George Chetwynd Griffith

“ Ernshaw found Garthorne already at Sir Godfrey's rooms in close conversation with Enid. He had, of course, heard much about her from Vane, but this was the first time he had seen her. She had more than fulfilled the promise of two years before, and Ernshaw, ascetic as he was, had still too strong an artistic vein in his temperament to be insensible to her beauty. In fact, as she rose to greet the closest friend of the man who had been her lover, and who, as she fondly hoped, would be so once more after to-day, he started and coloured ever so slightly. ”

“ Here's to you, Maxwell, won't you join me? You know you have quite an ordeal to go through to-day, and just one won't hurt you—do you good, in fact. You look as if you wanted a bracer."
Vane listened to the tempting words, so kindly and frankly spoken, as he might have listened to words heard in a dream. All the high resolves which had shaped themselves with such infinite labour during the past two years, seemed already to have been made by someone else—a someone else who was yet himself. ”

“ A black pall of darkness seemed to come down and crush him to the earth. He lurched out of the chair on to the hearth-rug, rolled on to his back, and lay there motionless with arms outstretched.
An hour later the door opened and Sir Arthur came in in his dressing gown. A glance at the empty decanter and the prostrate figure on the hearth-rug, showed him the calamity that had fallen upon his house. He staggered forward and dropped on his knees beside Vane, crying in a weak, broken voice:
"My boy, my boy! Good God! what have I done? Why didn't I tell him at once?" ”

“ Vane faced the half-delighted, half-angry throng with the perfect steadiness of a man who has decided upon a certain course and means to pursue it at all hazards. Curiosity reduced one portion of the audience to silence, and a respectful anticipation the other. In the sea of faces before him, Vane recognised several that were familiar to him. His father, Carol, Dora, Ernshaw and Rayburn were there as a matter of course. ”

“ The sins of the fathers! I am afraid Sir Reginald will have a very terrible confession to make. It is difficult to believe that a human being could be guilty of such infamy."
"Still I'm afraid there is no doubt about it," said Dora. "But what's to be done? Mr. Maxwell will never let his father go to the Abbey now without telling him what I have told you, and when he knows—no, I daren't think about it. And poor Mrs. Garthorne, too; she married Mr. Garthorne in all innocence, although I still believe she would rather have married Mr. Maxwell. ”

“ And yet, how sweet and dainty she looked as she stood there before him, a bright flush on her cheeks and a soft, regretful expression in those big hazel eyes which were so wonderfully like hers! No one seeing her and Vane together could possibly take them for anything but brother and sister—and but for this marvellous likeness; but for the subtle instinct of kindred blood which had spoken in this outcast's heart the night before, would not a still deeper depth have opened in the hell of that old infamy? There was at least that to be thankful for. ”

“ Vane, in the recklessness of his new confidence, had mixed himself a pretty stiff dose. As he raised his glass with Garthorne's, something seemed to drag upon his arm, and something in his soul rose in revolt; but the old lurking poison was already aflame in his blood. He nodded to Garthorne and said:
"Thanks, old man. Here's to us and her!"
A few minutes before the words would have seemed blasphemy to him, now they sounded like an ordinary commonplace. He put the glass to his lips and emptied it in quick, hungry gulps. ”

“ Koda Bux was awake the moment his master touched his shoulder. He rose at once and followed him. When they reached the library Sir Arthur pointed without a word to where Vane lay. He looked at him and then at the decanters, and said, without moving a feature save his lips:
"Truly, Huzur, the young sahib is exceeding drunk, and he must sleep. To-morrow the fires of hell will be burning in his brain and in his blood. It is a thing that no others should know of. He shall sleep in his bed, and thy servant shall watch by him until he is well, and neither man nor woman shall come near him." ”

“ I simply wanted to have a quiet talk with the usual audience."
"I am afraid you won't have many more quiet talks with any audiences now, Vane," laughed Sir Arthur. "This sudden jump that you have made into fame has made it impossible. You will have to pay the usual penalty of greatness."
"It appears," said Carol, "in this case, to be mostly abuse and misunderstanding."
"I don't think there is much misunderstanding, Carol," said Dora. "It seems to me to be quite the other way about. These people understand Mr. Maxwell only too well for their own comfort. ”

“ The mother who bore you was as good and pure a woman as ever lived when she became your mother, and this girl, from what I have seen of her this morning, I am perfectly certain is thoroughly good and honest in herself. I am satisfied that it is her fate that has made her what she is; not her fault."
"Yes," said Vane, "I was wrong. After all I have no right to judge my mother. I remember nothing about her, and as for Carol, she is a good girl whatever else she may be. Can't something be done for her, dad? ”

“ Vane looked up and saw that his eyes were glowing and his features set. His lips and voice trembled as he spoke. His whole being seemed irradiated by the light of an almost divine enthusiasm.
"Maxwell, will you be one of the few that find it, or one of the many that miss it, and take the other way? As a good Christian, as the son of a Christian man, you know where that one leads to.
"After all, Maxwell," he continued, more quietly, "the trials of life are like lessons in school. You needed this experience or you would not have got it. In every fight you must win or lose. ”

“ Ever since they had come home together from Bombay on that memorable voyage, she and Vane had been sweethearts. They were very much in love with each other, and so far their love had been a striking exception to that old proverb which comes true only too often. Saving only those lovers' quarrels which don't count because they end so much more pleasantly than they begin, there had never been a cloud in that morning-sky of life towards which they had so far walked hand in hand. It seemed as though the Fates themselves had conspired to make everything pleasant and easy for them ”

“ Garthorne, I still say that it was a good thing for you to discover it."
"But why, Father Philip? How can it be a good thing for a man to discover a change for the worse in a woman whom he has grown up with from boy and girl, whom he has loved, and who has been to him the ideal of all that was good and lovable on earth?" ”

“ After a little pause, during which their eyes met and their cheeks flushed in a somewhat boy-and-girlish fashion, he laughed a trifle awkwardly and said:
"Well, then, we shall have to introduce ourselves, I suppose. My name is Maxwell—Vane Maxwell."
"Vane!" she echoed, "how funny! My name is Vane too—Carol Vane. It's not a sham one either, such as a lot of girls like me take. It's my own—at least, I have always been called Carol, and Vane was my mother's name."
"I see," said Maxwell, after another little pause, during which the oysters came and the waiter opened the wine. ”

“ The moment that Vane appeared in the pulpit, that strange rustling sound which always betokens an access of sensation in a church, became distinctly audible from the side where the women [Pg 189] sat. As he stood there in cassock, cotta and white, gold-embroidered stole, he looked, as many a maid, and matron too, said afterwards, almost too beautiful to be human. Both as boy and man he had always been strikingly handsome, but the long weeks and months of prayer and fasting, and the constant struggle of the soul against the flesh, had refined and spiritualised him. ”

“ Vane leant back in his chair, dropped his pipe quietly on the floor, and waited. He knew that Mark Ernshaw, his chum at Eton and his friend at Balliol—this tall, sparely-built man, with dark hair, high, somewhat narrow forehead, and big, deep-set, brown eyes, delicate features, and the somewhat too finely-moulded chin which, taken together, showed him to the eye that sees to be the enthusiast as well as the man of intellect, perhaps of genius—was not thinking in the ordinary meaning of the word. ”

“ It was just a family party, as Sir Arthur called it, so the bride and bridegroom were spared the giving and receiving of speeches. Never did a greater change take place in a girl's life more simply and more quietly than this tremendous, almost incredible change which took place in Carol's, when, from being a nameless outcast beyond the pale of what is more or less correctly termed respectable society, she became the wife of a man who had wooed, and won her under such strange circumstances, yet knowing everything, and the mistress of millions to boot. ”

“ Many a man and woman has rashly wished that it were possible to look into the future. Such a thought had more than once crossed Vane Maxwell's mind, but could he, in that solemn moment, have looked into the future and seen what lay before him, he would have been well content with the high destiny to which his great renunciation was to lead him. ”

“ Once more, speaking not only as a priest of God, but as your fellow man, let me as man implore you to be honest, and as priest, warn you that the penalty of hypocrisy is eternal damnation. You have no choice in the matter. One or the other you must be, and you cannot possibly be both. Wherefore I tell you that whether you elect to be the servant of God or the servant of Mammon, you must let all men know plainly which you are. If you are reasonable beings you cannot believe in yourselves or in each other, unless you do this. ”

“ The real fault, the real sin, is not individual, it is collective—the guilt properly belongs to Society. Men do not descend to these mean subterfuges and these despicable trickeries merely to make money, to pile on hundreds on hundreds and thousands on thousands. In their hearts all the best of them despise the methods by which they are forced to earn their incomes and make their fortunes; but the penalties which the laws of Society place on honesty are so tremendous that a really honest man will deliberately sacrifice his own honour rather than incur them. ”

“ He had lived on good terms with his fellow men, not out of any respect for them, but simply because it was more convenient and comfortable for himself. He had committed the worst of crimes against his friend, Sir Arthur Maxwell, in perfect callousness, simply because the woman Maxwell had married and inspired him with the only passion, the only enthusiasm of which he was capable. He had never felt a single pang of remorse for it. The sinner who sins through absolute selfishness as he had done never does. ”

“ Surely there is no need for us to ask you to witness such a painful scene as this, of course, must be."
"I am Carol's friend, Sir Arthur," said Dora, "and I think it only right to do all that I can do to prove that her story is true. I have got the photographs, and I know the marks by which Sir Reginald can be identified. If we are not too late, such a man will, of course, answer you with a flat denial, but if I am there I don't think he can." ”

“ In the next worlds and in the next lives we may meet again, and then you will know that neither did I kill your father nor die myself without good cause. Of the rest the gods will judge."
He made a movement with his jaws and crunched something between his teeth. They saw a movement of swallowing in his throat. A swift spasm passed over his features; his limbs stiffened into rigidity, and as he stood before them so he fell, as a wooden image might have done. And so died Koda Bux the Pathan, loyal avenger of his master's honour. ”

“ As he said this he went towards the spirit-case on the little old oak sideboard and took out the whiskey decanter.
"Take care, Vane!" said Ernshaw. "I hope you are not forgetting the old doctrine of association. Remember what you were saying just now about this room. There is a sense, you know, in which places are really haunted."
"My dear Ernshaw, I believe you are even more ideal than I am," laughed Vane, as he took the stopper out and raised the decanter to his nostrils. As he did so the front door bell tinkled, and the hand of a practised footman played a brief fantasia on the knocker. ”

“ I know I am expressing myself horribly badly, but, to put it as shortly as I can, it is the sort of miracle that only a good, clean-souled, pure-hearted girl like Carol, could have worked upon a fellow like myself. I tell you, Maxwell, honestly, that if she wouldn't have me now, I'm damned if I know what I should do. She is everything that is good to me. I am worth nearly a couple of millions, and not a cent of it would be worth anything to me if I lost her. And so you really will marry us?"
"I will," said Vane. ”

“ Enid and her husband were by no means the only members of the congregation of St. Chrysostom who discussed Vane's sermon on their way home. In fact, whether people walked or rode home, it was the universal topic. Some discussed it with timorous sympathy; others, perhaps with more worldly wisdom, talked of it quietly and cynically as the outburst of a half-fledged clerical enthusiast who would very soon find out that his superiors, on whom he depended for preferment, regarded the doctrines of Christianity as one thing and the practises of the Church as something entirely different. ”

“ As a matter of fact, she had rattled all this off [Pg 152] so quickly that Vane had not had time to reply to her greeting. He had taken her hand and, somewhat tremblingly, returned the frank, firm pressure. While she was speaking, he looked into her face and saw that she had already assumed the invisible but impenetrable mask in which the society woman plays her part in the tragic comedy of Vanity Fair. It was the same face and yet not the same, the same voice and yet a different one, and the sight and sound acted upon him like a powerful tonic. ”

“ When her wonder had given way to complete recognition Enid dismounted and waited, naturally expecting that he would greet her; but he stood silent, looking at her as though he were trying to find some words of salutation.
"Well, Vane," she said at last, "I suppose we may shake hands. I did not expect to see you here. Cannot you look a little more cheerful? What is the matter? You look as if you hadn't been home all night." ”