Now Miles was at the end of the pew, next the wall, and in shadow. Alice noticed nothing in his expression, and went on singing without pause or break. But either her face, as she raised it, came in direct line with the skirt of some saint, in the window above Miles, and the sun, or else the sun chose that moment for a farewell gleam; in any case, the girl's pale face was instantly flooded with a rich, warm, crimson glow. Miles looked down, and this warm glow caught in his heart like a tongue of live flame.
The hymn was over; they sank down side by side: she to listen to the sermon, no matter its calibre—he to his thoughts, no matter their madness.
What were his thoughts? Not reflections now. Not hesitancy, his new unaccountable failing; not nervous doubt, his new humiliating enemy. No, his thoughts were of the old kind, but worse. He was contemplating a crime. He was contemplating the worst crime of his whole career. The plain English of his thoughts was this:
"I believe that she likes me. I see that she is, in the catch phrase, 'pining.' I am told that it is for me. Very good. If that is the case she will believe what I tell her, and do what I ask her. I have some power of persuasion. I am not without invention. I shall represent to her all kinds of reasons for precipitancy and secrecy—temporary secrecy. In a word, she shall fly with me! Well, that is bad enough; but there my badness ends. I will live without crime for her sake; I will retrieve what I can of the past. Henceforth my life is of her, with her—above all, it is for her. She need never know how I have wronged her, therefore she will not be wronged."
He looked at the face beside him; it was white as alabaster. Alice was straining her eyes towards some object that filled them with sadness and sympathy. He followed the direction of her gaze; and he saw an old, old man—a man who would soon come to church for the last time, and remain outside the walls, under the grass—who was gazing with pathetic wistfulness at the preacher, and, with wrinkled hand raised to the ear, making the most and the best of every well-worn epithet and perfunctory stock phrase. That was all. Miles brought back his glance to the white profile at his side, and found it changed in this instant of time: the long eyelashes were studded with crystal tears!
How sad she looked—how thin and ill! Would she look like this afterwards? Would tears often fill her eyes in the time to come?
Miles shut his eyes, and again exerted might and main to blot out thought. But he could not do it; and half his confidence was gone at the moment when he most needed it all. He knew it, and shuddered. A thought that had haunted him of late crossed his mind for the hundredth time: he was an altered man not only in pretence but in reality; his nerve and coolness had deserted him!
The sermon was over, and the congregation awake. Miles stood up with the rest, and took between thumb and finger his side of the little hymn book held out to him. He heartily wished it all over. In his present unfortunate state of mind another hymn was another ordeaclass="underline" her voice, when she sang, put such weak thoughts into his head. Was he not a fool and a madman to think at all of a woman who unmanned him so? Nay, hush! The hymn was begun. She was singing it with her whole heart, the little head thrown backward, the little white face turned upward. She was singing; he could hear nothing else. She was singing; would she sing afterwards? She was singing from the depths of her tired soul. Would she ever sing like this again? Would he ever hear her voice again. Hush! This might be the last time!
Colonel Bristo was back on the steps, gazing under his thin, hollowed hand up the road. He looked anxious, and indignant, and determined—but old and careworn.
"What a time they are!" said Dick, pointing to the crest of the second hill, where the brown road met the silver sky. Next moment he would have recalled his words, for two figures, not three, stood out black against the sky. They were only in sight for an instant, but during that instant they were hand in hand!
The two men on the steps waited without a word for many minutes. Neither could bring himself to speak—perhaps each hoped that the other had not seen everything. Besides, one was the father of the girl, and the other—her jilted lover. More than once the father shivered, and his fingers twitched the whole time. Simultaneously they both started in surprise; for all at once Alice appeared over the brow of the nearest hill, coming swiftly towards them—alone.
"Thank God!" murmured the Colonel, forgetting Dick's presence. "He has asked her to marry him, and she has refused. The villain!"
"Then, if you are right," cried Dick with sudden intensity, "a million times blacker villain he."
"What do you mean?"
"Mean? I mean—but there is no need to tell you now."
"You may as well tell me everything."
"Then I mean that he is married already."
XXVI
AT BAY
"Where is Mrs. Parish?" demanded Colonel Bristo, the moment his daughter reached the gate. In spite of a gallant effort to be calm before Alice, his voice quivered.
"The walk was too much for her." The girl's face was flushed, and her tones faint. "She said she couldn't walk back were it ever so. She spoke to Mrs. Commyns—who was called here, you know—and went to the Rectory. She wants us to send the pony-trap if——"
"Where is Mr. Miles?" Alice's father interrupted her.
"He is following."
She passed quickly by them into the house. Her face was full of trouble. Traces of tears were visible under her eyes. They heard her hurrying upstairs. Neither of them spoke a word. Dick had his back turned; he was watching the road.
The figure of Miles appeared on the nearest knoll. He walked slowly down the bank, his head bent, his eyes fixed upon the ground. Dick turned to Colonel Bristo.
"You had better leave me to speak to him," he said. "I will settle with him on the spot."
"It ought to come from me," said the Colonel doubtfully; "and yet——"
The old man paused. Dick looked at him with some anxiety.
"You had really better leave him to me, sir," he repeated. "I am sorry to say I am used to treating with him. There had better be no third party to our last parley. And the fewer words the better, on Alice's account; she need know nothing. Besides, I know your intentions——"
"Yes, yes; that for my part I will take no steps, not even to get back my money; that he may go to-day instead of to-morrow, and leave the country—we will not stop him. Of course, he will be only too glad to get off! Dick, I care nothing about the paltry pounds he has got out of me; he is welcome to them; I do not grudge him them, because of the service he did me—yet if I saw him now, I feel that I should forget to count that service. And you are right about Alice. Speak quietly, and get rid of him quickly. I will not see him unless I am obliged; at least, I will first hear from the dining-room what he has to say to you."
A moment later the Colonel was at his post in the dining-room. His retreat from the steps, which was really characteristic of the man, is open to misconstruction. He feared nothing worse than an unpleasantness—a disagreeable scene; and he avoided unpleasantnesses and disagreeables systematically through life. That was the man's weakness. Now if Dick had led him to suppose that Miles would do anything but take his congé philosophically and go, the Colonel would have filled the breach bristling with war. But from Dick's account of his previous relations with the impostor, he expected that Miles would be sent to the right-about with ease, and Colonel Bristo shrank from doing this personally.
The dining-room windows were wide open, but the brown holland blinds were drawn. Colonel Bristo did not raise them. He sat down to listen without looking. Almost immediately he heard a sharp click from the latch of the wicket-gate; then a louder click accompanied by a thud of timbers. Whoever had opened the gate had passed through and swung it to. The next sound that Colonel Bristo heard was the quiet, business-like voice of young Edmonstone: