Chapter XVI. 'Wholly a Dark Labyrinth.'

It was the day before that appointed for the wedding, and Philiberta was alone in her chamber assorting her belongings, touching all her small treasures reverentially, as with the touch of farewell.

'For Philiberta Campbell dies to-morrow,' she said, half laughing to herself at the weird conceit. 'And Philiberta—no, Berta—he will never call me anything but Berta—Berta Paget will be the new phœnix rising from the old one's ashes. Let me look at you in the glass, old identity, so that presently I may compare you with the new, and observe the difference matrimony makes. Well, I never admired you much—in an artistic sense, you know—partial though I have been to you as an individual, but I really think you are a better-looking girl than you used to be; your face seems rounder, your mouth less firm, that determined under-jaw less prominent and assertive, and your eyes, of which he says he does not even yet know the true colour, are softer; they have lost a good deal of that keen, hard look that I always objected to. If you continue to improve under the new influence as you have during the last fortnight, I shouldn't wonder if you were to become at last actually good-looking. I wonder how you will look when you are dead—you will be whiter, that is certain, and pallor becomes you. Brown women look too robust always. Brown men I like naturally. My king is a brown man, bronze as Launcelot, whom two women loved too dearly. I wonder how he will look when he is dead? Such a length page 114as he would be, so still, so handsome. Oh love, my love, that I may go first! That I may go first! I could do so much—suffer so much—for you, but not that. I could not suffer to be left behind—

With the odour of death cast over my soul,
Like the odour of flowers that are dead;
No, love, I will guide Death's hand o'er his scroll,
And his list with my name shall be led.'

(The lines were her own, but she would not for the world have had anybody know that.)

Shimmer and shadow, concord and discord, mirth and melancholy, were always so nearly allied in this many-mooded temperament that you never could be certain which aspect would be the next in ascendant.

Presently in her packing and repacking she came upon a queer-shaped object swathed in flannel at the bottom of a trunk. It was her fiddle.

With all the fearlessness and unconventionality of her nature, she was a little ashamed of this musical accomplishment of hers. She had gotten a notion that it was unladylike, unfeminine. When, upon first entering the ladies' seminary in Melbourne, she had announced her desire and intention of taking lessons in violin-playing, the gentle principal of that establishment had nearly fallen off her chair in shocked surprise. If Philiberta had proposed a friendly cigar (though why smoking should be considered so much a matter of sex, too, is more than I can understand), the effect could not have been more startling. This, and the subsequent discovery when she had commenced lessons that she was her violin tutor's sole feminine pupil, rather frightened her, and made her very chary of acknowledging her propensity to strangers. She loved the thing too well to give it up, but she took her pleasure furtively, practised in solitude, and kept the fiddle locked up. Hence it came about that even Mrs. Retlaw, who would have delighted in it, knew nothing at all about it.

'Shall I tell Edgar to-day, or leave it till afterwards?' the girl asked herself now, as she unwrapped her treasure stealthily page 115and fondled it as an old friend. 'Is it right for a woman to marry a man with even the merest shadow of a secret kept from him?'

Just then her name was called, and quick as thought she bandaged up the fiddle again.

'I'll leave it until afterwards,' she said, thrusting it into the box. 'I can find out by degrees whether he likes it or not. If he does, it will be a pleasant surprise; if he does not, I can throw it away and forget it.'

Again she was called.

'Yes, I am here,' she answered, her heart thrilling as it always did and always would at the sound of that voice.

'Then come hither. I want you to go out with me.'

'I will be down in five minutes,' she said, and hastily donned her cloak and hat.

The morning of the day had been showery; the afternoon was bright and clear. The streets were ankle-deep in muddy batter; the hillsides were slippery and slimy; the hilltops almost dry.

'I don't think there will be much pleasure in walking to-day,' said Philiberta, when she had waded some distance with her lover through the mud.

'No matter,' said Paget. 'I wanted you, love, all to myself; and I can't get five minutes alone with you indoors. One or other of those fellows who are in love with you is always coming in and interrupting.'

He was unreasonably jealous; very unreasonably, since he knew in his heart that no other man than himself would ever cost her a thought. But he could not bear that other men should talk to her or look at her; and this weakness of his was the one bitter drop in Philiberta's cup of gladness, because she could bear no flaw in her idol. She wanted the same whole souled perfect faith and love from him that she rendered unto him, that is, she had a vague feeling that she wanted that; the only really definable sense she experienced about it was misery when he looked offended. Only the evening previously he had looked so, and the thought of it had made page 116her eyes fill and her heart ache for hours after. Surely there is something tragic in a love like hers, when a mere look has power to make or mar its all of sunshine. Now when he spoke of those 'fellows who were in love with her,' the joy of her face died out in a look of sorrowful humility. That 'the king could do no wrong' was her steadfast creed as yet, so the fault, if fault there were, must be hers—all hers.

Along Princes and George streets they tramped and splashed; then up the winding line of the Water of Leith till they reached the fork, then following the streamlet that leads to the reservoir, until at last they had climbed to the very summit of the steep incline, and stood looking out over forests of brilliant glistening green.

'Just see how bedraggled I am!' cried Philiberta, viewing her boots and skirts with disgust, 'and I can't keep my hat on for the wind.'

'Take it off, then,' said Paget, doing so for her, and laughing at her dismay as the breeze caught her hair and tossed it into a wild, hopeless tangle. 'No, you shall not have it,' and he held it up at arm's length, while she reached towards it, standing on tip-toe and steadying herself by his coat collar. Then suddenly he lifted her almost as high as he had held the hat, and ran with her in his arms a few yards along the top of the hill.

'I did not know you were bringing me up here to ill-use me,' she gasped breathlessly. 'You have jolted me to death almost.'

'Did I hurt you, Berta? What a rough brute I am! Come here, love, to this dry rock, and let us sit down. No, no; the rock for me; you will sit in my arms, so.'

'But it is not proper—out of doors. What if anyone should go by?'

'But no one will. Nobody would come up here on such a day as this.'

'Except two stupids like us.'

'I brought you here that I might hold you in my arms and kiss you. I hardly ever get a chance indoors. There I have page 117to sit and watch you talking to some one else by the hour, while I am just mad to have you in my arms.'

'You are so unreasonable—so insatiable. But I suppose a little time will serve to alter all that. It will be as Mrs. Retlaw says—though I told her it was a sin to make a jest of anything of Carlyle's—first here will be the everlasting Yea, which in this distorted rendering means the honey season; then the everlasting No—when quarrels begin and continue; finally the Centre of Indifference—when you will not care enough even to quarrel.'

'The Centre of Indifference!' said Paget, looking in her face earnestly. 'I might quarrel with you, Berta; ill-use you; love you—hate you; but I could never be indifferent to you.'

In all the after-years she remembered those words.

'If we do not start homeward now, we shall be in the dark,' she said presently, releasing herself from his arms, but leaning towards him that he might kiss her again.

He drew her arm through his, and they commenced the descent. Before they were far advanced, the sound of voices reached them from below.

'There!' said Philiberta, 'I thought you said no one would venture up here to-day.'

Even as she spoke, two men rounded the sharp bend in the road before them, and the four were face to face.

'Paget, by Jove!' exclaimed one, springing forward with extended hand. 'My dear old fellow, what on earth are you doing here?'

'Oh—I—what on earth are you doing here? is a more likely question,' Paget said, in a voice so curious that Philiberta turned to look and saw that his face had turned livid.

'When did you come? Where are you stopping? When are you going back?' questioned the new-comers rapidly.

'I haven't—quite—made up my mind.'

Paget's words came slowly, as if their utterance cost him an effort.

'It's awfully lucky I've run across you like this, for I was commissioned to hunt you up and giye you this letter. Where page 118the dickens is it? Oh! ah! There it is! It is from your wife. I was up your way the week before I left, and so dropped in at Yoanderruk to see you; but you were over here.'

That was all Philiberta heard. There was more said—much more: there were introductions, and jests, and laughter. But for her!—a long night had already fallen; life was become 'wholly a dark labyrinth;' her 'loadstars were blotted out—in the canopy of grim fire shone no star.'

She did not faint, or fall, or even cry out. A friendly grey rock lent her aid in the first moment of blindness; and then she stood up bravely enough.

Presently they were alone again, and he gazed into the mute misery of her soul through her eyes.

'It makes no difference,' he said at last, his deep voice husky and harsh. 'It makes no difference. You are mine. You are still mine.'

She did not answer. It was always so with her, that she had no power of words when dire pain or sorrow was upon her. She only moaned a little.

'Don't do that!' he exclaimed, silencing her roughly. 'I cannot bear it, Now, look you, Berta; you have my fate in your hands. You can raise me into heaven or cast me out into hell, just as you will. Remember, I tried to save us from this—I tried to go. You remember the night I came back to you?'

Something like relief came to her for a moment. She had held him back that night. The blame was hers then—thank God!

'I came back, and the temptation was too much for me. I stayed, and felt like a villain then and often afterwards. But I have got over that. I care not one jot for anything in heaven or earth beyond the happiness you have put into my life. And Berta—oh, my love, my dear love! say that you care for nothing beyond that, too.'

He made as if he would fling himself before her, and then she gave a little frightened cry and hurried past him. He overtook her at once, and they went on down the hill. But her steps were so uncertain—the sky seemed so dark above page 119her—the earth so strange beneath her feet—that she was fain to let him help her He put his arm about her waist; once he stooped to kiss her, but she put him away with a glance and gesture he felt powerless against Then he pleaded as surely never a man pleaded before; and then he said that there had been a curse put upon his life with that marriage she had heard of; a curse that she would never know, because, scoundrel though he was, he would never be mean enough to tell her it was in her power to lift the ban from off him, and once in another country together the past could be as if it had never been. In perfect happiness great trouble could be easily forgotten.

And all the answer he heard was that piteous moan, like the sound wrung from a brave heart in the extremity of pain, and it nearly maddened him.

And so they reached the town, where lights were beginning to appear, and a soft, drizzling mist was falling over everything like a grey pall.

'We are near home now' said he, with a cheerfulness assumed in desperation. 'You will soon be in the light and warmth again, Berta, This mist chills one's very blood. My poor little girl, I ought not to have kept you out in it I ought to have hastened you off the hilltop earlier. My God, if I only had! Mind you, Berta, I am not repentant. Only one thing I regret, and that is that you have found me out, Another week, and we should have been away, and you would never have known. It isn't the fact that has made this difference; it is the revelation of it But even now it is not beyond forgetting, and we WILL forget it You will not tell them indoors?"

'Oh no,' she said quickly.

'That is right. Now look at me once, my treasure. Let me kiss you once, my own love. You are mine; I feel quite sure of you, dearest, but I should like to feel my safety from your lips. Kiss me once.'

She suffered the caress; nay, even clung to him a moment, her breath coming hard and fast, every breath a pain; then he opened the door, and she passed in and away from him.

He went to his room, and half an hour later the dinner-bell page 120rang, and he went downstairs to the dining-room. Mr. and Mrs. Retlaw and young Heatherwood were there, but not Philiberta. After waiting patiently a few minutes, Mrs. Retlaw sent William to remind Miss Campbell.

William returned, saying that he had rapped thrice at Miss Campbell's door without receiving any answer.

'She has probably fallen asleep, poor child, after the fatigue and cold and mist,' said Mrs. Retlaw reproachfully to Paget. 'I wonder if you men will ever learn to be less selfish!"

But seeing that his face had grown suddenly haggard and full of pain, she hurried upstairs herself to Berta's room.

And found it empty.