"Thou wilt not with Predestination round
Enmesh me, and impute my Fall to Sin?"

—Omar KhayyÁm.

The scandal smouldered for a day or two, and then raged across London like a fire. Mary stayed at home. She could not face the glare of it. She said she was ill. Her hand shook. She started at the slightest sound. She felt shattered in mind and body.

"I could not have stopped her," she said stubbornly to herself a hundred times, lying wide-eyed through the long, terrifying nights. She besieged Heaven with prayers for Elsa.

On the fourth day Jos came to her.

She went down to her little sitting-room, and found him standing at the open window with his back to her. She came in softly, trembling a little. She would be very gentle and sympathetic with him. She would imply no reproach. As she entered he turned slowly and faced her. The first moment she did not recognise him. Then she saw it was he.

Jos' face was sunk and pinched, and the grey eyes were red with tears fiercely suppressed by day, red with hard crying by night. Now as they met hers they were fixed, unflinching in their tearless, enduring agony, like those of a man under the surgeon's knife.

"Oh! Jos, don't take it so hard," said Mary, laying her hand on his arm.

She had never dreamed he would feel it like this. She had thought that he would see at once he had had a great escape.

He did not appear to hear her. He looked vacantly at her, and then recollected himself, and sat down by her.

"You saw her last," he said, biting his lips.

Mary's heart turned sick within her.

"The Lestranges saw her last," she said hastily. He made an impatient movement. He knew all that.

"You were with her all the afternoon on the boat?"

"Yes. But, of course, there were numbers of others. I had many friends whom I had to——"

"Did you notice anything? Did you have any talk with her? Was she different to usual?"

"She does not generally talk much. She was rather silent."

"You did not think she looked as if she had anything on her mind."

"I couldn't say. I know her so very slightly." Mary's voice was cold.

"She did not care for me," said Jos. "I knew that all along," and he put his scarred hand over his mouth.

"She was not worthy of you."

He did not hear her. He took away his hand and clenched it heavily on the other.

"I knew she didn't care," he said in a level, passionless voice. "But I loved her. From the first go-off I saw she was different to other women. And I thought—I know I'm only a rough fellow—but I thought perhaps in time ... I'm not up to much, but I would have made her a good husband—and at any rate, I would have taken her away from—her father. He said she was willing. I—I tried to believe him. He wanted to get rid of her—and—I wanted to have her. That was the long and the short of it. We settled it between us.... She hadn't a chance in that house. I thought I'd give her another—a home—where she was safe. She had never had a mother to tell her things. She had never had any upbringing at that French school. She had no women friends. She had never known a good woman, except her old nurse, till I brought her to you, Mary. I told her you were good and gentle and loving, and would be a friend to her; and that I had known you all my life, and she might trust you."

"She never liked me," said Mary. It seemed to her that she must defend herself. Against what? Against whom?

"If she had only confided in you," he said. "I knew she was in trouble, but I could not make out what it was. She was such a child, and I seemed a long way off her. I took her to plays and things after I had seen them first, to be sure they were all right; and she would cheer up for a little bit—she liked the performing dogs. I had thought of taking her there again; but she always sank back into low spirits. And I knew that sometimes young girls do feel shy about being married—it's a great step—a lottery—that is what it is, a lottery—so I thought it would all come right in time. I never thought. I never guessed." Jos' voice broke. "I see now I helped to push her into it—but—I didn't know.... If only you had known that last afternoon, and could have pleaded with her ... if only you had known, and could have held her back—my white lamb, my little Elsa."

He ground his heel against the polished floor. There was a long silence.

Then he got up and went away.

It was not until the end of July that Mary saw him again. She heard nothing of him. She only knew that he had left London. He came in one evening late, and Mary's aunt discreetly disappeared after a few minutes' desultory conversation.

He looked worn and aged, but he spoke calmly, and this time he noticed Mary's existence. "You look pulled down," he said kindly. "Has the season been too much for you?"

"It is not that," she said. "I have been distressed because an old friend of mine is in trouble."

He looked at her and saw that she had suffered. A great compunction seized him. He took her hand and kissed it.

"You are the best woman in the world," he said. "Don't worry your kind heart about me. I'm not worth it." Then he moved restlessly away from her, and began turning over the knick-knacks on the silver table.

"Bethune has been tackled," he said suddenly. "The Duke of —— did it, and he has promised to marry her—if—if——"

"If what?"

"If his wife will divorce him. The Duke has got his promise in black and white."

"I don't think Lady Francis will divorce him."

"N-no. I've been with her to-day for an hour, but I couldn't move her. She doesn't seem to see that it's—life or death—for Elsa."

"You would not expect her under the circumstances to consider Elsa."

"Yes, I should," said the simpleton. "Why should not she help her? There are no children, and she does not care for Bethune. She never did. She ought to release him for the sake of—others."

"I don't think she will."

"I want you to persuade her, Mary." Mary's heart swelled. This then was what he had come about.

"Aren't you her greatest friend? Do put it before her plainly. I'm a blundering idiot, and she seemed to think I had no right to speak to her on the subject. Perhaps I had not. I never thought of that. I only thought of——. But do you go to her, and bring her to a better mind."

"I will try," said Mary.

"I wish there were more women like you, Maimie," he said, using for the first time for years the pet name which he had called her by when they were boy and girl together.

Mary went to Lady Francis next day, but she did not make a superhuman effort to persuade her friend. She considered that it was not desirable that Elsa should be reinstated. If there were no punishment for such misdemeanours, what would society come to? For the sake of others, as a warning, it was necessary that Elsa should suffer.

All she said to Lady Francis was: "Are you going to divorce Lord Francis?"

"No, my dear," said that lady with a harsh little laugh. "I am not. Not that I could not get a divorce. He has been quite brute enough, but if I did it would be forgotten in about a quarter of an hour, whether I had divorced him or he had divorced me. I have a right to his name, and I mean to stick to it. It's about all I've got out of my marriage. I don't intend to go about as a divorced woman under my maiden name of Huggins. The idea does not smile on me. Besides, I know Francis. He will come back to me. He did—before. He has not a shilling, and he is in debt. He can't get on without me. I was a goose to marry him; but still I am the goose that lays the golden eggs."

Jos' parents sent Mary a pressing invitation to stay with them after the season. Mary went, and perhaps she tasted something more like happiness in that quiet old country house than she had known for many years. Jos' father and mother were devoted to her, with that devotion, artificial in its origin, but genuine in its later stages, of parents who have made up their minds that she was "the one woman" for their son. Mary played old Irish melodies in the evenings by the hour, and sang sweetly at prayers. She was always ready to listen to General Carstairs' history of the fauna of Dampshire, and to take an interest in Mrs Carstairs' Sunday School. She had a succession of the simplest white muslin gowns (she could still wear white) and wide-brimmed garden hats. Mary in the country was more rural than those who abide in it all the year round.

Jos was often there. There was no doubt about it. Jos was coming back to his early allegiance. Perhaps his parents, horrified by his single unaided attempt at matrimony, were tenderly pushing him back. Perhaps, in the entire exhaustion and numbness that had succeeded the shock of Elsa's defection, he hardly realised what others were planning round him. Perhaps when a man has been heartlessly slighted he turns unconsciously to the woman of whose undoubted love he is vaguely aware.

Jos sat at Mary's feet, not metaphorically but literally, for hours together by the sundial in the rose-garden; hardly speaking, like a man stunned. Still he sat there, and she did her embroidery, and looked softly down at him now and then. The doors of the narrow, airless prison of her love were open to receive him. They would be married presently, and she should make him give up the Army, and become a magistrate instead. She would never let him out of her sight. A wife's place is beside her husband. She knew, for how many wives compact of experience had assured her during the evening hour of feminine confidence when the back hair is let down, that the perpetual presence of the wife was the only safeguard for the well-being of that mysterious creature of low instincts, that half-tamed wild animal, always liable to break away unless held in by feminine bit and bridle, that irresponsible babe, that slave of impulse—man. She would give him perfect freedom of course. She should encourage him to go into the Yeomanry, and she should certainly allow him to go out without her for the annual training. He would be quite safe in a tent, surrounded by his own tenantry; but, on other occasions, she, his wife, would be ever by his side. That was the only way to keep a man good and happy.

Early in September Jos went away for a few days' shooting. Mary, who generally paid rounds of visits after the season at dull country houses (she was not greatly in request at the amusing ones), still remained with the Carstairs, who implored her to stay on whenever she suggested that she was paying them "a visitation."

Jos was to return that afternoon, for General Carstairs was depending on him to help to shoot his own partridges on the morrow. But the afternoon passed, and Jos did not come. The next day passed, and still no Jos. And no letter or telegram. His father and mother were silently uneasy. They said, no doubt he had been persuaded to stay on where he was, and had forgotten the shoot at home. Mary said, "No doubt," but a reasonless fear gathered like thin mist across her heart. Where was he? The letters that had been forwarded to his last address all came back. A week passed, and still no Jos, and no answers to autocratic telegrams.

Then suddenly Jos telegraphed from London saying he should return early that afternoon, and asking to be met at the station.

When the time drew near, Mary established herself with a book in the rose-garden. He would come to her there, as he had so often done before. The roses were well-nigh over, but in their place the sweet white faces of the Japanese anemones were crowding up round the old grey sundial. The sunny windless air was full of the cawing of rooks. It was the time and the place where a desultory love might come by chance, and linger awhile, not where a desperate love, brought to bay, would wage one of his pitched battles. Peace and rest were close at hand. Why had she been fearful? Surely all was well, and he was coming back. He was coming back.

She waited as it seemed to her for hours before she heard the faint sound of his dog-cart. She should see him in a moment. He would speak to his parents, and then ask where she was, and come out to her. Oh! how she loved him; but she must appear calm, and not too glad to see him. She heard his step—strong, light, alert, as it used to be of old, not the slow, dragging, aimless step of the last two months.

He came quickly round the yew hedge and stood before her. She raised her eyes slowly from her book to meet his, a smile parting her lips.

He was looking hard at her with burning scorn and contempt in his lightning grey eyes.

The smile froze on her lips.

"I have seen Elsa," he said. "I only came back here for half-an-hour to—speak to you."

A cold hand seemed to be pressed against Mary's heart.

"I found by chance, the merest chance, where she was," he continued. "I went at once. She was alone, for Bethune has gone back to his wife. I suppose you knew he had gone back. I did not. I found her——" He stopped as if the remembrance were too acute, and then went on firmly. "We had a long talk. She was in great trouble. She told me everything, and how he, that devil, had made love to her from the first day she came back from school, and how her father knew of it, and had obliged her to accept me. And she said she knew it was wrong to run away with him, but she thought it was more wrong to marry without love, and that the nearer the day came the more she felt she must escape, and she seemed hemmed in on every side, and she did love Bethune, and he had sworn to her that he would marry her directly he got his divorce, and that his wife did not care for him, and would be glad to be free, and that all that was necessary was a little courage on her part. So she tried to be brave—and—she said she did not think at the time it could be so very wicked to marry the person she really loved, for you knew, and you never said a word to stop her. She said you had many opportunities of speaking to her on the boat, and she knew you were so good, you would certainly have told her if it was really so very wicked."

"I knew it was no use speaking," said Mary, hoarsely.

"You might have tried to save my wife for my sake," said Jos. "You might have tried to save her for her own. But you didn't. I don't care to know your reasons. I only know that—you did not do it. You deliberately—let—her—drown." His eyes flashed. The whole quiet, commonplace man seemed transfigured by some overmastering, ennobling emotion. "And I have come to tell you that I think the bad women are better than the good ones, and that I am going back to Elsa; to Elsa—betrayed, deserted, outcast, my Elsa, who, but for you, might still be like one of these." He touched one of the white anemones with his scarred hand. "I am going back to her—and if—in time she can forget the past and feel kindly towards me—I will marry her."

And he did.