The Upas Tree, Florence Louisa Barclay [the little red hen read aloud .TXT] 📗

already wedded to himself and to his career. He had no whole-hearted devotion to give to you.

"Helen, don't wait for his return. Directly you get this come out here to me. Bring your little son and his nurse. My flat will be absolutely at your disposal. I can sleep elsewhere; and I swear to you I will never stay one moment after you have bid me go. As soon as West has set you legally free, we can marry and travel abroad for a couple of years; then, when the whole thing has blown over, go back to live in the old house so dear to us both.

"Helen, you will have twenty-four hours in which to get away before he returns. But even if you decide to await his return, it will not be too late. His utter self-absorption must give you a final disillusion.

"See if his first words to you are not about his cursed 'cello, rather than about his child and yours.

"If so, treat him with the silent contempt he deserves, and come at once to the man who won you first and to whom you have always belonged; come, where tenderest consideration and the worship of a lifetime await you.

"Yours till death--- and after,

"AUBREY TREHERNE."


CHAPTER IX


THE PINNACLE OF THE TEMPLE

Aubrey's letter fell upon Helen as a crushing, stunning blow.

At first her womanhood reeled beneath it.

"What have I been--what have I done," she cried, "that a man dares to write thus to me?"

Then her wifehood rose up in arms as she thought of Ronnie's gay, boyish trust in her; their happy life together; his joyous love and laughter.

She clenched her hands.

"I could _kill_ Aubrey Treherne!" she said.

Then her motherhood arose; and bowing her proud head, she burst into a passion of tears.

At length she stood up and walked over to the window.

"It will be bad for my little son if I weep," she said, and smiled through her tears.

The trees were leafless, the garden beds empty. The park looked sodden, dank and cheerless. Summer was long dead and over, yet frosts had not begun, bringing suggestions of mistletoe and holly.

But the mists were lifting, fading in white wreaths from off the grass; and, at that moment, the wintry sun, bursting through the November clouds, shone on the diamond panes, illumining the cross and the motto beneath it.

"_In hoc vince!_" murmured Helen. "As I told my own dear boy, the path of clear shining is the way to victory. _In hoc signo vinces!_ I will take this gleam of sunlight as a token of triumph. By the help of God, I will write such an answer to Aubrey as shall lead him to overcome his evil desires, and bring his dark soul out into the light of repentance and confession."

The same post had brought her a short letter from Ronnie, written immediately on his arrival at Leipzig, evidently before receiving hers. It was a disappointment to have nothing more. As Aubrey had got a letter through after hearing the news, Ronnie might have done the same.

But perhaps, face to face with her wonderful tidings, words had altogether failed him. He feared to spoil all he would so soon be able to say, by attempting to write.

To-morrow--the day which should bring him to her--would soon be here.

Meanwhile her reply to Aubrey must be posted to-day, and his letter consigned to the flames.

Feeling unable to go to the nursery with that letter unanswered, she sat down at once and wrote to her cousin.

"I only read your letter, Aubrey, half an hour ago. I am answering it at once, because I cannot enter the presence of my little son, with such a letter as yours still in my possession. As soon as I have answered it I shall burn it.

"I may then be able to rise above the terrible sense of shame which completely overwhelmed me at first, at the thought that any man--above all a man who knew me well--should dare to write me such a letter!

"At first my whole soul cried out in horror: 'What am I? What have I been? What have I done--that such words should be written--such a proposition made--to me?' The sin of it seemed to soil me; the burning wickedness, to brand me. I seemed parted from my husband and my child, and dragged down with you into your abyss of outer darkness.

"Then, into my despair, sacred words were whispered for my comfort. 'He was in all points tempted, like as we are, _yet without sin_,' and, through my shame and tears, I saw a vision of the Holy One, standing serene and kingly on the pinnacle of the temple, where, though the devil dared to whisper the fiendish suggestion: 'Cast Thyself down,' He stood His ground without a tremor--tempted, yet unsoiled.

"So--with this vision of my Lord before me--I take my stand, Aubrey Treherne, upon the very summit of the holy temple of wifehood and motherhood, and I say to you: 'Get thee gone, Satan!' You may have bowed my mind to the very dust in shame over your wicked words, but you cannot cause my womanhood to descend one step from off its throne.

"This being so, poor Aubrey, I feel able to forgive you the other great wrong, and to try to find words in which to prove to you the utter vileness of the sin, and yet to show you also the way out of your abyss of darkness and despair, into the clear shining of repentance, confession, and forgiveness.

"As regards the happenings of the past, between you and me--you state them wrongly. I did not love you, Aubrey, or I would never have sent you away. I could have forgiven anything to an honest man, who had merely failed and fallen.

"But you had lived a double life; you had deceived me all along the line. I had loved the man I thought you were--the man you had led me to believe you were. I did not love the man I found you out to be.

"I could not marry a man I did not love. Therefore, I sent you away. There was no question then of giving you, or not giving you, a chance to prove yourself worthy. I was not concerned just then with what you might eventually prove yourself. I did not love you; therefore, I could not wed you. Though, as a side issue, it is only fair to point out--if you wish to stand upon your possible merits--that this letter, written four years later, confirms my then estimate of your true character.

"Aubrey, I cannot discuss my husband with you; nor can I bring myself to allude to the subject of my relations with him, or his with me.

"To defend him to you would be to degrade him in all honest eyes.

"To enlarge upon my love for him, would be like pouring crystal water into a stagnant polluted pool, in order to prove how pure was the fountain from which that water flowed. Nothing could be gained by such a proceeding. Pouring samples of its purity into the tainted waters of the pool, would neither prove the former, nor cleanse the latter.

"But, in order to free my own mind from the poison of your suggestions and the shame of the fact that they were made to me, I must answer, in the abstract, one statement in your letter. Please understand that I answer it completely in the abstract. You have dared to apply it to my husband and to me. I do not admit that it applies. But, even if it did, I should not let it pass unchallenged. I break a lance with you, Aubrey Treherne, and with all men of your way of thinking, on behalf of every true wife and mother in Christendom!

"You say, that if a man has disappointed his wife, she has a right to leave him; the fact of that disappointment sets her free?

"I say to you, in answer: when a woman loves a man enough to wed him, he becomes to her as her life--her very self.

"I often fail, and fall, and disappoint myself. I do not thereupon immediately feel free to commit suicide. I face my failure, resolve to do better, and take up my life again, as bravely as may be, on higher lines.

"If a woman leaves her husband she commits moral suicide. By virtue of his union with her, he is as her own self. If disappointment and disillusion come to her through him, she must face them as she does when they come through herself. She must be patient, faithful, understanding, tender; helping him, as she would help herself, to start afresh on higher ground; once more, with a holy courage, facing life bravely.

"This is my answer--every true woman's answer--to the subtle suggestions of your letter.

"I admit that often marriages turn out hopeless--impossible; mere prisons of degradation. But that is when the sacred tie is entered into for other than the essential reasons of a perfect love and mutual need; or without due consideration, 'unadvisedly, lightly, wantonly,' notwithstanding the Church's warning. Or when people have found out their mistake in time, yet lacked the required courage to break their engagement, as I broke off mine with you, Aubrey; thus saving you and myself a lifetime of regret and misery.

"Oh, cannot you see that the only real 'outer darkness' is the doing of wrong? Disappointment, loss, loneliness, remorse--all these may be hard to bear, but they can be borne in the light; they do not necessarily belong to the outer darkness.

"May I ask you, as some compensation for the pain your letter has given me, and the terrible effort this answer has cost, to bear with me if, in closing, I quote to you in full the final words of the first chapter of the first epistle of St. John? I do so with my heart full of hope and prayer for you--yes, even for you, Aubrey. Because, though _my_ words will probably fail to influence you, God has promised that _His_ Word shall never return unto Him void.

"'If we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin.... If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.'

"Oh, Aubrey, act on this! It is true.

"Your cousin, who still hopes better things of you, and who will not fail in thought and prayer,

"HELEN WEST."



Part III

CHAPTER X


RONNIE ARRIVES IN A FOG

Ronnie reached Liverpool Street Station at 8 o'clock on a foggy November morning.

After the quiet night on the steamer, the landing in darkness at Harwich, and the steady run up to town, alone in a first-class compartment, he felt momentarily confused by the noise and movement within the great city terminus.

The brilliant lights of the station, combined with the yellow fog rolling in from the various entrances; the onward rush of many feet, as hundreds of busy men and eager young women poured out of suburban trains, hurrying to the scenes which called for their energy during the whole of the coming day; the gliding in and out of trains, the passing to and fro of porters, wheeling