“It is for that I wished to tell you,” went on Rainham faintly, “that she might know some day, that there might be just one person who could give her the truth in its season. Yes! I wanted her to be always in ignorance of what she had made of her life, of the kind of man she has married. She was such a child; it seemed too pitiful. It was for that I did it, damned myself in her eyes, to give her a little longer—a sort of respite. Very likely I made a mistake! Those things can’t be concealed for ever, and the longer the illusion lasts, the more bitter the awakening. Only if it might serve her later, in her darkest hour, as a sort of after-thought, it won’t have been quite vain. That is how I see it now: I want her to know immensely—to know that she has always been unspeakably dear to me. Ah, don’t mistake me! It’s not for myself, it’s not yet; I shall have done with life, done with love, by that time. When one is as tired as I am, death seems very good; only it hasn’t those things. Nothing can make any difference to me; I am thinking of her, that some day or other it will be for her benefit to understand, to remember——”
“To remember?”
“Yes, to remember,” repeated Rainham quietly, “that her unhappiness has its compensation; if she has been bitterly wronged, she has also been fervently loved.”
The other said nothing for a long time, simply considered the situation which Rainham’s words, and still more even than anything that he had said, the things that he had not said, had strikingly revealed to him, leaving him, at the last, in a state of mingled emotions over which, perhaps, awe predominated.
At last he remarked abruptly:
“It is you who are fortunate; you are so nearly done with it all; you’ve such a long rest before you.” Then he added with a new solemnity: “You may trust me, Rainham. When it is seasonable, Mrs. Lightmark shall know the truth. Perhaps she will come to me for it— Heaven knows!—stranger things have happened. You have my hand upon it; I think you are right.”
“Right? You mean that it wasn’t a mistake, a betise?”
“Felix culpa! If it was a mistake it was a very fine one.”
“Ah! I don’t regret it,” said Rainham, “only——”
“Only it was a mistake to suppose that life was to be arranged. That was all I meant. Yes; I don’t believe in much, but I believe in necessity. You can’t get over it yourself, and you can’t—no, not for all your goodwill, your generosity—get over it for another. There are simply inevitable results of irrevocable causes, and no place for repentance or restitution. And yet you help her, not as you meant to, and not now; but ah, you help her!”
“So long as I do that——” murmured Rainham, with a deep inhalation, closing his eyes wearily, in a manner which revealed how severely the intimate strain of conversation had told upon him.
Oswyn waited a little longer, in half expectation of his further utterance; but Rainham made no sign, lay quite motionless and hushed, his hands clasped outside of the counterpane as if already in the imitation of death; then the other rose and made a quiet exit, imagining that his friend slept, or would soon sleep.