there is always, between men and women, the dormant principles of mistrust and hatred. He had discussed this theory frequently with Robert, who found the notion as repulsive as it was false. But it seemed a truth beyond contradiction to Reckage, who possessed, in his own mind, constant irrefutable testimony in support of the view. Sara had never before defied him. She had never before seemed to feel her power as a creature incomparably superior in brilliancy to all the other girls in their circle. She had never before seemed to pity him as a man who had feared to do what Marshire--a being considered remarkable only for his family and his fortune--had boldly, gladly volunteered to carry out to the ultimate consequence. That glance pierced his self-love, his pride, his will. After his long hesitations, after the wearisome, interminable debates between his judgment and his inclination, he decided suddenly, all at once, without further reflection, that he no longer belonged to himself. He was the slave once more of doubts, fears, and temptations. His excited nerves and troubled senses asserted their right to be regarded as threads, at least, in the web of destiny. From the hour of that chance encounter in the Park, till he and Sara met at Lord Garrow's that day, he had not been able to escape from the inexorable cruelty of an ill-used passion, once more, in full command. Every individual has his rule--could one but find it out--and a rule to which there are no exceptions.
With Reckage it was simple enough: he invariably followed the line of his own glory. The distress he suffered--really, and not colourably--took its rise from the intervention of Marshire. He felt as a racing man feels when he sees a friendless horse, which he might have purchased, beat the Derby favourite by some three lengths and a half. He winced at the suspicion that he had committed an error in judgment, and lost a great opportunity. The words of Sir Piers Harding on the subject of audacity in love had fallen on his ears with startling force. It was an illustration of that old saying--"The appetite, the occasion, and the ripe fruit." Convinced now that his reputation, his career, and his comfort depended on his conduct toward Sara, all hesitation left him. He would have to drive Marshire, in confusion, from the field, and bear away the prize himself. Pensee's observations with regard to Agnes had cleared away most, if not all, of his difficulties in that particular quarter. No one had ever accused him of cowardice. Whenever he took refuge in procrastination or deceit, it was never because he was afraid, but in order that nothing might interfere with the purpose he had in hand. The growing miseries of the situation which he saw, already in part, served only to augment the violence of his resolve. His vanity forbade him to believe that Agnes would not suffer very much when he told her, as he intended, that they had both mistaken a profound esteem--based on reason--for love, which, as all the world admits, is something remote indeed from one's will and one's power. He was desirous to remain her friend, but he could not, without insincerity--and by God's grace, he would not--continue longer in a position which was false in itself and an injustice to each of them. He proposed to dwell very frankly, but in deep sadness, on the fact that although their engagement had been a seeming success--outwardly--the success had been by no means proved either to his satisfaction, or, he ventured to think, to hers. He would pray that she would not consider herself under any restraint in speaking freely to him, from her heart, at all times.
He hoped that the inevitable criticism of malicious or ignorant persons would never shake her faith in his unwavering loyalty, his singular desire for her happiness. On the other hand, he did not wish to involve her in justifying his action to the world. There was no call for that. She might be assured that he would do as little as possible to protract the agony--he used the word advisedly--of their separation. He believed it would be the best way--if God gave them the ability--not to meet until they had trained themselves to the peaceful, sweet relationship of their first acquaintance. All this and more he composed and turned over in his mind as he paced the deck. His eyes frequently filled with tears, and he thought how little, how fearfully little, he had ever suspected this severance from a noble life with which he had wished most earnestly to join his own. He was unhappy according to the measure of his capacity, and he was genuine in so far as he regretted the necessary suffering of the innocent with the guilty. But guilt is in the intention, and he could say, with truth, that he had never intended to give pain, or to make trouble, in his life.
