§ 30

As soon as her father had gone, she set out for Conster. She went by the road, for the field way ran near Starvecrow, and she had not the courage to go by Starvecrow.

She did not get to Conster till nearly eleven, and as she walked up the drive she asked herself what she would do if Gervase was out. She would have to wait, that was all. She must see him—he was the only person on earth who could help her.

However, he was not out. Wills let her in very solemnly. He did not attach any importance to the gossip in the servants’ hall—but ... she looked ill enough, anyway, poor creature.

“Yes, Miss, Sir Gervase is in. I will tell him you’re here.”

Stella started a little—Sir Gervase! She had asked for Mr. Gervase. She had forgotten. In her absorption in the main stream of the tragedy she had ignored its side issues, but now she began to realise the tempests that must be raging in Gervase’s life. Would he have to leave his community, she wondered—after all, he could easily come out, and great responsibilities awaited him. The next minute she gave another start—as she caught her first sight of Brother Joseph.

He seemed very far away from her as he shut the door behind him. Between them lay all the chairs and tables, rugs and plants of the huge, overcrowded drawing-room. For the first time she became aware of a portrait of Peter on the wall—a portrait of him as a child, with masses of curly hair and wide-open, pale blue eyes. She stared at it silently as Gervase came towards her across the room.

“Stella, my dear.”

He took both her hands in his firm, kind clasp, and looked into her eyes. His own seemed larger than usual, for his hair was cut very close, almost shorn. That, and his rough grey cassock buttoned collarless to his chin, altered his appearance completely. Except for his touch and voice, he seemed almost a stranger.

“Gervase....” she sank into a chair—“Help me, Gervase.”

“Of course I will. Did you get my note?”

“Yes—but, oh, Gervase....”

She could say no more. Her breath seemed gone. She held her handkerchief to her mouth, and trembled.

“I should have written more—but I’ve had such a time, Stella, with my family and the lawyers. Perhaps you can understand what a business it all is when I tell you that I’ve no intention of coming out of the Order, which means I’ve got to make up my mind what to do with this place. I’ve been at it hard all yesterday afternoon and this morning with my father’s London solicitors, but I’ve managed to keep the family quiet till after the funeral, by which time I shall have the details settled. Otherwise I should have come to see you.... But I knew you were safe.”

“Gervase, I’m not safe.”

“My dear——”

He held out his hand and she took it.

“I’m not safe, Gervase. You think I’m stronger than I am. And you don’t know what’s happened.”

“I know all about Peter.”

“Yes, but you don’t know the details. You don’t know that Peter killed himself because I insisted, in spite of all his entreaties, on going away. He told me that my presence was the only comfort he had left, but I wouldn’t stay, because if I stayed I knew that I should be tempted, and I was afraid.... I thought it was my duty to run away from temptation. So I ran. I never thought that perhaps Peter couldn’t live without me—that I was saving my soul at the expense of his. I wish now that I’d stayed—even if it had meant everything.... I’d far rather sin through loving too much than through loving too little.”

“So would I. But have you loved too little?”

“Yes—because I thought of myself first. I thought only of saving my own soul ... and I thought I could forget Peter if only I didn’t ever see him again, and I thought he could forget me. But he couldn’t—and I can’t.”

“In other words, you did right and behaved very sensibly, but the results were not what you expected.”

“Gervase—if you tell me again that I’ve been ‘right’ and ‘sensible,’ I—oh, I’ll get up and go, because you’re being just like everyone else. Father says I’ve been ‘right’ and ‘sensible’—and I know Father Luce would say it—and the Coroner will say it this afternoon. And it’ll be true—true—true! I have been right and sensible, and my right has put Peter in the wrong, and my sense has driven him mad.”

“And what would your ‘wrong’ have done for Peter?”

“He’d still be alive.”

“With your guilt upon him as well as his own. Stella, my dear, listen to me. When I talk about your being ‘right’ I don’t mean what most people would mean by right. If it’s any comfort to you, I think that most people who have intelligence and are not merely conventional would think you had done wrong. You loved Peter and yet refused to have him, with the result that his life is over and yours is emptied. I know, and you know, that you did this because of an allegiance you owed beyond Peter. But most people wouldn’t see that. They’d think you had refused him because you were afraid, because you dared not risk all for love. They’d never see that all the daring, all the risk, lay in your refusing him. Now be candid—isn’t part of your unhappiness due to your feeling that it would have been braver and more splendid to have done what Peter wanted, and let everything else go hang?”

“Yes,” said Stella faintly.

“Well, I’ll tell you what I think would have happened—if you’d stayed—stayed under the only conditions that would have satisfied Peter. Vera would have, of course, found out—she has found out already a great deal more than has happened; she’s not the sort of woman who endures these things; she would have divorced Peter, and he would have married you. Nowadays these scandals are very easily lived down, and you’d have been Lady Alard. After a time the past would have been wiped out—for the neighbourhood and for you. You would probably have become extremely respectable and a little censorious. You would have gone to Leasan church on Sundays at eleven. You would have forgotten that you ever weren’t respectable—and you would have forgotten that you ever used to live close to heaven and earth in the Sacraments, that you ever were your Father’s child.... In other words, Stella, you would be in Hell.”

Stella did not speak. She stared at him almost uncomprehendingly.

“I know what you think, my dear—you think you would have undergone agonies of regret, and you tell yourself you should have borne them for Peter’s sake. But I don’t think that. I think you would have been perfectly happy. Remember, you would have been living on a natural level, and though we’re made so that the supernatural in us may regret the natural, I doubt if the natural in us so easily regrets the supernatural. Your tragedy would have been that you would have regretted nothing. You would have been perfectly happy, contented, comfortable, respectable, and damned.”

“But Peter—he——”

“Would probably have been the same. He isn’t likely to have turned to good things after seeing how lightly they weighed with you. But the point is that you haven’t the charge of Peter’s soul—only the charge of your own—‘Man cannot deliver his brother from death or enter into agreement with God for him.’ It cost very much more to redeem their souls than you could ever pay.”

“But, Gervase, isn’t Peter’s soul lost through what he did—through what I drove him to——”

“My dear, how do we know what Peter did? What do we really know about his death? Can’t you take comfort in the thought that perfect knowledge belongs only to Perfect Love? As for your own share—your refusal to love your love for him unto the death, your refusal to make it the occasion for treachery to a greater love—that refusal may now be standing between Peter’s soul and judgment. You did your best for him by acting so—far better than if you had put him in the wrong by making his love for you—probably the best thing in his life—an occasion for sin. He takes your love out of the world unspoilt by sin. Your love is with him now, pleading for him, striving for him, because it is part of a much greater Love, which holds him infinitely dearer than even you can hold him. Stella, don’t you believe this?”

She was crying now, but he heard her whisper “Yes.”

“Then don’t go regretting the past, and thinking you would have saved a man by betraying God.”

“I’ll try not....”

“And suppose as the result of your refusing to stay, Peter had turned back to Vera, and been happy in his wife and child again, you wouldn’t have regretted your action or thought you’d done wrong. Well, the rightness of your choice isn’t any less because it didn’t turn out the way you hoped.”

“I know—I know—but ... I was so cold and calculating—one reason I wanted to go away was that though I couldn’t have Peter I didn’t want to go without love ... for ever....”

“I scarcely call that ‘cold and calculating.’ I hope you will love again, Stella, and not waste your life over has-beens and might-have-beens. It’s merely putting Peter further in the wrong if you spoil your life for his sake.”

“You think I ought to get married?”

“I certainly do. I think you ought to have married years ago, and Peter was to blame for holding that up and damming your life out of its proper course. He kept you from marrying the right man—for Peter wasn’t the right man for you, Stella, though probably you loved him more than ever you will love the right man when he comes. But I hope he will come soon, my dear, and find you—for you’ll never be really happy till he does.”

“I know, Gervase, I know—oh, do help me to be sensible again, for I feel that after what’s happened, I couldn’t ever.”

“My dear, you don’t really want help from me.”

“I do. Oh, Gervase ... I wish I weren’t going to Canada—I don’t feel now as if I could possibly go away from you. You’re the only person that can help me.”

“You know I’m not the only one.”

“You are. You’re the only one that understands ... and we’ve always been such friends.... I feel I don’t want to go away from you—even if you’re still at Thunders....”

She spoke at random, urged by some helpless importunity of her heart. He coloured, but answered her quite steadily.

“I shall never leave Thunders, my dear. It’s too late for that now. I shall always be there to help you if you want me. But I don’t think you really want me—I think you will be able to go through this alone.”

“Alone....”

A few tears slid over her lashes. It seemed as if already she had gone through too much alone.

“Yes, for you want to go through it the best way—the way Love Himself went through it—alone. Think of Him, Stella—in the garden, on the cross, in the grave—alone. ‘I am he that treadeth the wine-press-alone.’”

“But, Gervase, I can’t—I’m not strong enough. Oh ... oh, my dear, don’t misunderstand me—but you say you owe your faith to me ... can’t the faith I gave you help me now that I’ve lost mine?”

“You haven’t lost it—it’s only hidden for a time behind the Altar ... you must go and look for it there. If you look for it in me you may never find it.”

She rose slowly to her feet.

“I see,” she said, as a blind man might say it.

He, too, rose, and held out his hand to her.

“You’ll know where I am—where I’ll always be—my life given to help you, Stella, your brother, your priest. I will be helping you with my thoughts, my prayers, my offices—with my Masses some day, because, but for you I should never say them. In that way I shall pay back all you’ve given me. But to the human ‘me’ you’ve given nothing, so don’t ask anything back. If I gave you anything in that way I might also take—take what I must not, Stella. So goodbye.”

She put her hand into his outstretched one.

“Goodbye, Gervase.”

“Goodbye.”

She wondered if he would give her another of those free kisses which had shown her so much when first he went away. But he did not. They walked silently to the door, and in the silence both of that moment and her long walk home she saw that he had paid his debt to her in the only possible way—by refusing to part with anything that she had given him.