Spellcraft For Hedge Witches A Guide To Healing

Our Lives Rae Beth download

https://ebookbell.com/product/spellcraft-for-hedge-witches-a-
guide-to-healing-our-lives-rae-beth-57341814

Explore and download more ebooks at ebookbell.com

Here are some recommended products that we believe you will be
interested in. You can click the link to download.

Spellcraft For Hedge Witches A Guide To Healing Our Lives Illustrated

Rae Beth

https://ebookbell.com/product/spellcraft-for-hedge-witches-a-guide-to-
healing-our-lives-illustrated-rae-beth-35188146

Spellcraft For A Magical Year Rituals And Enchantments For Prosperity

Power And Fortune Bartlett

https://ebookbell.com/product/spellcraft-for-a-magical-year-rituals-
and-enchantments-for-prosperity-power-and-fortune-bartlett-6641138

Spellcraft For A Magical Year Rituals And Enchantments For Prosperity

Power And Fortune Sarah Bartlett

https://ebookbell.com/product/spellcraft-for-a-magical-year-rituals-
and-enchantments-for-prosperity-power-and-fortune-sarah-
bartlett-61438570

Power Spellcraft For Life The Art Of Crafting And Casting For Positive
Change Arin Murphyhiscock

https://ebookbell.com/product/power-spellcraft-for-life-the-art-of-
crafting-and-casting-for-positive-change-arin-murphyhiscock-22958238
Wicca Spellcraft For Men A Spellbook For Male Pagans Aj Drew

https://ebookbell.com/product/wicca-spellcraft-for-men-a-spellbook-
for-male-pagans-aj-drew-4578692

Wicca Spellcraft For Men A J Drew Drew A J

https://ebookbell.com/product/wicca-spellcraft-for-men-a-j-drew-drew-
a-j-22958638

The Witchs Complete Guide To Selfcare Everyday Healing Rituals And

Soothing Spellcraft For Wellbeing Theodosia Corinth

https://ebookbell.com/product/the-witchs-complete-guide-to-selfcare-
everyday-healing-rituals-and-soothing-spellcraft-for-wellbeing-
theodosia-corinth-36360134

Spell Craft For A Magical Year Sarah Bartlett

https://ebookbell.com/product/spell-craft-for-a-magical-year-sarah-
bartlett-47869382

Spells Spellcraft Compendium Of Mystic Lore Legends Lairs D20 System

Fantasy Flight Games

https://ebookbell.com/product/spells-spellcraft-compendium-of-mystic-
lore-legends-lairs-d20-system-fantasy-flight-games-2188424
 Another Random Document on
Scribd Without Any Related Topics
of three years back. With trembling fingers he ran through the
numbers. The counterfoil of Roderick's cheque was missing.
Mechanically he replaced the stub and locked the cupboard. And
then he stood for a while, fierce-eyed, shivering with a horrible
certainty. Roderick had forged the cheque, and the shock of
discovery had nearly killed his father.
The whole man was white-hot with fury. In such accesses of
anger, stern, reserved men have killed their enemies mercilessly.
Instead of confusing their judgment, their anger burns it to crystal
clearness. Every action is that of sublimated reason. Sylvester
remained for a few moments motionless; then he picked up a
railway time-card from the table, glanced at it, and consulted his
watch. He turned down the lamp and left the room. In the hall he
was met by Simmons, the doctor. The latter was by far the more
outwardly perturbed of the two.
“Well, how are things?”
“As satisfactory as can be expected,” replied Sylvester. “Come and
see.” They went together slowly up the stairs, discussing the
symptoms, and entered the sick chamber. There was very little
change. Unconsciousness would still last for many hours. That at
least was certain. Meanwhile they could do nothing but await events.
Before leaving the room, Sylvester bent down and kissed his father's
face, that looked shrunken in the dim light, and never had he felt
such yearning love for him. Downstairs, he drew Simmons into the
library.
“I am going to London to-night,” said he.
Simmons stared at him. “To London?” he queried.
“And leave my father in this condition? Yes, I am summoned on a
matter of life and death.”
The other was puzzled by the non-professional phrase. “An urgent
case” would have been intelligible. But he made no comment.
Neither of the Lanyons was a man to discuss his private concerns
with his acquaintance. Sylvester continued,—
“I am more than satisfied to leave him in your hands, Simmons.
You know that. But you would be doing me a good turn if you sent
me two or three telegrams to-morrow. I hope to get back at night.”
“Willingly,” replied Simmons; and after a few more words, the two
men shook hands and parted. Miss Lanyon, whose simple gospel it
was that whatever Matthew or Sylvester did was right, demanded no
explanations when Sylvester announced his intention of going to
London; but when he was gone, she cried a bit to herself in a
sympathetic feminine way. Men were unaccountable beings in her
eyes. They represented mysterious forces which she had been
brought up, in her young days, to regard with respectful awe. There
was a trace of orientalism in the attitude of our grandmothers
towards the male sex. It lingers still in old-fashioned, sequestered
places.
It was late when Sylvester's cab stopped at his house in
Weymouth Street. He attempted to open the door with his latch-key,
but the chain was up, and he had to ring and wait in the drizzling
rain until a shivering and tousled servant came down. At another
time he would have felt a chill of desolation at entering the dark and
fireless house, so cold in its unwelcome. But to-night he was strung
to a high pitch; and the loneliness of his surroundings failed to touch
the usually responsive chord. He went upstairs to his room,
dominated by a fixed idea. He would stop the marriage, thus tardily
doing his father's bidding, and have Roderick arrested on a charge of
forgery. If his father died, his murder would thus, at least, be
avenged.
Early the next morning he went to Roderick's chambers. The
servant, who was setting the breakfast table, informed him that Mr.
Usher had not yet been called.
 “Wake him and say that Dr. Lanyon particularly wishes to see him,”
said Sylvester.
The servant retired and returned a few moments afterwards with
a request that he would wait for Mr. Usher in the studio. She
conducted him thither and having put a match to the fire, departed.
The room was bare, the hangings taken down, the knick-knacks
packed in cases lying untidily about the floor, the pictures stacked
against the walls,—all in preparation for the coming change in
Roderick's way of living.
Presently a door opened, and Roderick appeared in dressing-gown
and slippers. His cheeks were sunken, his eyes bloodshot. He looked
like a man hag-ridden. He drew a quick, short breath at the first
sight of Sylvester's threatening face. All his jauntiness had gone. He
went a step or two towards his visitor and said curtly,—
“Well?”
“You have forged my father's name to a cheque for £3,000,” said
Sylvester.
“Can I see it?”
Sylvester drew the cheque from his pocketbook and held it up for
the other's inspection.
“I perceive the bankers have honoured it,” said Roderick. “Mr.
Lanyon will not repudiate it.”
“He will not have the chance. I repudiate it. He is lying
unconscious,—perhaps at the point of death. By God! if he dies you
will have killed him.”
“You are talking rank folly,” said Roderick, leaning against the jamb
of the window, his hands in his dressing-gown pockets. “Mr. Lanyon
as my solicitor sold out certain of my investments and sent me a
cheque for the total amount.”
 “A cheque to which there is no counterfoil, taken from a cheque-
book in use three years ago?”
Sylvester laughed harshly and buttoned his overcoat, which he
had opened so as to get at the cheque. Roderick grew white and
passed his hand across his forehead. There was a moment's silence.
“As a matter of elementary justice,” said Sylvester, “I came here
first for your explanation. As you can give none, I will now put the
matter in the hands of the police, and in an hour or two there will be
a warrant out for your arrest.”
He moved towards the door. Roderick staggered away from the
window and drew his hand hard across his face in a gesture of utter
weariness. The strain of the past week had been too much. Always
thriftless and reckless in money matters, he had hitherto stopped
short of unredeemed rascality. The burden of a crime had crushed
his self-assurance.
“Stop a moment,” he said hoarsely. “There are other
considerations.”
“I have them in view,” replied Sylvester, icily. He turned again.
Roderick hurriedly interposed himself between him and the door.
“For God's sake, man, think of what you are doing! I don't deny it.
There! I can't. It is more than I can bear. I have been in hell for the
past week, devoured alive, with the flames licking my soul. I was
driven to it, to save myself from disgrace. I was desperate. I would
have replaced the money. By Heaven! I would. It was my only
chance to avert sudden crash and to marry the woman I love.”
“You love!” sneered Sylvester.
“Yes, the woman I love and crave and worship, for whose sake I'd
commit a thousand crimes. I was pushed hard, I tell you, with my
back against the wall. I had to. Go back to Ayresford and tell your
father I'll repay it,—every penny. I swear to God I will.”
 “With Miss Defries's money. Rob Peter to pay Paul. Let me pass.”
“You are going to have me arrested?”
“Certainly.”
“But—Sylvester—good God!” cried Roderick, in incoherent agony.
“Think of what it means—our old friendship—we were young
together—we have grown old together—years ago, when you too
were marrying a sweet woman, I stood by your side—”
“Your damned hand has been in every tragedy of my life,”
exclaimed Sylvester, kindled into a sudden flame of anger. “And a
damned woman's! If it had not been for a woman, you would not
have killed my father.”
In the midst of his frantic anxiety, it was suddenly revealed to
Roderick that in alluding to Sylvester's marriage he had touched the
man's hidden wound. He hastened to repair his blunder.
“I am not pleading for myself alone,” he said, drawing himself up
and speaking in a more dignified voice. “You can disgrace me, but
my disgrace will fall on another—whom your father loves. If you
arrest me, the marriage will be broken off by a miserable, horrible
scandal,—one that will poison a woman's whole existence. It would
be more than pain to your father if such hurt happened to Ella
Defries.”
“You certainly don't propose that I should let this marriage take
place to-morrow?” said Sylvester, recovering his cold scorn of
manner. But he was somewhat checked in his purpose by Roderick's
argument, and Roderick saw that he had gained a point.
“I happen to know,” said he, “that you would be carrying out your
father's wish in preventing my marriage. I undertake to break it off.
The day I marry her you can arrest me.”
Again Sylvester laughed harshly. “You know very well you would
be safe then, as Ella Defries's husband.”
 He turned and walked to the window and looked out in deep
thought. He hated the man, clung fiercely to the revengeful joy of
seeing him stamped out of decent existence. Compromise was
wormwood, and yet compromise there must be. Roderick remained
by the door straining haggard eyes at his judge, a strange figure,
with his gorgeous dressing-gown and dishevelled hair, in the midst of
the dismantled and rubbish-strewn room. Sylvester's last words had
sent the thrill of a forlorn hope through his veins and he waited with
throbbing heart for the other to speak.
At last Sylvester faced him again.
“I will give you a day's grace,” he said stonily. “You will leave
Liverpool Street tonight at 8.30 for the Hook of Holland; one way of
getting to the Continent is as good as another, and I happen to
choose this one. You can take what steps you like to inform Miss
Defries that you cannot marry her tomorrow or any other time.
Those are my terms. I shall have a warrant ready. If you shuffle out
of them, I shall put it in force and proceed against you without
mercy.”
“Mercilessness is a dangerous game when a creature is driven to
bay,” said Roderick.
“What could you do?” asked Sylvester, contemptuously.
Roderick drew his shoulders together and turned away. “Nothing,”
he said in a low voice. “No, damn it! nothing.”
Somehow he could not utter the threat that rose to his lips. His
soul revolted. It is one of the strangest facts in human psychology
that there is no man so vile but that there is one thing he cannot
and will not do: sometimes the thing is a hideous crime, sometimes
only a comparatively trivial act of dishonour; but whatever may be
its relative importance, there is always one virtuous principle to
which the human soul must cling. Roderick had blackmailed the
father,—for that is what his forgery came to,—but he could not
blackmail the son. Nor could he drag his own father, hoary scoundrel
though he knew him to be, down with him in his disgrace. So he
kept silent as to the mysterious relations between the two old men,
and—unutterable pathos of poor humanity—his silence was a salve
to his conscience.
Sylvester turned the handle of the studio door.
“Do you accept my terms?”
“Yes,” said Roderick, suddenly.
“Good,” said Sylvester, and he closed the door behind him and
went downstairs into the street. There he took a cab and drove to
Scotland Yard.
He was not the man to utter idle threats. Before dictating
conditions to Roderick, he had coldly calculated upon the power that
he could wield. Like that of every London specialist, his practice was
socially varied to a curious extent. Among his patients was a high
official at Scotland Yard, who, he knew, without dereliction of duty,
would courteously carry out the arrangements he intended to
suggest. The official received him as he had anticipated. In order to
avoid a painful scandal in society, it would be better to let the culprit
fly the country. Of course there would be no talk of extradition. In
the mean time, a warrant could be issued and put in force whenever
Dr. Lanyon gave the word. Sylvester went home grimly satisfied with
his morning's work. He found awaiting him a telegram from
Simmons to the effect that his father's condition was unchanged.
Roderick went into his dining-room, as dismantled and cheerless
as the studio, and drank a cup of coffee. He tried to eat, but the
food choked him. He was crushed, beaten, ruined. Utter dejection
was in his attitude as he sat in the straight-backed chair, staring
helplessly in front of him. Even in his crimes he had failed. He had
deferred paying in the forged cheque to the very last moment
possible for the cheque he had written for Urquhart to be honoured
by his own bankers. He had reckoned on clearing-house delay, on
the half-day of Saturday, on the intervening dies non of Sunday, in
fact, on the cheque not coming under Matthew's notice until after
the wedding. But the cheque had passed from bank to bank with
diabolical expedition, and, like the curses in the Spanish proverb, it
had come home to roost with a vengeance.
What was to become of him? He could scarcely realise his
sentence. Exile from England meant a bitter struggle with poverty;
and yet exile was his irremediable lot. In eight or nine hours he must
start. There was no escape. He knew Sylvester of old, as hard as
iron and as cold as ice, a man to carry out his purpose relentlessly.
To-night—to leave this dear world of London behind him; tomorrow
—to be in the aimless solitude of some foreign hotel, when, if
fortune had been kind, he would have been standing at the altar
with the woman whom he desired above all women that had ever
entered his life. It was like the blank future of the man condemned
to death.
Thoughts of his own misdoing, of his banishment, faded into a
vague heaviness at the back of his brain, while the pang of a great
hunger gripped him. He flung his arms on the table and buried his
head and clutched his hair in both hands.
“My God, my God! I can't give her up!” he cried. Now that she was
torn from him, he craved her with the awful passion of the man no
longer young. A picture of her ripe lips and her fresh, eager face, so
quick to flush, floated maddeningly before his closed eyes. Last night
on parting he had held her close and kissed her. He felt the yielding
softness of her bosom against his breast, could almost feel now the
throb of her heart. He bit through his sleeve into his arm.
The paroxysm passed. He must think. The wedding must be
postponed. Sylvester had intrusted him with that duty, out of regard
for Ella. See her he could not; his soul shrank from it. A cowardly
letter to reach her too late for questions to be asked, giving no
reasons, simply stating that he was summoned away that night for
an indefinite period? It must be written. He grovelled in his self-
abasement.
 Suddenly he raised his head and stared up, with panting breath
and trembling body. A wild, mad idea had sprung from a
recrudescence of the forlorn hope with which Sylvester's words had
inspired him. He sprang to his feet with a quavering, hysterical
laugh.
“By Christ! I'll carry it through,” he cried, and he walked about the
room, swinging his arms in great gestures.
 CHAPTER XVII—A WEDDING EVE

T
he room was in a state of bewitching confusion. Trunks, half
filled, yawned open on the floor. On the bed were piles of
white garments in the midst of which here and there a pink or
blue ribbon peeped daintily. Cardboard boxes and tissue paper
pervaded space. Hats small and hats immense lay about in
unconsidered attitudes upon chintz-covered chairs and other resting-
places. A pearl-coloured ball-dress, all gauze and chiffon and foamy
nothingness, hung over the bed-rail. A thousand odds and ends—
veils, hatpins, mysterious smooth wooden boxes, and cut-glass
phials—were strewn on the tables. And the pale morning sunshine
streamed in a friendly way into the room.
Ella was superintending her packing. Her maid having gone out for
a moment, she sat on the edge of the bed (leaving, with feminine
sureness of pose, the dainty piles of garments aforesaid unscathed),
and gazed critically at a hat which she held on outstretched fingers
thrust into the crown. In a dark silk blouse and a plain skirt, and
with her auburn hair somewhat ruffled, she looked very simple and
girlish. Lady Milmo, occupying the only vacant chair opposite, also
regarded the hat with the eye of experience. The examination had,
however, come to an end, for Ella, after flicking the great bows with
the finger-tips of her disengaged hand, threw the confection lightly
on the top of the pile, and putting her hands in her lap resignedly,
turned to her aunt.
“I am sure Josephine will disappoint me with the blue dress.”
“Oh, no, my dear,” said Lady Milmo, “kingdoms may fall and
empires may decay, but Josephine never fails. A woman of her word,
my dear. Don't you know what she did for La Guira, the singer? La
Guira ordered four dresses to take away with her to Patagonia or
somewhere. It was impossible to finish them before the morning of
departure. Josephine herself raced with them to Waterloo in a
hansom just in time to see the train with La Guira in it steam out of
the station; and that woman took a special there and then, and
chased the train and got the dresses on board all right. Josephine is
a marvellous woman.”
Ella laughed. She did not care very much. Her life at that moment
was too full.
“It's quite sweet of the sun to come in and see me, isn't it?” she
said.
“Provided he keeps up his good behaviour to-morrow,” said Lady
Milmo.
“Oh, I sha'n't mind what he does tomorrow; I shall have too many
things to think of.”
“But what about us poor unfortunates who are not going to be
married?”
“You could be married now, fifty times over, auntie, if you chose,”
said Ella, out of her lightness of heart.
“The Lord preserve me!” replied Lady Milmo, vivaciously. “When
poor Howgate died I vowed that when we met in heaven, if there is
one, no other man should stand between us.”
As the late Sir Howgate Milmo, Bart., had been a notoriously evil
liver, Ella did not think there was much chance of her aunt escaping
forsworn, even on her hypothesis.
“One can love heaps of times, you know,” she said, stretching out
her limbs girlishly and looking at the tips of her shoes.
“Love your husband once and for all, my dear,” said her aunt,
sententiously.
 Ella rose to her feet and crossed over to her aunt's chair and sat
on the arm, and kissed Lady Milmo. A spontaneous caress like that
was rare with her, and the recipient looked up in pleased surprise.
But Ella had grasped her fate in both hands and felt mistress thereof,
and all seemed right with the world. She had compelled herself into
entire happiness.
“Of course I do—or I shall,” she replied. “Do you think I could
marry a man to whom I did not feel I could give all that is in me?”
“It is the fate of women to give,” said Lady Milmo, who was in a
moralising mood.
“We must do something to justify our existence,” laughed Ella.
“Women can't do much. I used to think differently when I was
young. Men do all the real work in the world, but somehow they
seem to want something from women. And it's a great thing to help
on the big world by giving oneself body and soul to a man.”
“Cook his food and wash his clothes and see that there is a proper
supply of Salutaris water when he comes home after a city dinner
That was the whole duty of woman in your grandmother's time,
child.”
“I think women are very much the same all through the ages,”
said Ella. “At least,” she added reflectively, “that's the only way the
riddle seems to be solved. A man does, wants, compels. A woman
yields—otherwise—why, well—”
She rose, confused at' her half-confession, and re-examined the
hat.
“Otherwise why should I be wanting to meet poor dear Howgate
in heaven,” finished Lady Milmo, coming to her assistance with a
humorous curl of the lip. “Anyhow,” she continued with some
irrelevance, “I'm glad you're going to stay in a decent Christian
country, where you can wear your pretty frocks.”
 “So am I, auntie—now,” replied Ella. “But I didn't think I should
be.”
Ella's maid came in, and the work of packing was resumed. Her
mistress tried on the much-considered hat before the pier-glass,
while Lady Milmo arranged the rumpled hair beneath, so that the hat
should produce its due effect. Then one of the bridesmaids came,
ostensibly to see if she could help; really to feast her innocent eyes
upon the articles of attire everywhere displayed. The time slipped by
pleasantly. At twelve o'clock the parlour-maid tapped at the door and
entered with the announcement that Mr. Usher was downstairs and
desired to see Miss Ella on most urgent business.
Lady Milmo threw up her hands. What could he want? Men were a
positive nuisance at weddings! They ought to be chained up for days
before and only let loose at the church door.
“I'm in such a mess,” cried Ella. But she sent down a message to
Roderick that she would see him directly.
The servant smiled and departed. Ella gave herself those anxious
feminine tidying touches before her glass, whose effect the eternal
irony decrees shall never be noticed by man, and ran happily down
the stairs to meet her lover. She turned the handle of the morning-
room door and stood before him, in the heyday of her youth and her
charm. All the anxieties of the past year had fallen from her. Her
cheeks flushed a shy welcome. Her eyes, honest and clear, smiled
upon him. She moved quickly forward, her lips already parted in
happy speech, when suddenly she felt him come upon her and
encircle her with strong, resistless arms and rain passionate kisses
upon her mouth and cheeks.
“Oh, my God, I love you, I love you!” he murmured hoarsely. “I
can't let you go. You are soul of my soul and blood of my blood. No,
Ella, no,” he continued, as, confused and blushing, she strove to
release herself; “I must keep you here. Heaven knows when I may
hold you in my arms again. Listen, something terrible has happened,
—a thing that may part our lives. Are you strong enough to bear it?
Brave and strong and heroic, like the woman I think you?”
He relaxed his clasp and stood with hands on her shoulders,
forcing her to look at him. She met his passion-filled eyes fearlessly,
but her colour had gone.
“Part our lives! I don't understand what you mean, Roderick.”
“Are you brave enough to face a terrible calamity?”
“I shall not faint, if you mean that,” she replied. “What is it?”
“I must leave England to-night,” he said in a quick voice. “How
long I shall have to stay away, I do not know. It may be weeks, it
may be months, it may be years.”
She looked at him with perplexed brows and a dawning fear in her
eyes.
“But to-morrow—” she began.
“There will be no to-morrow—for me. Unless——”
“Unless what?”
He turned away and paced across the room and back again. He
had thrown off the gold pince-nez, and now they swung by the cord
over his waistcoat, and his small blue eyes, usually obscured by
them, glowed strangely and the pupils were dilated. Where the
actor, the inveterate poseur, ended and the man began, it were
impossible to tell. He was playing a part, but playing it in desperate
earnestness. The words, the gestures, were false; but the yearning
folly of love that vibrated in his voice was as real a thing as had ever
entered into the man's life.
“I must be plain with you, Ella. It's as much as my life, my honour,
your fair happiness, is worth for me to stay in England over to-night.
There can be no wedding to-morrow. I have done all that a man
could do to avert things. The suspense has been a torturing agony
above words. But the inevitable, the inexorable, has come. Oh, God,
Ella, if you knew what living hell it is to me to tell you this!”
She put her hands before her face, feeling dazed and sick, and
when she drew them away, her face was very white. Like every pure
woman, her thoughts of late had been absorbed by the sweet
vanities of the morrow's ceremony, with just a warm, tremulous sub-
consciousness of the beyond. The sudden fall about her ears of this
structure of vanities bewildered her. Her brain seemed to be an
avalanche of telegrams and letters. Faces of bidden guests swam
lurid before her. Roderick, a long way off, faded into infinite mist. A
pang of disappointment, humiliation, she knew not what, ached in
her breast. She scarcely heard or heeded what the man was saying.
He stopped, seeing her so white, and looked at her, breathless. Then
suddenly a cloud seemed to roll away before her, and she was
conscious of him standing there with haggard eyes and features
drawn in pain. Scorn of her first imaginings drove them into the
limbo of all vain things; the thrill of a proud courage nerved her; she
drew herself up and faced realities. And the first reality was a rush
through her being of yearning pity for the man so stricken. With an
impulse of consolation she went up to him, and again his arms
closed swiftly round her. He murmured burning incoherences. He
could not live without her love, the crown and joy of earthly things.
Life would be a purgatorial flame. He loved her. He worshipped her,
so brave, so loyal, so adorable. His voice was vibrant with elemental
passion.
A woman, young and ardent, with rich blood running through her
veins, is, above all things, a primitive human being. It were an ill day
for the pride and vigour of the race if she were not. There are
moments when the world's music surges like the roar of the sea in
her ears, and the heart within her is lifted to her lips; when her
limbs are as water, and her body is carried in the unfaltering arms of
a god through illimitable space. She has yielded, is swept away by
the man's passion, deliriously lost.
 As in a dream, standing there in his embrace, she heard him
whisper:—
“There is one way—to scoff at destiny—to rise triumphant above it
—to be married tomorrow in spite of all things. Not here. In Holland
where I am summoned—I have the license—we can explain the
urgency of our flight—the English Consul or Chaplain at Amsterdam
will marry us. Come with me tonight—Ella—for God's sake, Ella, say
that you will.”
She smiled up at him without replying. The mad proposal seemed
at the dreamy moment the sweetest of sanities. He continued in
hurried intensity,—
“All will be so easy. You can say you are going to Ayresford—what
more natural?—to stay here would be pain—there is a train for
Ayresford about the time—half-past eight at Liverpool Street. I will
meet you there with a ticket,—and then we shall be carried off to
happiness—you and I—alone together—to conquer the world....
There—it must be.”
He took her hands, kissed them both, and released her. She stood
for a while with downcast eyes and heaving bosom, recovering her
mental balance.
“You have not yet told me,” she said presently, in a calmer voice,
“why there should be this upheaval. I have said perhaps I might help
you. Why do your life and honour and my happiness depend upon
your leaving England to-night, Roderick?”
The supreme moment had come. He braced every nerve to meet
the inevitable question. Summoning up an extraordinary dignity
subtly tinged with sadness, he said with grave deliberation,—
“I cannot tell you.”
Ella recoiled involuntarily, staggered by the unexpectedness of the
reply. She could only regard him in mute but anxious questioning.
 “You must trust me, child,” he said. “It is another's secret.”
“So grave as to be withheld even from me?”
“Even so,” he replied. “I know,” he continued gravely, “I am asking
you the ultimate thing a man can ask a woman,—blind trust. It is a
thing that only the great soul, like you, can give. Put your hand in
mine and trust in me!”
“Let me think,” she said in a low voice.
She sat down on a couch, baffled. If she looked up, she met the
man's burning eyes fixed upon her, and the depths of her being were
stirred. If she looked away, her life seemed fragmentary chaos,
unrealisable, incomprehensible. She breathed fast from a heaving
bosom. Roderick's mystery hovered between the grotesque and the
tragic. To run away clandestinely with the man to whom she was to
have been married with all the pomp of publicity on the morrow was
an idea of comic opera. On the other hand, the blind trust required
raised the proceeding to the heroic plane. Again, Nature within her
shrank from mystery; she was a child appalled by the dark, and fear
was upon her. But the sensitive gentlewoman felt the appeal to
honour in every fibre of her pride. Generosity swelled against doubt.
A strange physical coldness enwrapped her. To start to-night, with
Roderick, surrendering herself utterly; the maiden in her piteously
sought refuge from the thought. She glanced tremulously up at him,
and her face flamed pink, and warmth entered her heart. She
covered her cheeks with her hands and shrank into the corner of the
couch.
“Oh, could I not join you afterwards?” she moaned. He fell at her
feet and clasped her knees, broke into impassioned pleading. It was
a matter of life or death. His unbalanced artistic temperament burst
all restraints of conventional forms of speech. He raved of his
consuming need. He was less a man than a shaking passion.
The eternal mystery to woman is man's desire of her. It
transcends her thought, it looms immense, inscrutable, and
irresistible before her. She is the everlasting Semele beneath the
fiery glory of Zeus. It is decreed that when brought face to face with
it (a chord within her being responsive, be it understood), she shall
lose all sense of the proportion between it and the infinite passions
of the universe. Life resolves itself into an amazement that she, with
a whisper, a touch of her hand, can raise a man from hell to heaven.
In the piteous, glorious, tragi-comedy of life, which has been played
on millions of stages for millions of years, this elemental fact is so
commonplace that it escapes our notice. We are apt to judge from
externals, from the results of adherence to ethical systems, from
social conventions; and when the actions of men and women are not
provided for in artificial canons, we are baffled or are shocked by a
sense of the immoral, the abnormal, or the preposterous. But men
will desire and women will yield till the end of the human race.
And Ella yielded. She bound herself to meet him that evening and
go with him into the darkness, whithersoever he should lead; and
Roderick left the house, holding his head high, exultant in the sense
of having conquered destiny.
But when he had gone, Ella threw herself face downwards on the
couch in all the abandonment of exhaustion. For a while she could
not think; she could only be conscious of the flow and ebb, and
again the flow and ebb, and once more the flow of emotion, during
the past hour. She had entered the room in light-hearted happiness;
there had come the shock of an awful dismay. Then she had been
lifted in the tide of the man's passion; there had followed the cold
numbness of doubt; again passion had swept away reason. Now was
reaction. She felt physically prostrated, and her body ached as if it
had been beaten. Her eyelids burned. She would have liked to cry
miserably, but she could not. She suffered the woman's torment of
unshed tears. Suddenly she rose and drew herself together,
despising her weakness. She had pledged herself to do a certain
thing. It was to be done, and practical commonplaces had to be
faced. First was the breaking of the news to Lady Milmo. The girl's
heart was smitten with pity for the kindly lady who had entered so
wholeheartedly into these wedding preparations. It would be a keen
disappointment to countermand the feast, put off the guests, make
lame excuses. And that would not be the end. There would be the
scandal of her flight, of which Lady Milmo would have to bear the
brunt. It was cruel to treat her so. She went to the window and
looked out at the sunny houses on the other side of Pont Street;
wondered whether they all were cages for women bound as she was
in invisible chains. Her course had been marked out with scrupulous
exactness; to deviate from it a hair's breadth would be not only
breaking a solemn pledge, but perhaps endangering the life or
honour, she knew not how, of the man she was to marry. Yet her
frank soul rebelled against the deception. The hour of Roderick's
departure was to be kept secret; her elopement with him not to be
whispered of. She was to give out a journey to Ayresford, to escape
from the painful associations of the house in Pont Street, filled with
all the vain preparations for the morrow. She had never lied
barefacedly in her life, and for a moment she hated Roderick for
compelling her to falseness. But then the lingering echoes of his
voice hummed in her ears, and the blood rushed back into her
cheeks, and she felt strong for the sacrifice of her honour.
Did she love him? She answered the self-put question with a
passionate affirmative. Else why was she doing this preposterous
thing? Was not the blindness of her trust the very banner of her
love? A phrase of Roderick's crossed her mind. “Life is merely the
summation of moments of keen living.” She caught at it as a plank
with the drowning man's thrill. She was living keenly; that alone was
sufficient to justify everything. She was defying the set uses of the
tame world. “Each man must batter down for himself the doors that
hide life's inner glory” was another of his sayings. Was she not even
now battering at the door? Her soul clutched at every supporting
straw. Yet, in spite of these aphoristic comforts, it was with a
strange, dull sense of fatality that she saw herself sitting by
Roderick's side in the train that night, being carried away further and
further into the inscrutable darkness.
 The first part of her task was over. She had told Lady Milmo. It
had been an interview of pain and self-reproach. Lady Milmo had
gasped, wept, waxed indignant. All her kindly woman's motherliness
had poured itself out upon the girl, whom she considered infamously
treated. It was in vain for Ella to plead the matter of life and death
that called Roderick away. Lady Milmo had her prejudices. She had
cordially approved of Ella's immediate retirement to Ayresford. How
could the poor child stay in the house where every surrounding
would be a pain to her? She had sent Ella off to lie down in peace
upon her own bed, away from the half-packed litter of finery in the
girl's room; and while Ella lay there with a splitting headache,
helplessly counting the slow hours, Lady Milmo sat heroically before
her writing-table immersed in lists and telegraph forms.
The slow hours passed. A little difficulty arose. Lady Milmo had
taken it for granted that Ella's maid would accompany her to
Ayresford. Ella, alarmed, announced her intention of leaving her
behind. She did not even wish her to come to the station to see
after the luggage. She had to insist that solitude was essential. Lady
Milmo yielded the point reluctantly. At last the time came. Ella's
luggage had been placed on the fourwheeled cab. The door was
open; the white-capped maid stood on the pavement. Ella turned
with a sudden rush of emotion and kissed Lady Milmo, who had
come with her to the hall.
“If I ever hurt you, dear, God knows it's because I cannot help it,”
she said. But before the other could reply, a telegraph boy entered
with a telegram. Name of Defries. Ella tore it open, with a spasm of
anticipation, half fear, half hope, that it came from Roderick. But it
ran:—
 “Your coming a joy. Your uncle dangerously ill. Is crying
for you. Agatha.”

Speechless she handed the paper to her aunt. Lady Milmo glanced
at it.
“Doesn't it all work out for the best, dear?” she said gently.
“Agatha Lanyon would not have wired if to-morrow's affair had not
been broken off.”
“How did she know?” asked Ella, with white lips.
“Why, I sent them a message,” said Lady Milmo.
Ella bade her good-bye again. The parlour maid shut the cab-door
and gave the word “Waterloo” to the driver. The cab drove off, and
then Ella, spreading out the crumpled telegram, broke for the first
time into a flood of passionate tears.
But some moments later she called to the driver,—
“I fancy the servant made a mistake. It is Liverpool Street I want
to go to.”
And to Liverpool Street was she driven.
 CHAPTER XVIII—FELLOW-
TRAVELLERS

A
misty evening had followed the sunshine of the day. The lights
in Liverpool Street, in shop-windows, street-lamps, and the
lamps of a thousand crossing and recrossing vehicles, flared
red and large through the slight fog. Luggage-laden cabs clattered
down the flagged incline of the station, sounding a hard treble to the
thundering bass of the street and city above. Down the sides of the
incline streamed the throng of work people and belated clerks
hurrying to their trains. The station portico beyond seemed a dark
vortex into which this seething life was sucked with irresistible
swiftness. There, in the uncertain light, was the bustle of porters
unloading cabs, the quick rattle of trucks and barrows, the ceaseless
patter of feet, the din of voices. It was an eddying whirl of vague
shapes appearing for a moment from the fog and vanishing after a
flash of passage.
Roderick stood by the wall, gazing anxiously at each cab as it
stopped and deposited its fare. He had taken the two tickets,
registered his luggage through to Amsterdam, and now was waiting
in feverish suspense for Ella. Would she come? He looked at his
watch. It was only five minutes past eight, and he had been
watching for her since the quarter to the hour. He threw away a
cigarette barely commenced, and a moment afterwards lit another.
By the light of the match his fingers could have been seen to shake
nervously. At last a cab stopped, a porter opened the door, and
Roderick's heart gave a leap of relief and joy as he saw the familiar
girlish figure emerge. He sprang to her side.
“Oh, thank God you have come, dear, thank God!” he whispered.
 “I keep my word,” said Ella, remotely. Roderick gave some
directions to the porters, and turned to her.
“I will show you straight into our carriage. I have reserved one for
ourselves.”
He led the way through the booking offices to the great glass-
covered station, with its blue glare of electric light and babel of
sounds.
“My heroic Ella,” he murmured. She raised her eyes somewhat
appealingly. Then he saw she had been crying; her lashes were still
wet.
“Those tears are the last you shall ever shed,” he whispered,
bending down to her ear. In reply she held out the crumpled ball of
paper which she had kept in her hand. He stood by the platform
gate and read, and looking at the telegram, reflected. The instinct of
the self-indulgent man prompted a reply. A dry-eyed woman, be she
never so beloved, was a pleasanter travelling companion than a
tearful one. He handed her back the telegram with a smile.
“It's the dear elderly lady's exaggeration. Mr. Lanyon is kept to his
room by a slight cold. That is all. I saw Sylvester this afternoon, and
he had only left Ayresford this morning. Make yourself quite easy,
dearest.”
She followed him through the gate, along the platform where the
Harwich train stood waiting.
“You take a great weight off my mind,” she said earnestly. “I have
felt it was wicked and selfish of me to leave him.”
“My poor child,” said Roderick, tenderly.
The guard hurried up and unlocked the door of the reserved
carriage. The porter, who had followed them, stowed Ella's hand-
baggage and wraps in the rack. Ella entered and took her seat, while
Roderick hastened away to see to the registration of her heavy
luggage. Tears of a great relief filled her eyes. However much she
hated Sylvester, she knew that he would not have spoken lightly to
any one of his father's illness; nor would he have left his father's
bedside if anything serious were the matter with the old man.
Roderick's confident report reassured her. She felt almost happy. If
only her head were not aching, and a strange heaviness were lifted
off her heart!
Presently Roderick returned, took the seat opposite, and closed
the door. His face had lost the haggardness that had troubled her
during the past week and wore an aspect of conquering pride. He
had looked thus in the few golden moments when she had cared for
him most. His bright air of confidence gave her strength. Her pulses
quickened a little. He was worthy of her blind trust. The instinct of
the woman to satisfy herself that the plank on which she walks is
the solid earth brought swift apotheosis of the man. She was
humble, little, of no account; he was strong and great, with the
artist's noble grip upon life. And he loved her passionately. She
leaned forward, touched his arm, and with the first smile for many
hours she asked him whether he was content. He vowed his utter
happiness.
“You will never have cause to regret this step to the day of your
death,” he said fervently.
At that moment the face of a man appeared at the window, and
Roderick threw himself back with a stifled exclamation.
“Sylvester!” cried Ella, involuntarily.
Sylvester looked from one to the other in silence.
“I did not expect to see you here, Miss Defries,” he said at last.
Ella drew herself up haughtily. “I am the sole mistress of my
actions,” she said. “What I choose to do is not your concern, Dr.
Lanyon.” For the moment indignation checked natural wonder at his
presence. Sylvester regarded her sternly. His dark face seemed
chiselled out of wood.
“Unfortunately, it is of vital concern to me,” he replied. “But I
apologise a thousand times for interrupting you.” He turned to
Roderick, over whose face a pallor was spreading. “A friend of mine
would like to speak to you for a few moments.”
“I am sorry I am not at his disposal,” returned Roderick, with a
forced laugh.
“You would hardly care to discuss the matter with him here,” said
Sylvester.
Roderick consulted his watch. The spark of hope died out. There
were still ten minutes before the train would start.
“Remember our compact,” said he. “You guaranteed I should be
annoyed no further. This is a breach of faith.”
Ella leaned before the window, obscuring Roderick from the
other's view.
“How dare you intrude in this unwarrantable manner?”
“Miss Defries,” said Sylvester, coldly, “please do not interfere in the
very grave affairs of men.”
She sank back in her corner, cut to the quick by the rebuke, and
quivering with baffled indignation. Sylvester again addressed
Roderick.
“Your presence here with Miss Defries is a breach of faith, and
renders our compact void. Once more, for Miss Defries's sake, I beg
that you will come on to the platform and discuss the matter with
my friend.”
He opened the door. Roderick got out of the carriage and went a
few paces along the platform with Sylvester. A decently dressed man
took off his hat as they approached him.
 “This is a police officer,” said Sylvester, quietly. “He has a warrant
for your arrest. You were wrong in thinking me such a fool as to
trust you. My object in coming here was to make certain that you
had left by this train. If you had not, the police would have been on
your track immediately. If you had been leaving alone, I should have
told the officer you were not here, and you would have gone scot
free, and the matter would have been hushed up. As it is, you have
played me false, prevailed by some devilish lie upon Miss Defries to
elope with you; and, by God! I'll have no pity on you. Mr. Wigram,
this is the gentleman I was speaking of.”
The police officer, on being summoned, drew near, and again
touching his hat stated his errand with due formality and explained
that he had no wish to create any unpleasantness in a public place,
and that if Mr. Usher would walk quietly by his side to the cab rank,
they could drive away unnoticed. A little knot of people saying
farewell to friends by an open carriage door, and one or two hurrying
passengers, eyed Roderick's ghastly face with some curiosity. The
guard of the train bustled up.
“Now, sir, perhaps you had better take your seat.”
“I am prevented, at the last moment, from travelling with you,”
said Roderick, with bitter cynicism.
The guard saluted and passed on. Roderick's eyes followed him
and rested on Ella looking anxiously from the carriage window. He
turned away with a sob.
“Come on, if I must go,” he said hoarsely; “you will pay for this
outrageous blunder, Dr. Lanyon.”
He walked away defiantly with the police officer, and Sylvester
went up to Ella. The guard was just fitting the key in the door to lock
it. Sylvester laid a detaining touch upon his arm.
“The lady is getting out.”
 The door was thrown open. Sylvester took Ella's travelling-bag
from the rack.
“Your companion is not going abroad this evening,” said he,
pausing with the bag on the seat. “And it will be scarcely worth your
while to go to Amsterdam alone.”
The girl's white, questioning face made him relent for a moment.
“Forgive me,” he said more kindly. “But what has happened was
inevitable. I have only saved you from the hands of a scoundrel.”
“How dare you call him that?” she whispered with trembling lips.
He did not reply, but handed the bag and wraps to a porter whom
he summoned, and descending from the carriage stood in readiness
to assist Ella to the platform. She obeyed his sign involuntarily, but
as soon as she stood opposite him, she turned upon him with
flashing anger.
“Now tell me at once what all this means,” she said in a low,
concentrated tone. “I am not a child to have things hidden from me.
I have lived too many hours to-day in darkness. What does it mean?
Why are you here, coming between me and the man I am to marry?
Where has Roderick gone? Tell me. I must know.”
“I should like to spare you the knowledge,—at all events, for the
present.”
He made a motion of his hand to indicate the public place. His
glance fell upon the porter standing expectant with the bag. Giving
the man a shilling, he bade him take the things to a cab and await
him there. Then he turned to Ella.
“Perhaps we might find a more suitable place.” he added. But Ella
stamped her foot impatiently.
“No. Here, at once! What is this mystery? Where has Roderick
gone?”
 The guard's whistle blew, the engine shrieked, there was a flutter
back of loungers from the carriage doors, and the train steamed out
of the station, carrying neither Roderick nor his fortunes, carrying
only, with the grotesque irony that accompanies most of the tragic
issues of life, the registered luggage of Ella and himself.
Sylvester waited until the commotion had subsided. Then he
spoke in his cold, unemotional way,—
“He has been arrested by the police for forgery, at my instance.”
The girl's eye closed for a few tremulous seconds, and reeling she
put her hand to her heart; but she waved Sylvester away when he
came forward to prevent her from falling.
“I am not going to faint—I said so before today—it is a hideous lie
—he is shielding some one else—he told me it was another's secret.
It is some horrible revenge of yours—you always hated him. An
honorable gentleman to do such a thing—it is ridiculous,
inconceivable! It is you that have trapped him.”
The lowered tones in which the girl spoke contrasted strangely
with the shrieking hubbub of the glaring station. Through her veil he
could see her features distorted with anger. He waited until she had
ended her invective.
“He forged my father's name to a cheque for three thousand
pounds,” he said with cutting distinctness. “The shock of discovery
yesterday has brought my father to the point of death.”
Ella swung her head contemptuously.
“You told Roderick yourself to-day that Uncle Matthew had only a
slight cold.”
“The lying devil!” cried Sylvester, with one of his rare blazes of
anger. “Read that.”
He drew a telegram from his pocket, and handed it to her.
 “Mr. Lanyons condition critical. May not live through
night. For God's sake come back at once and bring Miss
Defries with you. Simmons

She returned it without a word, and stood with both hands

pressed closely to her temples, in an awful convulsion of soul.
Roderick's lie blazed before her eyes in letters of fire. It was
blazoned upon the walls of the station. It reddened the pale glare of
the electric light. It was a magnesium flame illuminating the
innermost darkness of the man's heart. Roderick's mystery was a
mystery no longer.
“Let us go,” she said at last faintly.
They walked silently, side by side, to the end of the platform.
There was the same eternal scurrying of eager feet. A train had just
arrived at another platform, and the crowd of passengers were
streaming through the gate on to the open space. Nothing in the
outer world had changed during the past hour. But Ella was filled
with a vague wonder that universal chaos did not prevail around her.
She followed Sylvester in a state of dream, to be aroused to practical
effort by his voice.
“This is your cab. Where would you care to be driven to?”
She collected her faculties. Pride rose in arms against betrayal of
weakness.
“I suppose there is no train to Ayresford to-night?” she asked
steadily.
“Yes. The ten o'clock. A fast train. I am going down by it.”
“You would have no objection to my accompanying you?”
“That my father needs you is enough for me to entreat you to
come.”
“Very well. I shall drive to Waterloo and wait there until the train
starts.”
 “And I in the mean time must do some necessary business.”
He gave the direction to the driver and the cab drove off. He
hailed another and was carried rapidly westward.
When the time came for taking her seat at Waterloo in the
Ayresford train, she mechanically followed a porter to an empty first-
class carriage and sat down in a further corner, broken with trouble.
She was only awakened to a sense of surroundings by the door
being thrown violently open as soon as the train began to move, and
a man whom she recognised as Sylvester leaping into the
compartment. He sat for a moment breathless, then moved up the
seat.
“I did not mean to intrude on you,” he said, when he had
recovered; “but I nearly missed the train, and this was the first
carriage to hand.”
She looked out of the window into the whirling darkness.
“It does not matter,” she murmured.
“Nothing much matters now.”
Sylvester lay back in his corner with an air of utter fatigue, and
closed his eyes. They travelled thus in silence for a long time. To Ella
the world seemed to have come to a disgraceful end. The dying
state of the old man to whom she was hurrying was in keeping with
the general finality of things. She suffered a horrible humiliation too
deep for coherent thought. Gradually, however, the sight of Sylvester
opposite, cold and stern, acted upon her like an irritant. At one
moment she was seized with an hysterical impulse to scream. She
mastered it, fighting with scornful violence. Resentment began to
burn within her, first dull, then increasing in intensity to fierceness.
The flame fed a smouldering horror scarcely as yet realised.
Roderick was in a police cell that night. He would be tried on a
disgraceful charge. The result would be imprisonment. Clearer and
clearer grew the significance of the term. As a woman in touch with
Welcome to our website – the perfect destination for book lovers and
knowledge seekers. We believe that every book holds a new world,
offering opportunities for learning, discovery, and personal growth.
That’s why we are dedicated to bringing you a diverse collection of
books, ranging from classic literature and specialized publications to
self-development guides and children's books.

More than just a book-buying platform, we strive to be a bridge

connecting you with timeless cultural and intellectual values. With an
elegant, user-friendly interface and a smart search system, you can
quickly find the books that best suit your interests. Additionally,
our special promotions and home delivery services help you save time
and fully enjoy the joy of reading.

Join us on a journey of knowledge exploration, passion nurturing, and

personal growth every day!

ebookbell.com