"We can make no triumph," she answered. "I have ruined your life, murdered your spirit, crushed out the best in you."
"It was a dream," he cried passionately. "Let it go the way of all dreams."
She shook her head.
"We must part to-morrow," she said, "and to-morrow will be the day of your re-birth."
"You stab me with your words," he said, as he passed, with head bowed, to the door.
"And you stab me with your dreams," she replied.
"We are both very unhappy," he said, as he paused on the threshold.
"Yes," she said, "very unhappy."
And she closed her door.
He stood alone on the landing. There was not a sound to be heard within the house or without. It was a still September night, so that even the branches of the trees were not moved in music. The harvest moon shone in coldly. The world seemed lonely to that lonely man.
"What a failure I have made of everything," he said to himself – "even of my silence."
He longed for some kind word, for some arresting glance of sympathy; but life could yield nothing to him in his moment of need. He thought of his boy whom he loved with all his heart, and he remembered only that he had deliberately made the lad suffer. He forgot all the years of intimate companionship which they two had enjoyed together, all the secret understanding so precious to both of them. These memories, which might have comforted him, and eloquently too, were silent; and because he was gentle and generous-hearted, he had to pay the uttermost price for the emotions which were the finest in his nature. He remembered only that he had wounded Marianne, hurt her to the quick, and that if he got his liberty – after fifteen years of bondage – he would be even as a released prisoner to whom the sweets of freedom had become distasteful.
He went mechanically down the stairs, let himself out of the hall-door, and stole round to the stables. Bully, the bull-terrier, knew his master's footstep, and, as a welcome, beat his tail against his kennel. Jinny, the brown mare, was asleep at the time; but she woke up and neighed softly when she heard her master's voice, and was eager enough to be saddled for a midnight ride. It was not the first time that she had been called upon to sacrifice her own slumbers to his restlessness. Many a time she and he had ridden out into the darkness and the tempest and the moonlight of the night.
When he came back again, it was nearly five o'clock. Worn out in body and spirit, he flung himself on his bed, fell asleep, and only awoke to the sound of some commotion in the house, and cries of "Father, father." He sprang up, opened the door, and found Alan outside.
"Father," he cried. "Mother – "
Clifford Thornton saw the look of alarm on his boy's face, and rushed to Marianne's room. The door stood open. Marianne was leaning back in the arm-chair – dead.
CHAPTER III
There was, of course, an inquest, and then poor Marianne Thornton was laid to rest in the little Surrey churchyard five miles from "Falun." The verdict was death from sudden failure of the heart's action, due probably to some shock, the exact nature of which was unknown.
"She must have had some shock, some great fright," Dr Aldborough deposed. "The expression on her face was that of excessive alarm. It may have been a dream – I have met with three such curious instances in my experience. Moreover, it was known to us all that Mrs Thornton was suffering from valvular disease of the heart. She had only lately been consulting a new heart-specialist."
"It was a dream," Clifford Thornton stated, "and she called to me, and I found her with that same expression of alarm on her face, and I tried to calm her and failed. And feeling heavy of heart, I saddled my horse and went riding."
"And the nature of the dream?" he was asked.
He shook his head.
"I do not know," he said. "I only know it was a dream."
He had made up his mind to keep that secret, chiefly for Alan's sake. He felt that he had already injured the boy, and no word of his should now add to the heavy burden of hastened knowledge.
"If I began to speak of it," he said to himself, "I should go on to tell him that I had killed her – and in time he would believe it – even as I do."
That was the torturing thought which at once began to assail him, although he fought it with all the weapons of reason and common-sense. He fought it even at the side of the grave, his impenetrable face showing no sign of the mental torture which he was enduring unhelped by any one. But when they came back to "Falun" after the funeral, he put his hands on Alan's shoulders and said sorrowfully:
"Alan, I would give my right hand, and the sight of my eyes, and the strength of my brain, if only I could unsay what I said to you the other day about your mother."
"Oh, father," the boy answered, in a paroxysm of grief, "perhaps we did not love her enough."
He broke off there, and they did not speak together further, both being of painfully reserved natures; but each wrung the other's hand silently, in token of closer friendship, and throughout that sad day they did not leave each other's side. The doctor called in during the afternoon, and found them in the study sitting close together and trying to interest themselves in a new book on architecture, which was Alan's beloved subject, and for which he had undoubted talent. They looked so desolate and pathetic that Dr Aldborough, who had always been attracted to this reserved man and his son, was concerned for their welfare. He offered no un-timely word of comfort or cheer, but he said to them:
"Come out with me. It is a splendid afternoon. I have to drive over to Midhurst, and the air will do you both good. You will sleep better. And Alan shall handle the greys, whilst we smoke."
The boy brightened up at once.
"Let us go, father," he said, a little eagerly.
"You go," his father answered. "I think I shall stay here."
"Then I shall stay," Alan said. "I couldn't be without you."
"In that case we will both go," Professor Thornton answered, smiling; and so they went off, thankful really for the break in that long day.
When they came back that evening, they were a little more cheerful in spite of themselves, and Alan went to bed and slept, and Clifford wrote to his old Danish governess, Miss Knudsgaard, telling her of his wife's sudden death, and asking her to come over. Then he sat thinking of his dead wife and of all the circumstances of their married life. He recalled to himself how bitterness of spirit and tenderness of intention had been ever at war within him. He had no sooner recovered from an attack of bitterness, than he was assailed by prolonged paroxysms of self-reproach, which tore him to shreds even more ruthlessly than his feelings of self-commiseration. He recalled all the petty strain and stress of trifling tragedies which had been steadily impairing his mental serenity. He hardened himself when he thought of that.
"This tragedy has happened," he said, "and through no fault of mine. I must not let it spoil the rest of my life. I am forty-three. What cannot a man still do and be at forty-three? I will battle with it until I conquer it. It shall not crush me. No, it shall not."
He rose from his chair with a grim determination in his manner.
"Do you hear what I say?" he said, as though to a vast audience. "It shall not crush me."
Then his eyes lighted on a box of his wife's letters and papers which had been found in her room. He opened the box and took out some of the papers. A few of them were receipted accounts. Several of them were letters evidently written on that last night, gummed down, and stamped ready for the post. One was to her intimate friend, Julia Stanhope, with whom she had been touring in Scotland: a woman whom he had always disliked, and who, so he thought, had always encouraged poor Marianne's displays of uncontrolled anger. He put the letters into the post-box. And here apparently was her journal. He did not know that she had kept