Page:Once a Week Volume 8.djvu/138

130 assisting this day, seems to have brought the bare facts more palpably before me in all their naked truth. Other men can have a home, can form social ties to bless it. I cannot.”

“But why?” asked Lucy, her lips trembling.

“Why! Can you ask it, Lucy? There are moments—and they are all too frequent—when a fond vision comes over me of what my future might be; of the new ties I might form, and find the happiness in that—that I did not find in the last. The vision, I say, comes all too frequently for my peace of mind, when I realise the fact that it can never be fulfilled.”

Lucy stood, her hands tightly clasped before her, a world of sadness in her fair young face. One less entirely single-hearted, less true than Lucy Tempest, might have professed to ignore the drift of his words. Had Lucy, since Mrs. Verner’s death, cast a thought to the possibility of certain happy relations arising between her and Lionel—those social ties he now spoke of? No, not intentionally. If any such dreams did lurk in her heart unbidden, there she had let them lie, in entire abeyance. Lionel Verner had never spoken a word to her, or dropped a hint that he contemplated such: his intercourse with her had been free and open, just as it was with Decima. She was quite content: to be with him, to see him daily, was enough of happiness for her, without looking to the future.

“The further I get away from England, the better,” he resumed. “India, from old associations, naturally suggests itself, but I care not whither I go. You threw out a suggestion once, Lucy, that Colonel Tempest might be able to help me to something there, by which I may get a living. Should I have found no success in London by the time he arrives, it is my intention to ask him the favour. He will be home in a few weeks, now.”

“And you talk of leaving Deerham immediately!” cried Lucy. “Where’s the necessity? You should wait until he comes.”

“I have waited too long, as it is. Deerham will be glad to get rid of me. It may hold a jubilee the day it hears I have shipped myself off for India. I wonder if I shall ever come back? Probably not. I and old friends may never meet again on this side heaven.”

He had been affecting to speak lightly, jokingly, toying at the same time with some trifle on the mantlepiece. But as he turned his eyes on Lucy at the conclusion of his sentence, he saw that the tears were falling on her cheeks. The words, the ideas they conjured up, had jarred painfully on every fibre of her heart. Lionel’s light mood was gone.

“Lucy,” he whispered, bending to her, his tone changing to one of passionate earnestness, “I dare not stay here longer. There are moments when I am tempted to forget my position, to forget honour, and speak words that—that—I ought not to speak. Even now, as I look down upon you, my heart is throbbing, my veins are tingling; but I must not touch you with my finger, or tell you of my impassioned love. All I can do is to carry it away with me, and battle with it alone.”

Her face had grown white with emotion. She raised her wet eyes yearningly to his: but she still spoke the simple truth, unvarnished, the great agony that was lying at her heart.

“How shall I live on, with you away? It will be more lonely than I can bear.”

“Don’t, child!” he said, in a wailing tone of entreaty. “The temptation from my own heart is all too present. Don’t you tempt me. Strong man though I am, there are things that I cannot bear.”

He leaned on the mantlepiece, shading his face with his hand. Lucy stood in silence, striving to suppress her emotion from breaking forth.

“In the old days—very long ago, they seem now, to look back upon—I had the opportunity of assuring my life’s happiness,” he continued, in a low, steady tone. “I did not do it; I let it slip from me, foolishly, wilfully; of my own free act. But, Lucy—believe me or not as you like—I loved the one I rejected, more than the one I took. Before the sound of my marriage bells had yet rung out on my ears, the terrible conviction was within me that I loved that other better than all created things. You may judge, then, what my punishment has been.”

She raised her eyes to his face, but he did not see them, did not look at her. He continued:

“It was the one great mistake of my life: made by myself alone. I cannot plead the excuse which so many are able to plead for life’s mistakes, that I was drawn into it. I made it deliberately, as may be said; of my own free will. It is but just, therefore, that I should expiate it. How I have suffered in the expiation, Heaven alone knows. It is true that I bound myself in a moment of delirium, of passion, giving myself no time for thought: but I have never looked upon that fact as an excuse; for, a man who has come to the years I had, should hold his feelings under his own control. Yes: I missed that opportunity, and the chance went by for life.”

“For life?” repeated Lucy, with streaming eyes. It was too terribly real a moment for any attempt at concealment. A little reticence, in her maiden modesty; but of concealment, none.

“I am a poor man now, Lucy!” he exclaimed: “worse than without prospects, if you knew all. And I do not know why you should not know all,” he added, after a pause: “I am in debt. Such a man cannot marry.”

The words were spoken quietly, temperately; their tone proving how hopeless could be any appeal against them, whether from him, from her, or from without. It was perfectly true: Lionel Verner’s position placed him beyond the reach of social ties.

Little more was said. It was a topic which Lucy could not urge or gainsay; and Lionel did not see fit to continue it: he may have felt that it was dangerous ground, even for the man of honour that he strove to be. He held out his hand to Lucy.

“Will you forgive me?” he softly whispered.

Her sobs choked her. She strove to speak as she crept closer to him, and put out her hands in answer; but the words would not come: she lifted her face to glance at his.