“Greatly to do is great, but greater still

Greatly to suffer.”

J. Noel Paton.

The following Tuesday proved to be as fine a day as Christine could have wished. Charlie was delighted to fall in with her suggestion of driving from Leamington to Warwick, and she left him with Linklater and his beloved camera to spend a long afternoon in seeing the castle, the church and the many picturesque places to be found in the old town.

“I have to pay a call in the neighbourhood,” she explained, “and will meet you here at six o’clock. See that he has plenty to eat, Linklater, for we made a very early lunch.”

When they were safely within the castle gates she ordered a Victoria at the hotel and drove in to Stratford. Up to that very moment she had felt eager and alert, ready to dare anything in her desperation. But now when there was no longer anything to do, she lay back in the carriage feeling utterly spent, unable to find the least comfort in the soft spring air, or in the beautiful expanse of country, or in the hedge-rows just bursting into leaf, or in the joyous song of the birds. It was not until they were close to Shakspere’s town that her spirit returned to her once more, and as they passed the Roman Catholic Church she sat up and called to her driver.

“I will get out here,” she said adjusting her white gossamer travelling veil. “You can drive on and put up at the Shakspere Hotel until I come there.”

The man obeyed and she walked on until upon the left she saw Clopton’s Bridge, at the further side of which she knew the Swan’s Nest was situated. As usual she was dressed with scrupulous quietness, there was nothing in her black serge coat and skirt and sailor hat to distinguish her from hundreds of other women, and no passer-by would have recognised her through her veil.

Nevertheless her heart failed her somewhat when the little old-fashioned inn with its red brick walls and tiled roof came into sight. She fully realised that she was taking a desperate step.

But then did not desperate diseases require desperate remedies? And had not Hugh Macneillie in the letter he wrote her three and a half years ago entreated her to let him serve her if ever she found herself in a difficulty?

No one else could help her now. He only could shield her and make her life worth living. And was not he ill and in need of her? Was she not fully justified in seeking him? She had paused involuntarily on the bridge lost in thought and now just for a moment the exceeding beauty of the view drew her attention away from her perplexities.

The silvery Avon, crossed a little further down by an old bridge of red brick, the irregular buildings of the little town, the finely proportioned Memorial theatre standing in its gardens upon the river’s brink; facing it a lovely pastoral bit of green meadows, and budding trees, and in the distance the old church spire with rooks circling about it.

In the opposite direction lay peaceful fields, and all along the bank pollard willows overhung the stream which curved round in a way that delighted her eye. Just at the bend of the river, moored to a willow tree, a small golden-brown boat was to be seen. It was empty but on the bank above it lay the figure of a man with his head propped on his arm and a book in his hand. She could not distinguish his features at that distance but from something in his attitude she at once knew that it was Hugh Macneillie.

Moreover she could see a corner of the plaid which he had invariably taken about with him, the dark blue and green of the Macneil tartan with its thin alternate cross lines of white and yellow. It was the very same one that in old days had often been spread over her knees on some cold wintry railway journey.

Somehow the sight of this restored her failing heart; she swiftly made her way down to the river-side and youth and hope seemed to come back to her as her feet touched the springy turf and passed lightly over the white and gold of the daisies.

Macneillie, just glancing up from his book, saw a lady approaching clad in the costume which is almost a uniform; he devoutly hoped, after the fashion of celebrities on a holiday, that she would not recognise him.

Christine could so well read his thoughts and understand his slightest gesture that she could hardly help laughing. She put up her veil and walked straight towards him, her brown eyes full of that soft love-light which for years he had not seen in them. As she paused close to him he involuntarily looked up once more, and with a cry sprang to his feet.

“Christine!” he exclaimed taking both her hands in his. “Is it indeed you!”

Just for one exquisite moment he forgot everything, was only conscious that she was beside him, and that they loved each other, with a love which surpassed even the first bliss of the early days of their betrothal. The next moment, with a horrible revulsion, he remembered the barrier that lay between them. Neither of them spoke; in the stillness they were each conscious of the clear birdlike whistle of an errand boy crossing the bridge. He had caught up one of the prettiest airs in “Haddon Hall”—“To thine own heart be true”!

“Hugh,” she said softly, “you told me if ever a time came when there was no one else who could help me more fitly that I was to come to you. I am driven almost desperate and I have come to claim your promise. Where can we talk quietly?”

“If you will not find it too cold I could row you up the river towards Charlcote,” he said. “Later in the week Stratford will be full of excursionists, but there is no one on the river this afternoon, we shall be quite unmolested.”

She thought this an excellent plan and let him help her into the boat and spread the plaid over her knees.

“It was by this dear old tartan that I recognised you, at least chiefly by that,” she said.

“Like its owner it has seen its best days,” said Macneillie with a smile. “But I have the same feeling for it that the fellow in Gounod’s song had for his old coat,

‘Mon viel ami

Ne nous sÉparons pas.’”

And he sighed a little as he remembered how in the days of their betrothal he had often taken her under his “plaidie.”

A strange, dreamy, unreal feeling crept over Christine as she leant back in the stern, while Macneillie with his strong arms rowed her up the winding river. She almost wished his strokes had not been so long and steady, for it seemed to her as if this heaven of peace and repose would end too swiftly. At last he paused.

“We couldn’t well find a more lovely place than this,” he said glancing over his shoulder and dexterously guiding the boat in between the grassy bank and the branches of an overhanging willow tree.

“I never saw such a wonderful colour as these new spring shoots of the willow,” said Christine, as he drew in his oars and sat down beside her in the stern.

Not a breath of wind stirred the leaves, the flies came out and made a cheerful droning sound as though summer had already come, a lark was singing far up in the blue vault above, and everywhere the quiet of perfect peace seemed to brood.

Macneillie felt that longer silence was perilous, he had learned to allow himself scant leisure when temptation was rife.

“Tell me now what your trouble is,” he said quietly.

“Oh!” she cried vehemently, “it seems like sacrilege even to speak of it in such a place as this where all is so peaceful.”

Macneillie, who was very far from being at peace, smiled a little involuntarily.

“The place is well enough,” he said glancing round. “But now that we are actually among the ‘pendent boughs’ it reminds me rather too much of

‘There is a willow grows aslant a brook.’

It might be the identical spot where Ophelia was drowned.”

“I wonder if it is,” she said diverted for a minute from her own anxieties. “Poor Ophelia! Somehow I have never cared for acting that part of late years. You spoiled me for all other Hamlets. I have often wondered since, Hugh, how you contrived to get through that last season in London.”

“Well it was a rough time,” said Macneillie, “for, like the Danish Prince,

‘In my heart there was a kind of fighting

That would not let me sleep.’

By the end of the season I was as nearly mad as Hamlet feigned to be. But no more of that. It is of the present we must talk not of the past. How can I help you? Has anyone been molesting you?”

“Yes,” she faltered. “I will tell you all, and then you will understand.”

So in her musical voice, and with that extraordinary charm of manner which made her irresistible, she told him simply and truthfully all the difficulties she had had to contend with. Lastly she told him of Conway Sartoris and of the arguments he had used in his letter.

“They seem to me quite unanswerable,” she said, “and he is a man everyone respects, he is far more intellectual than we are, and he doesn’t merely theorise, he knows the difficulties of real life. The more I think of it, the more it seems to me that you and I are wrecking our lives and suffering so cruelly all for a mistaken idea,—a sort of fetish-worship for the law of the land.”

Macneillie had grown very pale, his hands trembled, but from long force of habit his voice was well under control.

“Sin is lawlessness,” he quoted in a low tone.

“Yes, yes,” she said quickly. “But this law that parts us, that makes our lives a hell—you say it is an unjust law and ought to be reformed. You said that in your letter.”

“I long for its reform with all my heart,” he replied. “And the greatest of living statesmen and the most devoted of English Churchmen did his utmost in 1857 to prevent this wicked double standard of morality from ever finding a place in the Divorce Law. He said he would deliberately prefer an increase in the number of cases of divorce to the acceptance of this shameful inequality between men and women.”

“And are we patiently and tamely to go on enduring it?” she cried. “Why, surely, all reforms have been won by those who were not afraid to break the bad laws that had no business to exist. Think of your Covenanters who gloriously broke the law and saved their country from tyranny! Almost all heroes and martyrs have broken the law when it deserved to be broken.”

“Yes, that is true,” he said. “But they only broke it out of obedience to a higher law, they did not break it for their own gain. My dearest,” he took her hand and held it closely in his, “though this law cries aloud for reform, let us be law-abiding citizens, and wait.”

Her eyes filled with tears, her voice quivered pitifully when after awhile she spoke.

“You talk of waiting, but when one sees how truth and justice are set at naught in parliament,—how with people agonising and dying, and with so much that is wrong to be righted our representatives will haggle miserably for months and years over useless questions, how from sheer spite they will waste the time of the nation, how from party jealousy they will thwart measures,—the thought of waiting grows intolerable.”

“But reform is bound to come,” said Macneillie, “most of the fair minded people who have studied the matter and who know anything of practical life desire it, we have against us only the narrow minded and the men of vicious life.”

“You say only!” exclaimed Christine with a laugh that was a sob. “But it is just the narrow good and the vicious bad who work all the misery of the world. Oh, Hugh! I am not strong and brave like you, I am weak and tired and worn out. I cannot live longer without you. I have tried to bear it but I have come to the end of my strength.”

She covered her face with her hands, he could see great tears slowly falling between her slender white fingers, and the sight wrung his heart. Yet he did not respond to her appeal. It was not because he failed to understand that bitter cry of exhaustion, it was because he understood it so well, had been indeed for the last few weeks so drearily conscious of just that same feeling that he could endure no longer, that his strength was gone. It was well that Christine could not see his face, for the agonising struggle which was going on within him was only too clearly visible. In the intense stillness of the calm sunny afternoon it seemed to him that all nature was at rest save themselves, and as in moments of great physical pain some very slight detail will attract the sufferer’s attention, so now, while he passed through the most cruel ordeal of his life, Macneillie was watching half unconsciously the pretty movements of a little water-rat which had run up the stem of a bush growing close to the river, and was evidently enjoying itself to the best of its ability. The birds, too, were singing as though in a perfect ecstasy of joy.

Their song contrasted mockingly with the torturing thoughts which filled his mind, and yet nevertheless it was through the joyousness of these lesser creatures that his help was to come. For it carried him back to the thought of a great Teacher who, when speaking to “an innumerable multitude of people,” average men and women, tempest-tossed as he was now, had told them that not one single bird was forgotten by God, and had said, “Fear not, ye are of more value than many sparrows.”

With that highest courage which in times of dire dismay can rise from what seems like certain defeat, and kindle hope and strength in the hearts of others, and win in a desperate fight, Macneillie gripped the words to his heart and was strong once more, with that trust in God which is man’s righteousness.

“I know exactly what you mean,” he said, as Christine at length looked up and dried her tears. “Many a time I have felt at the end of my strength. It’s just a device of the devil’s own making. Depend upon it, God won’t take away His gift just when it is most needed. Is it likely He would do that?”

“It seems to me that the devil rules,” said Christine. “I can believe in little but evil in the wretched life I have had to live. Here, with you, it is different, I seem another being altogether. You can make me good.”

There was truth in what she said. He had always had over her the best possible influence. Without each other they were incomplete.

“And yet,” he said, “it is just because I so love and honour you that the arguments of Conway Sartoris which you mentioned just now, clever and plausible though they are, seem contemptible. Shall I let the one I love best in all the world bear shame and reproach? Shall you and I who have tried all these years to be a credit to the profession give such a handle to its enemies? Shall we dare to bring down upon innocent children the curse of illegitimacy? And all because we were too weakly impatient to wait—or too cowardly to suffer? Forgive me, my dear one, I put these things in a blunt way, but are they not things we must think out clearly if we would come safely through this ordeal?”

She looked up in his face, it was singularly beautiful just at the minute, in spite of the havoc which time and suffering had wrought in it. She fancied that he would wear that look of manly courage, of noble strength in his resurrection body. The thought seemed to give her new life. Quietly, indeed with a calmness which surprised herself, she slipped her hand into his; it was done spontaneously as a child slips its hand into that of a trusted companion.

“You are right, Hugh, quite right,” she said. “We will wait. You must forgive me for having come here to-day.”

“You were only keeping your promise,” he said, “and perhaps to talk things out was best for both of us.”

He was silent for a few minutes, wondering what could be done to render her life a little more bearable. What was it that had been his own greatest relief during the last few years? Well, undoubtedly, it had been the companionship of Ralph and his wife and little Dick. They were a very fascinating trio and carried about with them an atmosphere of youth and brightness which was pleasant enough to middle-aged folk sorely burdened with care and trouble. A sudden idea flashed into his mind. Many people are ready to assert that they would lay down their lives for those they love. Macneillie seldom protested in words but had a way of quietly giving up his most treasured possessions, so quietly, indeed, that most people hardly noticed that he did it at all.

“And now,” he said, “I am going to ask you to do something for me. Do you recollect a young fellow who was acting with you at Edinburgh four summers ago—Ralph Denmead by name?”

“Why yes, to be sure. I met him only last Sunday at the Herefords. What a nice fellow he seems, and I lost my heart to his dear little wife.”

“I am glad you saw them both, they are a delightful couple. Well now, could you possibly get him a London engagement? Would Barry Sterne have any opening for him? It seems to me that there is a very good chance just now for a young romantic actor. We have no really satisfactory Romeo or Orlando.”

“But surely you are in no hurry to part with him? I hear he is very popular everywhere.”

“For myself I am in no hurry,” said Macneillie. “But I should be glad for him to get a London engagement, he deserves it, and then this wandering life is a little hard on his wife and child. They had better settle down, and if they were somewhere in your neighbourhood you would perhaps befriend them. Evereld is a dear little woman, you would like her, and she has the greatest admiration for you.”

Christine’s face brightened up, it pleased her greatly that he should have asked her to do something for him; she resolved to leave no stone unturned and to do her utmost for his friends.

“I should like to have them near me; you can’t think how lonely it is often,” she said. “If it were not for my work and for Charlie’s companionship I don’t think I could have endured it all this time. The best plan would be for Barry Sterne to see him act. I wonder whether there would be a chance of getting him to ran down for one of the performances in the Memorial Week?”

“That is a good idea,” said Macneillie. “By the bye, Sterne will scarcely remember it, but the boy did go to him some years ago when he first made up his mind to be an actor. I have often heard him describe the interview. He got cold comfort from Sterne and a most discouraging letter from me. But nothing daunts your real genius. He plodded on, and starved and struggled till things took a turn. And some day if I am not much mistaken he will be one of our leading actors.”

“His own opinion is that he owes everything to you,” said Christine with a smile. “I heard a great deal about you on Sunday from both of them. I shall be so glad if I can really do anything for people you care for, Hugh. The Denmeads will be quite a new object in life for me.”

Those words and the look which went with them were Macneillie’s comfort when, shortly after, he parted with Christine. But to stay longer at Stratford with nothing to do had become impossible for him. The river was a haunted place, he dared not go on it again, everything which on his arrival had seemed so peaceful bore upon it now the ineffaceable stamp of the bitter struggle he had passed through.

To go back to his work was directly against the doctor’s orders, but go somewhere he must. He packed his portmanteau, and tried to think of any place in the world he wished to see, but could not care even to return to his own country. All things were “weary, stale, flat and unprofitable.”

“Fate shall decide,” he said to himself with the ghost of a smile playing about his lips. And dragging out an ancient atlas from the pile of books on the sitting-room table, he opened at the map of Europe and solemnly spun a threepenny bit. After threatening to come to an end in the middle of the German Ocean it finally settled down in Holland.

“Via Harwich and the Hook,” said Macneillie pocketing the arbiter of his fate. “So be it. I will run across and see if the bulbs are coming into bloom.”