CHAPTER XLI.
"IT HAS ALL BEEN A LIE."
In a week's time Saint Méran had become a distinct element in the social atmosphere of Broxton and vicinity. He fell into his place at Rachel Ffrench's side with the naturalness of a man who felt he had some claim upon his position. He was her father's guest; they had seen a great deal of each other abroad. Any woman might have felt his well-bred homage a delicate compliment. He was received as an agreeable addition to society; he attended her upon all occasions. From the window of his work-room Murdoch saw him drive by with her in her carriage, saw him drop into the bank for a friendly chat with Ffrench, who regarded him with a mixture of nervousness and admiration.
Haworth, having gone away again, had not heard of him. Of late the Works had seen little of its master. He made journeys hither and hither, and on his return from such journeys invariably kept the place in hot water. He drove the work on and tyrannized over the hands from foremen to puddlers. At such times there was mysterious and covert rebellion and some sharp guessing as to what was going on, but it generally ended in this. Upon the whole the men were used to being bullied, and some of them worked the better for it.
Murdoch went about his work as usual, though there was not a decent man on the place who did not gradually awaken to the fact that some singular change was at work upon him. He concentrated all his mental powers upon what he had to do during work hours, and so held himself in check, but he spent all his leisure in a kind of apathy, sitting in his cell at his work-table in his old posture, his forehead supported by his hands, his fingers locked in his tumbled hair. Sometimes he was seized with fits of nervous trembling which left him weak. When he left home in the morning he did not return until night and he ate no midday meal.
As yet he was only drifting here and there; he had arrived at no conclusions; he did not believe in his own reasoning; the first blow had simply stunned him. A man who had been less reserved and who had begun upon a fair foundation of common knowledge would have understood; he understood nothing but his passion, his past rapture, and that a mysterious shock had fallen upon him.
He lived in this way for more than a week, and then he roused himself to make a struggle. One bright, sunny day, after sitting dumbly for half an hour or so, he staggered to his feet and took up his hat.
"I'll—try—again," he said, mechanically. "I'll try again. I don't know what it means. It may have been my fault. I don't think it was—but it may have been. Perhaps I expected too much." And he went out.
After he had been absent some minutes, Ffrench came in from the bank. He had been having a hard morning of it. The few apparently unimportant indiscretions in the way of private speculation of which he had been guilty were beginning to present themselves in divers unpleasant forms, and to assume an air of importance he had not believed possible. His best ventures had failed him, and things which he was extremely anxious to keep from Haworth's ears were assuming a shape which would render it difficult to manage them privately. He was badgered and baited on all sides, and naturally began to see his own folly. His greatest fear was not so much that he should lose the money he had risked as that Haworth should discover his luckless weakness and confront and crush him with it. As he stood in fear of his daughter, so he stood in fear of Haworth; but his dread of Haworth was, perhaps, the stronger feeling of the two. His very refinement added to it. Having gained the object of his ambition, he had found it not exactly what he had pictured it. Haworth had not spared him; the very hands had derided his enthusiastic and strenuous efforts; he had secretly felt that his position was ridiculous, and provocative of satire among the unscientific herd. When he had done anything which should have brought him success and helped him to assert himself, it had somehow always failed, and now——.
He sat down in the managerial chair before Haworth's great table, strewn with papers and bills. He had shut the door behind him and was glad to be alone.
"I am extremely unfortunate," he faltered aloud. "I don't know how to account for it." And he glanced about him helplessly. Before the words had fairly left his lips his privacy was broken in upon. The door was flung open and Murdoch came in. He had evidently walked fast, for he was breathing heavily, and he had plainly expected to find the room empty. He looked at Ffrench, sat down and wiped his lips.
"I want you," he began, with labored articulation, "I want you—to tell me—what—I have done."
Ffrench could only stare at him.
"I went to the house," he said, "and asked for her." (He did not say for whom, nor was it necessary that he should. Ffrench understood him perfectly.) "I swear I saw her standing at the window as I went up the path. She had a purple dress on—and a white flower in her hair—and Saint Méran was at her side. Before, the man at the door never waited for me to speak; this time he stood and looked at me. I said, 'I want to see Miss Ffrench;' he answered, 'She is not at home.' 'Not at home,'"—breaking into a rough laugh,—"'not at home' to me!"
He clinched his fist and dashed it against the chair.
"What does it mean?" he cried out. " What does it mean?"
Ffrench quaked.
"I—I don't know," he answered, and his own face gave him the lie.
Murdoch caught his words up and flung them back at him.
"You don't know!" he cried. "Then I will tell you. It means that she has been playing me false from first to last."
Ffrench felt his position becoming weaker and weaker. Here was a state of affairs he had never seen before; here was a madness which concealed nothing, which defied all, which flung all social presuppositions to the winds. He ought to have been able to palter and equivocate, to profess a well-bred surprise and some delicate indignation, to be dignified and subtle; but he was not. He could only sit and wonder what would come next, and feel uncomfortable and alarmed. The thing which came next he had not expected any more than he had expected the rest of the outbreak.
Suddenly a sullen calmness settled upon the young fellow—a calm which spoke of some fierce determination.
"I don't know why I should have broken out like this before you," he said. "Seeing you here when I expected to fight it out alone, surprised me into it. But there is one thing I am going to do. I'll hear the truth from her own lips. When you go home I will go with you. They wont turn me back then, and I'll see her face to face."
"I——" began Ffrench, and then added, completely overwhelmed, "Very—perhaps it would be—be best."
"Best!" echoed Murdoch, with another laugh. "No, it won't be best; it will be worst; but I'll do it for all that."
And he dropped his head upon the arms he had folded on the chair's back, and so sat in a forlorn, comfortless posture, not speaking, not stirring, as if he did not know that there was any presence in the room but his own.
And he kept his word. As Ffrench was going out into the street at dusk he felt a touch on his shoulder, and turning, found Murdoch close behind him.
"I'm ready," he said, "if you are."
When they reached the house, the man who opened the door stared at them blankly, which so irritated Ffrench that he found an excuse for administering a sharp rebuke to him about some trifle.
"They are always making some stupid blunder," he said to Murdoch as they passed upstairs to the drawing-room.
But Murdoch did not hear.
It was one of the occasions on which Rachel Ffrench reached her highest point of beauty. Her black velvet dress was almost severe in its simplicity, and her one ornament was the jewelled star in her high coiffure. M. St. Méran held his place at her side. He received Murdoch with empressement and exhibited much tact and good feeling. But Murdoch would have none of him. He had neither tact nor experience.
His time did not come until the evening was nearly over, and it would never have come if he had not at last forced her to confront him by making his way to her side with a daring which was so novel in him that it would have mastered another woman.
Near her he trembled a little, but he said what he had come to say.
"To-day," he said, "when I called—your servant told me you were not at home."
She paused a moment before answering, but when she did answer he trembled no more.
"That was unfortunate," she said.
"It was not true—I saw you at the window."
She looked him quietly in the face, answering him in two words.
"Did you?"
He turned on his heel and walked away. His brain whirled; he did not know how he got out of the room. He was scarcely conscious of existence until he found himself out-of-doors. He got beyond the gate and into the road, and to the end of the road, but there he stopped and turned back. He went back until he found he was opposite the house again, looking up at the lighted window, he did not know why. A sharp rain was falling, but he did not feel it. He stood staring at the window, mechanically plucking at the leaves on the hedge near him. He scarcely knew whether it was a curse or a sob which fell from his lips and awakened him at last.
"Am I going mad?" he said. "Do men go mad through such things? God forbid! It has all been a lie—a lie—a lie!!"