Vera Nevill Part 26

Presently she put forth her hands, almost mechanically, and reached her cloak and hat from the chair behind her.

The soft rustle of her dress upon the carpet struck his ear; he looked up with a start, like one waking out of a painful dream.

"You are going!" he said, in his usual voice.

"Yes; I am going."

He stood up, facing her.

"There is nothing more to be said, is there?" He said it not as though he asked her a question, but as one a.s.serting a fact.

"Nothing, I suppose," she answered, rather wearily, not looking at him as she spoke.

"I shall not see you again, as I leave to-morrow morning by the early train. You will, at least, wish me good-bye?"

"Good-bye, Maurice."

"Good-bye, Vera; G.o.d bless you."

She opened the door softly and went out. She went slowly away down the avenue, wrapping her cloak closely around her; the wind blew cold and chill, and she shivered a little as she walked. Presently she struck aside along a narrow pathway through the gra.s.s that led her homewards by a shorter cut. She had forgotten that Sir John was to wait for her at the lodge-gates.

She had forgotten his very existence. For she _knew_. She had eaten of the tree of knowledge, and the scales had fallen for ever from her eyes.

She knew that Maurice loved her--and, alas! for her--she knew also that she loved him. And between them a great gulf was fixed; deep, and wide, and impa.s.sable as the waters of Lethe.

Out of the calm, unconscious lethargy of her maidenhood's untroubled dreams the soul of Vera had awakened at length to the realization of the strong, pa.s.sionate woman's heart that was within her.

She loved! It had come to her at last; this thing that she had scorned and disbelieved in, and yet that, possibly, she had secretly longed for.

She had deemed herself too cold, too wise, too much set upon the good things of earth, to be touched by that scorching fire; but now she was no colder than any other love-sick maiden, no wiser than every other foolish woman who had been ready to wreck her life for love in the world's history.

Surely no girl ever learnt the secret of her own heart with such dire dismay as did Vera Nevill. There was neither joy nor gladness within her, only a great anger against herself and her fate, and even against him who, as he had said, had dared to love her. She had courted the avowal from his lips, and yet she resented the words she had wrung from him.

But, more than all, she resented the treachery of the heart that was within her.

"Why did I ever see him?" she cried aloud in her bitterness, striking her hands wildly against each other. "What evil fate brought us together?

What fool's madness induced me to go near him to-day? I was happy enough; I had all I wanted; I was content with my fate--and now--now!" Her pa.s.sionate words died away into a wail. In her haste and her abstraction her foot caught against a long, withered bramble trail that lay across her path; she half stumbled. It was sufficient to arrest her steps. She stood still, and leant against the smooth, whitened trunk of a beech tree. Her hands locked themselves tightly together; her face, white and miserable, lifted itself despairingly towards the pitiless winter sky above her.

"How am I to live out my life?" she asked herself, in her anguish.

It had not entered into her head that she could alter it. It did not occur to her to imagine that she could give up anything to which she now stood pledged. To be John Kynaston's wife, and to love his brother, that was what struck upon her with horror; no other possible contingency had as yet suggested itself to her.

Presently, as she moved slowly onwards, still absorbed in her new-found misfortune, a fresh train of thought came into her mind. She thought no longer about herself, but about him.

"How cruel I was to leave him like that," she said to herself, reproachfully; "without a word, or so much as a look, of consolation--for, if I suffer, has not he suffered too!"

She forgot that he had asked her for nothing; she only knew that, little enough as she had to give him, she had withheld that little from him.

"What must he think of me?" she repeated to herself, in dismay. "How heartless and how cold I must be in his eyes to have parted from him thus without one single kind word. I might, at least, have told him that I was grateful for the love I cannot take. I wonder," she continued, half aloud to herself, "I wonder what it is like to be loved by Maurice----" She paused again, this time leaning against the wicket-gate that led out of the park into the high road.

A little smile played for one instant about her lips, a soft, far-away look lingered in her dreaming eyes for just a moment--just the s.p.a.ce of time it might take you to count twenty; she let her fancy carry her away--_where_?

Ah, sweet and perilous reverie! too dear and too dangerous to be safely indulged in. Vera roused herself with a start, pa.s.sing her hand across her brow as though to brush away the thoughts that would fain have lingered there.

"Impossible!" she said aloud to herself, moving on again rapidly. "I must be a fool to stand here dreaming--I, whose fate is irrevocably fixed; and I would sooner die than alter it. The best match in the county, it is called. Well, so it is; and nothing less would satisfy me. But--but--I think I will see him once again, and wish him good-bye more kindly."

CHAPTER XVI.

"POOR WISDOM."

No; vain, alas! the endeavour From bonds so sweet to sever, Poor Wisdom's chance against a glance Is now as weak as ever!

Thos. Moore.

The station at Sutton stood perched up above the village on a high embankment, upon which the railway crossed the valley from the hills that lay to the north to those that lay to the south of it. Up at the station it was always draughty and generally cold. To-day, this very early morning, about ten minutes before the first up train is due, it is not only cold and draughty, but it is also wet and foggy. A damp, white mist fills the valley below, and curls up the bare hill sides above; it hangs chillingly about the narrow, open shed on the up side of the station, covering the wooden bench within it with thick beads of moisture, so that no man dare safely sit down on it, and clinging coldly and penetratingly to the garments of a tall young lady in a long ulster and a thick veil, who is slowly walking up and down the platform.

The solitary porter on duty eyes her inquiringly. "Going by the up train, Miss?" he says, touching his hat respectfully as he pa.s.ses her.

"No," says Vera, blushing hotly under the thick shelter of her veil, and then adds with that readiness of explanation to which persons who have a guilty conscience are p.r.o.ne, "I am only waiting to see somebody off." An uncalled-for piece of information which has only the effect of setting the bucolic mind of the local porter agog with curiosity and wonderment.

Presently the few pa.s.sengers for the early train begin to arrive; a couple of farmers going into the market town, a village girl in a smart bonnet, an old woman in a dirty red shawl, carrying a bundle; that is all. Maurice is very late. Vera remembers that he always puts off starting to catch a train till the very last minute. She stands waiting for him at the further end of the platform, as far away as she can from the knot of rustic pa.s.sengers, with a beating heart and a fever of impatience within her.

The train is signalled, and at that very minute the dog-cart from Kynaston drives up at last! Even then he has to get his ticket, and to convey himself and his portmanteau across from the other side of the line. Their good-bye will be short indeed!

The train steams up, and Maurice hurries forward followed by the porter bearing his rugs and sticks; he does not even see her, standing a little back, as she does, so as not to attract more attention than need be. But when all his things are put into the carriage, and the porter has been duly tipped and has departed, Captain Kynaston hears a soft voice behind him.

"I have come to wish you good-bye again." He turns, flushing at the sound of the sweet familiar voice, and sees Vera in her long ulster, and her face hidden behind her veil, by his side.

"Good Heavens, Vera! _you_--out on such a morning?"

"I could not let you go away without--without--one kind word," she begins, stammering painfully, her voice shaking so, as she speaks, that he cannot fail to divine her agitation, even though he cannot see the lovely troubled face that has been so carefully screened from his gaze.

"This is too good of you," he begins. That very minute a brougham dashes rapidly up to the station.

"It is the Shadonake carriage!" cried Vera, casting a terrified glance behind her. "Who can it be? they will see me."

"Jump into the train," he answers, hurriedly, and, without a thought beyond an instinct of self-preservation for the moment, she obeys him.

Maurice follows her quickly, closing the carriage door behind him.

"n.o.body can have seen you," he says. "I daresay it is only some visitors going away; they could not have noticed you. Oh! Vera," turning with sudden earnestness to her; "how am I ever to thank you for this great kindness to me?"

"It is nothing; only a five minutes' walk before breakfast. It is no trouble to me; and I did not want you to think me unfeeling, or unkind to you."

Before she could speak another word the carriage door was violently slammed to, and the guard's sharp shrill whistle heralded the departure of the train. With a cry, Vera sprang towards the door; before she could reach it, Maurice, who had perceived instantly what had happened, had let down the window and was shouting to the porter. It was too late. The train was off.

Vera sank back hopelessly upon the seat; and Maurice, according to the manners and customs of infuriated Britons, gave utterance to a very laconic word of bad import below his breath.

"I wouldn't have had this happen for ten thousand pounds!" he said, after a minute, looking at her in blank despair.