Born in Exile (41 page)

In the morning he returned to the seaside. Prospect of pleasure
there was none, but by moving about he made the time pass more
quickly. Wandering in the lanes (which would have delighted him
with their autumnal beauties had his mind been at rest), he came
upon Miss Walworth, busy with a water-colour sketch. Though their
acquaintance was so slight, he stopped for conversation, and the
artist's manner appeared to testify that Marcella had as yet made
no unfavourable report of him. By mentioning that he would return
home on the morrow, he made sure that Marcella would be apprised of
this. Perhaps she might shorten her stay, and his suspense.

Back in Longbrook Street once more, he found another letter. It
was from Mrs. Warricombe, who wrote to tell him of their coming
removal to London, and added an invitation to dine four days hence.
Then at all events he would speak again with Sidwell. But to what
purpose? Could he let her go away for months, and perhaps all but
forget him among the many new faces that would surround her. He saw
no feasible way of being with her in private. To write was to run
the gravest risk; things were not ripe for that. To take Martin
into his confidence? That asked too much courage. Deliberate
avowals of this kind seemed to him ludicrous and humiliating, and
under the circumstances—no, no; what force of sincerity could make
him appear other than a scheming adventurer?

He lived in tumult of mind and senses. When at length, on the
day before his engagement with the Warricombes, there came a note
from Marcella, summoning him to the interview agreed upon, he could
scarcely endure the hour or two until it was time to set forth;
every minute cost him a throb of pain. The torment must have told
upon his visage, for on entering the room where Marcella waited he
saw that she looked at him with a changing expression, as if
something surprised her.

They shook hands, but without a word. Marcella pointed to a
chair, yet remained standing. She was endeavouring to smile; her
eyes fell, and she coloured.

'Don't let us make each other uncomfortable,' Peak exclaimed
suddenly, in the off-hand tone of friendly intimacy. 'There's
nothing tragic in this affair, after all. Let us talk quietly.'

Marcella seated herself.

'I had reasons,' he went on, 'for going away from my old
acquaintances for a time. Why not, if I chose? You have found me
out. Very well; let us talk it over as we have discussed many
another moral or psychological question.'

He did not meditate these sentences. Something must of necessity
be said, and words shaped themselves for him. His impulse was to
avoid the emotional, to talk with this problematic woman as with an
intellectual friend of his own sex.

'Forgive me,' were the first sounds that came from Marcella's
lips. She spoke with bent head, and almost in a whisper.

'What have I to forgive?' He sat down and leaned sideways in the
easy chair. 'You were curious about my doings? What more
natural?'

'Do you know how I learnt where you were?'

She looked up for an instant.

'I have a suspicion. You went to Twybridge?'

'Yes.'

'But not in your own name?'

'I can hardly tell why not.'

Peak laughed. He was physically and mentally at rest in
comparison with his state for the past few days. Things had a
simpler aspect all at once. After all, who would wish to interfere
maliciously with him? Women like to be in secrets, and probably
Marcella would preserve his.

'What conjectures had you made about me?' he asked, with an air
of amusement.

'Many, of course. But I heard something not long ago which
seemed so unlikely, yet was told so confidently, that at last I
couldn't overcome my wish to make inquiries.'

'And what was that?'

'Mr. Malkin has been to America, and he declared that he had met
you in the streets of Boston—and that you refused to admit you were
yourself.'

Peak laughed still more buoyantly. His mood was eager to seize
on any point that afforded subject for jest.

'Malkin seems to have come across my Doppelganger. One mustn't
pretend to certainty in anything, but I am disposed to think I
never was in Boston.'

'He was of course mistaken.'

Marcella's voice had an indistinctness very unlike her ordinary
tone. As a rule she spoke with that clearness and decision which
corresponds to qualities of mind not commonly found in women. But
confidence seemed to have utterly deserted her; she had lost her
individuality, and was weakly feminine.

'I have been here since last Christmas,' said Godwin, after a
pause.

'Yes. I know.'

Their eyes met.

'No doubt your friends have told you as much as they know of
me?'

'Yes—they have spoken of you.'

'And what does it amount to?'

He regarded her steadily, with a smile of indifference.

'They say'—she gazed at him as if constrained to do so—'that you
are going into the Church.' And as soon as she uttered the last
word, a painful laugh escaped her.

'Nothing else? No comments?'

'I think Miss Moorhouse finds it difficult to understand.'

'Miss Moorhouse?' He reflected, still smiling. 'I shouldn't
wonder. She has a sceptical mind, and she doesn't know me well
enough to understand me.'

'Doesn't know you well enough?'

She repeated the words mechanically. Peak gave her a keen
glance.

'Has she led you to suppose,' he asked, 'that we are on intimate
terms?'

'No.' The word fell from her, absently, despondently.

'Miss Moxey, would anything be gained by our discussing my
position? If you think it a mystery, hadn't we better leave it
so?'

She made no answer.

'But perhaps,' he went on, 'you have told them—the Walworths and
the Moorhouses—that I owe my friends an explanation? When I see
them again, perhaps I shall be confronted with cold, questioning
faces?'

'I haven't said a word that could injure you,' Marcella replied,
with something of her usual self-possession, passing her eyes
distantly over his face as she spoke.

'I knew the suggestion was unjust, when I made it.'

'Then why should you refuse me your confidence?'

She bent forward slightly, but with her eyes cast down. Tone and
features intimated a sense of shame, due partly to the feeling that
she offered complicity in deceit.

'What can I tell you more than you know?' said Godwin, coldly.
'I propose to become a clergyman, and I have acknowledged to you
that my motive is ambition. As the matter concerns my conscience,
that must rest with myself; I have spoken of it to no one. But you
may depend upon it that I am prepared for every difficulty that may
spring up. I knew, of course, that sooner or later some one would
discover me here. Well, I have changed my opinions, that's all; who
can demand more than that?'

Marcella answered in a tone of forced composure.

'You owe me no explanation at all. Yet we have known each other
for a long time, and it pains me that—to be suddenly told that we
are no more to each other than strangers.'

'Are we talking like strangers, Marcella?'

She flushed, and her eyes gleamed as they fixed themselves upon
him for an instant. He had never before dreamt of addressing her so
familiarly, and least of all in this moment was she prepared for
it. Godwin despised himself for the impulse to which he had
yielded, but its policy was justified. He had taken one more step
in disingenuousness—a small matter.

'Let it be one of those things on which even friends don't open
their minds to each other,' he pursued. 'I am living in solitude,
and perhaps must do so for several years yet. If I succeed in my
purposes, you will see me again on the old terms; if I fail, then
too we shall be friends—if you are willing.'

'You won't tell me what those purposes are?'

'Surely you can imagine them.'

'Will you let me ask you—do you look for help to anyone that I
have seen here?' She spoke with effort and with shame.

'To no one that you have met,' he answered, shortly.

'Then to some one in Exeter? I have been told that you have
friends.'

He was irritated by her persistency, and his own inability to
decide upon the most prudent way of answering.

'You mean the Warricombe family, I suppose?'

'Yes.'

'I think it very likely that Mr. Warricombe may be able to help
me substantially.'

Marcella kept silence. Then, without raising her eyes, she
murmured:

'You will tell me no more?'

'There is nothing more to tell.'

She bit her lips, as if to compel them to muteness. Her breath
came quickly; she glanced this way and that, like one who sought an
escape. After eyeing her askance for a moment, Peak rose.

'You are going?' she said.

'Yes; but surely there is no reason why we shouldn't say
good-bye in a natural and friendly way?'

'Can you forgive me for that deceit I practised?'

Peak laughed.

'What does it matter? We should in any case have met at Budleigh
Salterton.'

'No. I had no serious thought of accepting their
invitation.'

She stood looking away from him, endeavouring to speak as though
the denial had but slight significance. Godwin stirred
impatiently.

'I should never have gone to Twybridge,' Marcella continued,
'but for Mr. Malkin's story.'

He turned to her.

'You mean that his story had a disagreeable sound?'

Marcella kept silence, her fingers working together.

'And is your mind relieved?' he added.

'I wish you were back in London. I wish this change had never
come to pass.'

'I wish that several things in my life had never come to pass.
But I am here, and my resolve is unalterable. One thing I must ask
you—how shall you represent my position to your brother?'

For a moment Marcella hesitated. Then, meeting his look, she
answered with nervous haste:

'I shall not mention you to him.'

Ashamed to give any sign of satisfaction, and oppressed by the
feeling that he owed her gratitude, Peak stood gazing towards the
windows with an air of half-indifferent abstractedness. It was
better to let the interview end thus, without comment or further
question; so he turned abruptly, and offered his hand.

'Good-bye. You will hear of me, or from me.'

'Good-bye!'

He tried to smile; but Marcella had a cold face, expressive of
more dignity than she had hitherto shown. As he closed the door she
was still looking towards him.

He knew what the look meant. In his position, a man of ordinary
fibre would long ago have nursed the flattering conviction that
Marcella loved him. Godwin had suspected it, but in a vague,
unemotional way, never attaching importance to the matter. What he
had
clearly understood was, that Christian wished to inspire
him with interest in Marcella, and on that account, when in her
company, he sometimes set himself to display a deliberate
negligence. No difficult undertaking, for he was distinctly
repelled by the thought of any relations with her more intimate
than had been brought about by his cold intellectual sympathy. Her
person was still as disagreeable to him as when he first met her in
her uncle's house at Twybridge. If a man sincerely hopes that a
woman does not love him (which can seldom be the case where a
suggestion of such feeling ever arises), he will find it easy to
believe that she does not. Peak not only had the benefit of this
principle; the constitution of his mind made it the opposite of
natural for him to credit himself with having inspired affection.
That his male friends held him in any warm esteem always appeared
to him improbable, and as regards women his modesty was profound.
The simplest explanation, that he was himself incapable of pure
devotedness, perhaps hits the truth. Unsympathetic, however, he
could with no justice be called, and now that the reality of
Marcella's love was forced upon his consciousness he thought of her
with sincere pity,—the emotion which had already possessed him
(though he did not then analyse it) when he unsuspectingly looked
into her troubled face a few days ago.

It was so hard to believe, that, on reaching home, he sat for a
long time occupied with the thought of it, to the exclusion of his
own anxieties. What! this woman had made of
him
an ideal
such as he himself sought among the most exquisite of her sex? How
was that possible? What quality of his, personal, psychical, had
such magnetic force? What sort of being was he in Marcella's eyes?
Reflective men must often enough marvel at the success of whiskered
and trousered mortals in wooing the women of their desire, for only
by a specific imagination can a person of one sex assume the
emotions of the other. Godwin had neither that endowment nor the
peculiar self-esteem which makes love-winning a matter of course to
some intelligent males. His native arrogance signified a low
estimate of mankind at large, rather than an overweening
appreciation of his own qualities, and in his most presumptuous
moments he had never claimed the sexual refulgence which many a
commonplace fellow so gloriously exhibits. At most, he had hoped
that some woman might find him
interesting
, and so be led on
to like him well enough for the venture of matrimony. Passion at
length constrained him to believe that his ardour might be
genuinely reciprocated, but even now it was only in paroxysms that
he held this assurance; the hours of ordinary life still exposed
him to the familiar self-criticism, sometimes more scathing than
ever. He dreaded the looking-glass, consciously avoided it; and a
like disparagement of his inner being tortured him through the
endless labyrinths of erotic reverie.

Yet here was a woman who so loved him that not even a proud
temper and his candid indifference could impose restraint upon her
emotions. As he listened to the most significant of her words he
was distressed with shame, and now, in recalling them, he felt that
he should have said something, done something, to disillusion her.
Could he not easily show himself in a contemptible light? But
reflection taught him that the shame he had experienced on
Marcella's behalf was blended with a gratification which forbade
him at the moment to be altogether unamiable. It was not
self-interest alone that prompted his use of her familiar name. In
the secret places of his heart he was thankful to her for a most
effective encouragement. She had confirmed him in the hope that he
was loved by Sidwell.