The Weavers

Chapter 9

THE LETTER, THE NIGHT, AND THE WOMAN

"Oh, do you not know me?" she said at last, and sank into the chair where

he had been sitting.

The question was unnecessary, and she knew it was so; but she could not

bear the strain of the silence. She seemed to have risen out of the

letter he had been writing; and had he not been writing of her--of what

concerned them both? How mean and small-hearted he had been, to have

thought for an instant that she had not the highest courage, though in

going she had done the discreeter, safer thing. But she had come--she had

come!

All this was in his eyes, though his face was pale and still. He was

almost rigid with emotion, for the ancient habit of repose and

self-command of the Quaker people was upon him.

"Can you not see--do you not know?" she repeated, her back upon him now,

her face still veiled, her hands making a swift motion of distress.

"Has thee found in the past that thee is so soon forgotten?"

"Oh, do not blame me!" She raised her veil suddenly, and showed a face as

pale as his own, and in the eyes a fiery brightness. "I did not know. It

was so hard to come--do not blame me. I went to Alexandria--I felt that I

must fly; the air around me seemed full of voices crying out. Did you not

understand why I went?"

"I understand," he said, coming forward slowly. "Thee should not have

returned. In the way I go now the watchers go also."

"If I had not come, you would never have understood," she answered

quickly. "I am not sorry I went. I was so frightened, so shaken. My only

thought was to get away from the terrible Thing. But I should have been

sorry all my life long had I not come back to tell you what I feel, and

that I shall never forget. All my life I shall be grateful. You have

saved me from a thousand deaths. Ah, if I could give you but one life!

Yet--yet--oh, do not think but that I would tell you the whole truth,

though I am not wholly truthful. See, I love my place in the world more

than I love my life; and but for you I should have lost all."

He made a protesting motion. "The debt is mine, in truth. But for you I

should never have known what, perhaps--" He paused.

His eyes were on hers, gravely speaking what his tongue faltered to say.

She looked and looked, but did not understand. She only saw troubled

depths, lighted by a soul of kindling purpose. "Tell me," she said, awed.

"Through you I have come to know--" He paused again. What he was going to

say, truthful though it was, must hurt her, and she had been sorely hurt

already. He put his thoughts more gently, more vaguely.

"By what happened I have come to see what matters in life. I was behind

the hedge. I have broken through upon the road. I know my goal now. The

highway is before me."

She felt the tragedy in his words, and her voice shook as she spoke. "I

wish I knew life better. Then I could make a better answer. You are on

the road, you say. But I feel that it is a hard and cruel road--oh, I

understand that at least! Tell me, please, tell me the whole truth. You

are hiding from me what you feel. I have upset your life, have I not? You

are a Quaker, and Quakers are better than all other Christian people, are

they not? Their faith is peace, and for me, you--" She covered her face

with her hands for an instant, but turned quickly and looked him in the

eyes: "For me you put your hand upon the clock of a man's life, and

stopped it."

She got to her feet with a passionate gesture, but he put a hand gently

upon her arm, and she sank back again. "Oh, it was not you; it was I who

did it!" she said. "You did what any man of honour would have done, what

a brother would have done."

"What I did is a matter for myself only," he responded quickly. "Had I

never seen your face again it would have been the same. You were the

occasion; the thing I did had only one source, my own heart and mind.

There might have been another way; but for that way, or for the way I did

take, you could not be responsible."

"How generous you are!" Her eyes swam with tears; she leaned over the

table where he had been writing, and the tears dropped upon his letter.

Presently she realised this, and drew back, then made as though to dry

the tears from the paper with her handkerchief. As she did so the words

that he had written met her eye: "'But offences must come, and woe to him

from whom the offence cometh!' I have begun now, and only now, to feel

the storms that shake us to our farthest cells of life."

She became very still. He touched her arm and said heavily: "Come away,

come away."

She pointed to the words she had read. "I could not help but see, and now

I know what this must mean to you."

"Thee must go at once," he urged. "Thee should not have come. Thee was

safe--none knew. A few hours and it would all have been far behind. We

might never have met again."

Suddenly she gave a low, hysterical laugh. "You think you hide the real

thing from me. I know I'm ignorant and selfish and feeble-minded, but I

can see farther than you think. You want to tell the truth about--about

it, because you are honest and hate hiding things, because you want to be

punished, and so pay the price. Oh, I can understand! If it were not for

me you would not. . . . " With a sudden wild impulse she got to her feet.

"And you shall not," she cried. "I will not have it." Colour came rushing

to her cheeks.

"I will not have it. I will not put myself so much in your debt. I will

not demand so much of you. I will face it all. I will stand alone."

There was a touch of indignation in her voice. Somehow she seemed moved

to anger against him. Her hands were clasped at her side rigidly, her

pulses throbbing. He stood looking at her fixedly, as though trying to

realise her. His silence agitated her still further, and she spoke

excitedly:

"I could have, would have, killed him myself without a moment's regret.

He had planned, planned--ah, God, can you not see it all! I would have

taken his life without a thought. I was mad to go upon such an adventure,

but I meant no ill. I had not one thought that I could not have cried out

from the housetops, and he had in his heart--he had what you saw. But you

repent that you killed him--by accident, it was by accident. Do you

realise how many times others have been trapped by him as was I? Do you

not see what he was--as I see now? Did he not say as much to me before

you came, when I was dumb with terror? Did he not make me understand what

his whole life had been? Did I not see in a flash the women whose lives

he had spoiled and killed? Would I have had pity? Would I have had

remorse? No, no, no! I was frightened when it was done, I was horrified,

but I was not sorry; and I am not sorry. It was to be. It was the true

end to his vileness. Ah!"

She shuddered, and buried her face in her hands for a moment, then went

on: "I can never forgive myself for going to the Palace with him. I was

mad for experience, for mystery; I wanted more than the ordinary share of

knowledge. I wanted to probe things. Yet I meant no wrong. I thought then

nothing of which I shall ever be ashamed. But I shall always be ashamed

because I knew him, because he thought that I--oh, if I were a man, I

should be glad that I had killed him, for the sake of all honest women!"

He remained silent. His look was not upon her, he seemed lost in a dream;

but his face was fixed in trouble.

She misunderstood his silence. "You had the courage, the impulse to--to

do it," she said keenly; "you have not the courage to justify it. I will

not have it so.

"I will tell the truth to all the world. I will not shrink I shrank

yesterday because I was afraid of the world; to-day I will face it, I

will--"

She stopped suddenly, and another look flashed into her face. Presently

she spoke in a different tone; a new light had come upon her mind. "But I

see," she added. "To tell all is to make you the victim, too, of what he

did. It is in your hands; it is all in your hands; and I cannot speak

unless--unless you are ready also."

There was an unintended touch of scorn in her voice. She had been

troubled and tried beyond bearing, and her impulsive nature revolted at

his silence. She misunderstood him, or, if she did not wholly

misunderstand him, she was angry at what she thought was a needless

remorse or sensitiveness. Did not the man deserve his end?

"There is only one course to pursue," he rejoined quietly, "and that is

the course we entered upon last night. I neither doubted yourself nor

your courage. Thee must not turn back now. Thee must not alter the course

which was your own making, and the only course which thee could, or I

should, take. I have planned my life according to the word I gave you. I

could not turn back now. We are strangers, and we must remain so. Thee

will go from here now, and we must not meet again. I am--"

"I know who you are," she broke in. "I know what your religion is; that

fighting and war and bloodshed is a sin to you."

"I am of no family or place in England," he went on calmly. "I come of

yeoman and trading stock; I have nothing in common with people of rank.

Our lines of life will not cross. It is well that it should be so. As to

what happened--that which I may feel has nothing to do with whether I was

justified or no. But if thee has thought that I have repented doing what

I did, let that pass for ever from your mind. I know that I should do the

same, yes, even a hundred times. I did according to my nature. Thee must

not now be punished cruelly for a thing thee did not do. Silence is the

only way of safety or of justice. We must not speak of this again. We

must each go our own way."

Her eyes were moist. She reached out a hand to him timidly. "Oh, forgive

me," she added brokenly, "I am so vain, so selfish, and that makes one

blind to the truth. It is all clearer now. You have shown me that I was

right in my first impulse, and that is all I can say for myself. I shall

pray all my life that it will do you no harm in the end."

She remained silent, for a moment adjusting her veil, preparing to go.

Presently she spoke again: "I shall always want to know about you--what

is happening to you. How could it be otherwise?"

She was half realising one of the deepest things in existence, that the

closest bond between two human beings is a bond of secrecy upon a thing

which vitally, fatally concerns both or either. It is a power at once

malevolent and beautiful. A secret like that of David and Hylda will do

in a day what a score of years could not accomplish, will insinuate

confidences which might never be given to the nearest or dearest. In

neither was any feeling of the heart begotten by their experiences; and

yet they had gone deeper in each other's lives than any one either had

known in a lifetime. They had struck a deeper note than love or

friendship. They had touched the chord of a secret and mutual experience

which had gone so far that their lives would be influenced by it for ever

after. Each understood this in a different way.

Hylda looked towards the letter lying on the table. It had raised in her

mind, not a doubt, but an undefined, undefinable anxiety. He saw the

glance, and said: "I was writing to one who has been as a sister to me.

She was my mother's sister though she is almost as young as I. Her name

is Faith. There is nothing there of what concerns thee and me, though it

would make no difference if she knew." Suddenly a thought seemed to

strike him. "The secret is of thee and me. There is safety. If it became

another's, there might be peril. The thing shall be between us only, for

ever?"

"Do you think that I--"

"My instinct tells me a woman of sensitive mind might one day, out of an

unmerciful honesty, tell her husband--"

"I am not married-"

"But one day--"

She interrupted him. "Sentimental egotism will not rule me. Tell me," she

added, "tell me one thing before I go. You said that your course was set.

What is it?"

"I remain here," he answered quietly. "I remain in the service of Prince

Kaid."

"It is a dreadful government, an awful service--"

"That is why I stay."

"You are going to try and change things here--you alone?"

"I hope not alone, in time."

"You are going to leave England, your friends, your family, your

place--in Hamley, was it not? My aunt has read of you--my cousin--" she

paused.

"I had no place in Hamley. Here is my place. Distance has little to do

with understanding or affection. I had an uncle here in the East for

twenty-five years, yet I knew him better than all others in the world.

Space is nothing if minds are in sympathy. My uncle talked to me over

seas and lands. I felt him, heard him speak."

"You think that minds can speak to minds, no matter what the

distance--real and definite things?"

"If I were parted from one very dear to me, I would try to say to him or

her what was in my mind, not by written word only, but by the flying

thought."

She sat down suddenly, as though overwhelmed. "Oh, if that were

possible!" she said. "If only one could send a thought like that!" Then

with an impulse, and the flicker of a sad smile, she reached out a hand.

"If ever in the years to come you want to speak to me, will you try to

make me understand, as your uncle did with you?"

"I cannot tell," he answered. "That which is deepest within us obeys only

the laws of its need. By instinct it turns to where help lies, as a wild

deer, fleeing, from captivity, makes for the veldt and the watercourse."

She got to her feet again. "I want to pay my debt," she said solemnly.

"It is a debt that one day must be paid--so awful--so awful!" A swift

change passed over her. She shuddered, and grew white. "I said brave

words just now," she added in a hoarse whisper, "but now I see him lying

there cold and still, and you stooping over him. I see you touch his

breast, his pulse. I see you close his eyes. One instant full of the

pulse of life, the next struck out into infinite space. Oh, I shall

never--how can I ever-forget!" She turned her head away from him, then

composed herself again, and said quietly, with anxious eyes: "Why was

nothing said or done? Perhaps they are only waiting. Perhaps they know.

Why was it announced that he died in his bed at home?"

"I cannot tell. When a man in high places dies in Egypt, it may be one

death or another. No one inquires too closely. He died in Kaid Pasha's

Palace, where other men have died, and none has inquired too closely.

To-day they told me at the Palace that his carriage was seen to leave

with himself and Mizraim the Chief Eunuch. Whatever the object, he was

secretly taken to his house from the Palace, and his brother Nahoum

seized upon his estate in the early morning.

"I think that no one knows the truth. But it is all in the hands of God.

We can do nothing more. Thee must go. Thee should not have come. In

England thee will forget, as thee should forget. In Egypt I shall

remember, as I should remember."

"Thee," she repeated softly. "I love the Quaker thee. My grandmother was

an American Quaker. She always spoke like that. Will you not use thee and

thou in speaking to me, always?"

"We are not likely to speak together in any language in the future," he

answered. "But now thee must go, and I will--"

"My cousin, Mr. Lacey, is waiting for me in the garden," she answered. "I

shall be safe with him." She moved towards the door. He caught the handle

to turn it, when there came the noise of loud talking, and the sound of

footsteps in the court-yard. He opened the door slightly and looked out,

then closed it quickly. "It is Nahoum Pasha," he said. "Please, the other

room," he added, and pointed to a curtain. "There is a window leading on

a garden. The garden-gate opens on a street leading to the Ezbekiah

Square and your hotel."

"But, no, I shall stay here," she said. She drew down her veil, then

taking from her pocket another, arranged it also, so that her face was

hidden.

"Thee must go," he said--"go quickly." Again he pointed.

"I will remain," she rejoined, with determination, and seated herself in

a chair.