Born in Exile (58 page)

The reply was as prompt as that from Earwaker. By the morning
post came a letter inviting him to call upon Miss Moxey as soon as
possible before noon. She added, 'My brother is away in the
country; you will meet no one here.'

By eleven o'clock he was at Notting Hill; in the drawing-room,
he sat alone for two or three minutes. Marcella entered silently,
and came towards him without a smile; he saw that she read his face
eagerly, if not with a light of triumph in her eyes. The expression
might signify that she rejoiced at having been an instrument of his
discomfiture; perhaps it was nothing more than gladness at seeing
him again.

'Have you come to live in London?' she asked, when they had
shaken hands without a word.

'I am only here for a day or two.'

'My letter reached you without delay?'

'Yes. It was sent from Twybridge to Bristol. I didn't reply
then, as I had no prospect of being in London.'

'Will you sit down? You can stay for a few minutes?'

He seated himself awkwardly. Now that he was in Marcella's
presence, he felt that he had acted unaccountably in giving
occasion for another scene between them which could only end as
painfully as that at Exeter. Her emotion grew evident; he could not
bear to meet the look she had fixed upon him.

'I want to speak of what happened in this house about Christmas
time,' she resumed. 'But I must know first what you have been
told.'

'What have
you
been told?' he replied, with an uneasy
smile. 'How do you know that anything which happened here had any
importance for me?'

'I don't know that it had. But I felt sure that Mr. Warricombe
meant to speak to you about it.'

'Yes, he did.'

'But did he tell you the exact truth? Or were you led to suppose
that I had broken my promise to you?'

Unwilling to introduce any mention of Sidwell, Peak preferred to
simplify the story by attributing to Buckland all the information
he had gathered.

'I understood,' he replied, 'that Warricombe had come here in
the hope of learning more about me, and that certain facts came out
in general conversation. What does it matter how he learned what he
did? From the day when he met you down in Devonshire, it was of
course inevitable that the truth should sooner or later come out.
He always suspected me.'

'But I want you to know,' said Marcella, 'that I had no willing
part in it. I promised you not to speak even to my brother, and I
should never have done so but that Christian somehow met Mr.
Warricombe, and heard him talk of you. Of course he came to me in
astonishment, and for your own interest I thought it best to tell
Christian what I knew. When Mr. Warricombe came here, neither
Christian nor I would have enlightened him about—about your past.
It happened most unfortunately that Mr. Malkin was present, and he
it was who began to speak of the
Critical
article—and other
things. I was powerless to prevent it.'

'Why trouble about it? I quite believe your account.'

'You
do
believe it? You know I would not have injured
you?'

'I am sure you had no wish to,' Godwin replied, in as
unsentimental a tone as possible. And, he added after a moment's
pause, 'Was this what you were so anxious to tell me?'

'Yes. Chiefly that.'

'Let me put your mind at rest,' pursued the other, with quiet
friendliness. 'I am disposed to turn optimist; everything has
happened just as it should have done. Warricombe relieved me from a
false position. If
he
hadn't done so, I must very soon have
done it for myself. Let us rejoice that things work together for
such obvious good. A few more lessons of this kind, and we shall
acknowledge that the world is the best possible.'

He laughed, but the tense expression of Marcella's features did
not relax.

'You say you are living in Bristol?'

'For a time.'

'Have you abandoned Exeter?'

The word implied something that Marcella could not utter more
plainly. Her face completed the question.

'And the clerical career as well,' he answered.

But he knew that she sought more than this, and his voice again
broke the silence.

'Perhaps you have heard that already? Are you in communication
with Miss Moorhouse?'

She shook her head.

'But probably Warricombe has told your brother——?'

'What?'

'Oh, of his success in ridding Exeter of my objectionable
presence.'

'Christian hasn't seen him again, nor have I.'

'I only wish to assure you that I have suffered no injury. My
experiment was doomed to failure. What led me to it, how I regarded
it, we won't discuss; I am as little prepared to do so now as when
we talked at Exeter. That chapter in my life is happily over. As
soon as I am established again in a place like that I had at
Rotherhithe, I shall be quite contented.'

'Contented?' She smiled incredulously. 'For how long?'

'Who can say? I have lost the habit of looking far forward.'

Marcella kept silence so long that he concluded she had nothing
more to say to him. It was an opportunity for taking leave without
emotional stress, and he rose from his chair.

'Don't go yet,' she said at once. 'It wasn't only this that
I'——

Her voice was checked.

'Can I be of any use to you in Bristol?' Peak asked, determined
to avoid the trial he saw approaching.

'There is something more I wanted to say,' she pursued, seeming
not to hear him. 'You pretend to be contented, but I know that is
impossible. You talk of going back to a dull routine of toil, when
what you most desire is freedom. I want—if I can—to help you.'

Again she failed to command her voice. Godwin raised his eyes,
and was astonished at the transformation she had suddenly
undergone. Her face, instead of being colourless and darkly
vehement, had changed to a bright warmth, a smiling radiance such
as would have become a happy girl. His look seemed to give her
courage.

'Only hear me patiently. We are such old friends—are we not? We
have so often proclaimed our scorn of conventionality, and why
should a conventional fear hinder what I want to say? You
know—don't you?—that I have far more money than I need or am ever
likely to. I want only a few hundreds a year, and I have more than
a thousand.' She spoke more and more quickly, fearful of being
interrupted. 'Why shouldn't I give you some of my superfluity? Let
me help you in this way. Money can do so much. Take some from me,
and use it as you will—just as you will. It is useless to
me
. Why shouldn't someone whom I wish well benefit by
it?'

Godwin was not so much surprised as disconcerted. He knew that
Marcella's nature was of large mould, and that whether she acted
for good or evil its promptings would be anything but commonplace.
The ardour with which she pleaded, and the magnitude of the
benefaction she desired to bestow upon him, so affected his
imagination that for the moment he stood as if doubting what reply
to make. The doubt really in his mind was whether Marcella had
calculated upon his weakness, and hoped to draw him within her
power by the force of such an obligation, or if in truth she sought
only to appease her heart with the exercise of generosity.

'You will let me?' she panted forth, watching him with brilliant
eyes. 'This shall be a secret for ever between you and me. It
imposes no debt of gratitude—how I despise the thought! I give you
what is worthless to me,—except that it can do
you
good. But
you can thank me if you will. I am not above being thanked.' She
laughed unnaturally. 'Go and travel at first, as you wished to.
Write me a short letter every month—every two months, just that I
may know you are enjoying your life. It is agreed, isn't it?'

She held her hand to him, but Peak drew away, his face
averted.

'How can you give me the pain of refusing such an offer?' he
exclaimed, with remonstrance which was all but anger. 'You know the
thing is utterly impossible. I should be ridiculous if I argued
about it for a moment.'

'I can't see that it is impossible.'

'Then you must take my word for it. But I have no right to speak
to you in that way,' he added, more kindly, seeing the profound
humiliation which fell upon her. 'You meant to come to my aid at a
time when I seemed to you lonely and miserable. It was a generous
impulse, and I do indeed thank you. I shall always remember it and
be grateful to you.'

Marcella's face was again in shadow. Its lineaments hardened to
an expression of cold, stern dignity.

'I have made a mistake,' she said. 'I thought you above common
ways of thinking.'

'Yes, you put me on too high a pedestal,' Peak answered, trying
to speak humorously. 'One of my faults is that I am apt to mistake
my own position in the same way.'

'You think yourself ambitious. Oh, if you knew really great
ambition! Go back to your laboratory, and work for wages. I would
have saved you from that.'

The tone was not vehement, but the words bit all the deeper for
their unimpassioned accent. Godwin could make no reply.

'I hope,' she continued, 'we may meet a few years hence. By that
time you will have learnt that what I offered was not impossible.
You will wish you had dared to accept it. I know what your
ambition
is. Wait till you are old enough to see it in its
true light. How you will scorn yourself! Surely there was never a
man who united such capacity for great things with so mean an
ideal. You will never win even the paltry satisfaction on which you
have set your mind—never! But you can't be made to understand that.
You will throw away all the best part of your life. Meet me in a
few years, and tell me the story of the interval.'

'I will engage to do that, Marcella.'

'You will? But not to tell me the truth. You will not dare to
tell the truth.'

'Why not?' he asked, indifferently. 'Decidedly I shall owe it
you in return for your frankness to-day. Till then—good-bye.'

She did not refuse her hand, and as he moved away she watched
him with a smile of slighting good-nature.

On the morrow Godwin was back in Bristol, and there he dwelt for
another six months, a period of mental and physical lassitude.
Earwaker corresponded with him, and urged him to attempt the work
that had been proposed, but such effort was beyond his power.

He saw one day in a literary paper an announcement that Reusch's
Bibel und Natur
was about to be published in an English
translation. So someone else had successfully finished the work he
undertook nearly two years ago. He amused himself with the thought
that he could ever have persevered so long in such profitless
labour, and with a contemptuous laugh he muttered '
Thohu
wabohu
.'

Just when the winter had set in, he received an offer of a post
in chemical works at St. Helen's, and without delay travelled
northwards. The appointment was a poor one, and seemed unlikely to
be a step to anything better, but his resources would not last more
than another half year, and employment of whatever kind came as
welcome relief to the tedium of his existence. Established in his
new abode, he at length wrote to Sidwell. She answered him at once
in a short letter which he might have shown to anyone, so calm were
its expressions of interest, so uncompromising its words of
congratulation. It began 'Dear Mr. Peak', and ended with 'Yours
sincerely'. Well, he had used the same formalities, and had uttered
his feelings with scarcely more of warmth. Disappointment troubled
him for a moment, and for a moment only. He was so far from Exeter,
and further still from the life that he had led there. It seemed to
him all but certain that Sidwell wrote coldly, with the intention
of discouraging his hopes. What hope was he so foolish as to
entertain? His position poorer than ever, what could justify him in
writing love-letters to a girl who, even if willing to marry him,
must not do so until he had a suitable home to offer her?

Since his maturity, he had never known so long a freedom from
passion. One day he wrote to Earwaker: 'I begin to your
independence with regard to women. It would be a strange thing if I
became a convert to that way of thinking, but once or twice of late
I have imagined that it was happening. My mind has all but
recovered its tone, and I am able to read, to think—I mean really
to
think
, not to muse. I get through big and solid books.
Presently, if your offer still hold good, I shall send you a scrap
of writing on something or other. The pestilent atmosphere of this
place seems to invigorate me. Last Saturday evening I took train,
got away into the hills, and spent the Sunday geologising. And a
curious experience befell me,—one I had long, long ago, in the
Whitelaw days. Sitting down before some interesting strata, I lost
myself in something like nirvana, grew so subject to the idea of
vastness in geological time that all human desires and purposes
shrivelled to ridiculous unimportance. Awaking for a minute, I
tried to realise the passion which not long ago rent and racked me,
but I was flatly incapable of understanding it. Will this
philosophic state endure? Perhaps I have used up all my emotional
energy? I hardly know whether to hope or fear it.'

About midsummer, when his short holiday (he would only be
released for a fortnight) drew near, he was surprised by another
letter from Sidwell.

'I am anxious [she wrote] to hear that you are well. It is more
than half a year since your last letter, and of late I have been
constantly expecting a few lines. The spring has been a time of
trouble with us. A distant relative, an old and feeble lady who has
passed her life in a little Dorsetshire village, came to see us in
April, and in less than a fortnight she was seized with illness and
died. Then Fanny had an attack of bronchitis, from which even now
she is not altogether recovered. On her account we are all going to
Royat, and I think we shall be away until the end of September.
Will you let me hear from you before I leave England, which will be
in a week's time? Don't refrain from writing because you think you
have no news to send. Anything that interests you is of interest to
me. If it is only to tell me what you have been reading, I shall be
glad of a letter.'