CHAPTER X.
ERRORS AND CORRECTIONS.
THE carriage rolled steadily homewards—a short enough journey; yet to Harvey, with mind bent and fixed upon the one impending certainty, laden with the one harrowing resolve, that drive was long and heavy as some final trundling towards a place of execution. With a heart leaden-weighted, impervious to all save the sense of this one burden, he sat speechless beside the woman from whom he was now to part, whom he must now renounce—with the rest, with all the misplacement and glitter of the last nine months.
Their silence was well-nigh unbroken. Only touch, the almost impalpable pressure of her wrappings, of the silken draperies that imagination warmed with the shape they enclosed, spoke to Harvey—was but once interrupted.
"You wrote that music?" she had asked; and he had assented with an absent "Yes."
At last they reached the house. Automatically half, reduced to sub-sensations, he followed her up the stairs to the little drawing-room where she had received him that first afternoon; after his dreary vigil in the Park, his happy questioning of Carter-Page.
Here a light supper was laid out, upon a table just large enough to accommodate the two of them.
"I am rather hungry," said the Countess, handing over wraps and outer encumbrances to her maid. "You need not sit up for me, nor need Mason—Mrs. Hodgson has a key," she added, dismissing the girl.
"Good-night, madam."
"Good-night."
Harvey and the Countess were alone.
The moment that Merceron was awaiting had at last arrived, when he must tell her the bitter truth and beg forgiveness. Pale, very pale, yet set and determined, he now stood before her.
She was watching him, reading between the lines on his face; and, tender as always, was swift to put him out of initial misery, to break the ice-bound silences from which he must emerge.
"Harvey," she gently observed, "you have said nothing to me for hours—and you want to."
The ice was broken.
He had seated himself, was leaning forward, elbow on knee, supporting his head with the clenched hand that was pressed against his cheek. Suffering was on the face he exposed, yet resignation also; once more he was master in his own house.
The Countess remained standing; looked down upon him, an arm resting above the unlit fireplace.
"I have come back with you, to ask your forgiveness," said Harvey, "to ask you to forget."
There was no halting in his voice, no hesitation; rather an added clearness, a roundness of tone consistent with the weight of what he uttered.
Her eyes bade him continue.
"To ask your forgiveness," he repeated, "to ask you to forget. I first met you at a masked ball, and I have been masquerading ever since."
Her eyes were still upon his face, unmoved, unsaddened.
"Not intentionally, believe me, nor consciously," he continued; "I, too, was deceived by my disguise, believed in it with you. I thought that I really was the man you have known. It was a mistake, and I have misled you as well; you whom I love, whom I shall always love."
He paused, checking the passion that the thought, the actuality, had brought forth; then, resuming:
"I imagined that I was able to live the life we have been leading, that I could belong to your world. I have made a mistake, have led you to share in it. I have been deceiving you all, myself as well—have been assuming the man of fashion, the idler. I am not as I pretended; but a common workman, an ordinary labourer, artist if you will; neither fashionable nor leisured."
Her eyes showed no wincing, were tranquil as before. She listened, changing no line of the face turned to his own, without visible emotion; as though she had already heard his words and answered them, long ago—long ago.
"Come back to the beginning with me," he continued, "and you will understand, perhaps pardon me?"
His voice was lower now, had sunk by several keys, when he resumed:
"I wrote to-night's opera. This was the work I had undertaken, had willingly slaved at, had shut myself up with, for those three years. It was but barely finished the night I first met you and your world. How bright and joyous it all seemed to me, after my years of solitude, you can well imagine. I had gone out that night, my mind perfectly free, no haunting sense of work waiting and unfinished, the first time for many months. London was new to me, a revelation. We dined in town and went to the Opera afterwards. I had seen no people like those around me for years. And then came the Stoke ball. I met you there; you, the representative, the embodiment of this beautiful world which I had just discovered. I went home that night forgetful of all else, and bent on following, on giving up the old ambitions—vain, unsubstantial, frivolous, they seemed, beside the reality of the existence I had just witnessed."
His voice was lower now; yet fuller and more vibrant than before, had deepened as the heart beyond had deepened, opened wider; as the thought expressed, the feelings exposed, were the more and more reserved, secret, and inward. And she, silent, motionless, was still looking down upon him with gaze untroubled.
"I went home that night, ardent, intoxicated, resolved on joining you," he had continued; "resolved on beginning my life afresh, on making it as yours,—on devoting every gift, every possession, to this new service. So I willed. For hours I revelled further, planning, anticipating; vaingloriously measuring my zest, my strength and aptitude. And to make this new course the more secure, to complete this utter severance from my former state, I hastened to destroy my opera. Thus would the previous years be quite obliterated and laid waste, all they held, their promise—return would be impossible. I determined to burn this work of mine, but instead, discovered that, during my absence, it had been stolen. My music had disappeared. The incident almost amused me, for the thief had but saved me trouble; my opera was to all intents and purposes destroyed. So I fancied. I was free, my life contained but that day!
"The rest you have seen, have shared in; how well I played my part—deceiving you, deceiving myself,—with what double-edged success I spread illusion, you know. Then came to-night. To-night, when this music I thought to have escaped confronted me, ghost-like, admonishing, recalling my former self, my real, my only self; returned, awakened me to the truth. Told me that I was masquerading, that my place was not that of idle listener and drone. That I was made for work, that I had in me a certain coarseness, a hardness, a brutality, a something different from the people amongst whom I was living; a latent force, concealed, dormant all this time or struggled against—till to-night, when it seemed to break loose, to overpower me, claiming me for another destiny than the one I had willed. And I must follow—must follow!"
His voice was heavy now, dull, with its sense of the inevitable, and worn with struggle. He continued, with an effort:
"I must follow. I do not belong here; my place is outside. I must give up everything. The middle course is to be a Sopwith. It seems almost as though Providence had arranged this theft, then flung my work back at me—a call, a call!"
Memories were these words of what had filled him during his escape from the crowded Opera House; his jaded mind could encompass no more. Her first movement, a step towards him made audible by the rustle of her gown, he instinctively met, as one of protest; attempted a reply, with feeble parryings, lamed echoes of what had gone before.
"This is stronger than I am," he repeated; "I must go utterly away and work ... and you whom I have cheated and betrayed ...will you not try to forgive me, to forget me?... It seems almost as though Providence is forcing me, has called to me..."
"Yes, Harvey, yes; but you have only heard half!" she interposed.
He looked up into her face, met her eyes fully for the first time since he had entered. He looked up into her face, expecting blows; but, instead, she was radiant with tears and smiles, a penetrating happiness.
"Harvey, my poor boy, I am so glad—so glad!"
She had come over to him, knelt before him, with those strangely bright eyes of hers opposite to his own. Her cool hands soothed his aching forehead. What did this mean? But she gave him no time to explain this reversal of all forebodings, to follow his vague misgivings.
"I am so glad, Harvey! I was waiting for this; I have watched for this; I knew it was coming! It is what I have hoped for, longed for, all the time,—and I am so happy!"
The perplexity that crossed his face was answered by:
"Do I not love you, Harvey; and does not love know and feel and see everything? Did you think you could hide anything from me? Oh, Harvey, I knew all you have told me to-night, knew it all long ago—almost from the first! I knew that you were not made for this kind of life—have I not said as much to you time and time again? But you were too happy to understand then. And, Harvey dear, what if you do work! Do you think that I could love an idle man, a man of no ambitions? I knew that you were a common labourer, an ordinary workman—perhaps that is why I loved you. Oh, Harvey, do you think that I am content with these husks, that I am content to dodder through life with empty hands? No, dear, I too am stifling! And we are going out into the free air together, to work and to share, to help each other. You will want help, and you will want love—as I, Harvey, as I!"
Her words came to him warm, glowing, reviving his spent forces with their generous heat. His hands stole over hers as she continued:
"We will not part now," she said, "and dear, my poor tired Harvey, you have only half understood it all. Do you not see what the last nine months mean?" she asked, "what they have done for you, why they were necessary? Do you not see that without me, without these nine months, you would still be what you were—the man who wrote to-night's music, the man who failed? Who failed because he knew nothing of real men and women, nothing about himself. And now, dear, we know these things. And to-morrow, the new man, the man that these nine months, that I have made of you—yes, I, Harvey," she triumphantly repeated,—"this new man goes back to work. Different work from that we heard to-night, eh, Harvey?"
He drew her gently to him. "You have forgiven me?" he asked; then added, "I was inside it all, and it is so difficult to see things clearly when one is inside."
He understood now, saw his life as a whole at last.
A minute later, holding her in his arms, he said:
"Darling, it seems almost as though we had been utter strangers until to-night."
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