Part 119

"Very well," he said. "We'll agree on that. There's been a revelation of what I am. I don't--I distinctly don't justify myself. It was a lie, a fraud."

"Yes," said Cecily, in a low but emphatic assent.

"I gained your consent by a trick, when you ought to have been free to give or refuse it. I admit it all."

"And it has brought us to this!" She rose as she spoke, a picture of indignation. "There's no use talking any more about it," said she.

He looked at her long and deliberately. He seemed to weigh something in his mind, to ask whether he should or should not say something.

"And you conclude that the sort of person I am isn't fit to live with?" he asked at last.

"I've told you what I've made up my mind to do. I can't help whether you stay or go too. But I'm going away from here, and going alone."

"Because I'm that sort of person?"

"Yes. If you like to put it that way, yes."

"Very well. But before you go, a word about you! Sit down, please." She obeyed his rather imperative gesture. "I've been meek," he smiled. "I've admitted all you said about me. And now, please, a word about you!"

"About me? What is there to say about me? Oh, you're going back to that old story about my pride again!"

Once more he looked long at her face. It was flushed and rebellious, it gave no hint of yielding to any weapon that he had yet employed.

"I'm not going to speak of your pride, but of your incredible meanness," said he.

"What?" cried Cecily, rudely startled and sitting bolt upright.

"There's no harm in plain speaking, since we're going to part. Of your extraordinary meanness, Cecily--and really it's not generally a fault of the Tristrams."

"Perhaps you'll explain yourself," she said, relapsing into cold disdain, and leaning back again.

"I will. I mean to. Just look at the history of the whole affair." He rose and stood opposite her, constraining her to look at him, although her attitude professed a lofty indifference. "Here was I--in possession! I was safe. I knew I was safe. I was as convinced of my safety as I am even now--when it's beyond question. Was I frightened? Ask Mina, ask Duplay. Then you came. You know what I did. For your sake, because you were what you are, because I had begun to love you--yes, that's the truth of it--I gave it all to you. Not this place only, but all I had. Even my name--even my right to bear any name. Nobody and nameless, I went out of this house for you."

He paused a little, took a pace on the grass, and returned to her.

"What ought you to have felt, what ought you to have prayed then?" he asked. "Surely that it should come back to me, that it should be mine again?"

"I did," she protested, stirred to self-defence. "I was miserable. You know I was. I couldn't stay here for the thought of you. I came to London. I came to you, Harry. I offered it to you."

"It's you who are deceiving yourself now. Yes, you came and offered it to me. Did you want, did you pray, that it might be mine again by no gift of yours but by right? Did you pray that the thing should happen which has happened now? That you should be turned out and I should be put in? Back in my own place, my proper place? That I should be Tristram of Blent again? Did you pray for that?"

He paused, but she said nothing. Her face was troubled now and her eyes could not leave his.

"You were ready to play Lady Bountiful to me, to give of your charity, to make yourself feel very noble. That was it. And now----" His voice became more vehement. "And now, look into your heart, look close! Look, look! What's in your heart now? You say I've cheated you. It's true. Is that why you're angry, is that why you won't live with me? No, by heaven, not that, or anything of the kind! Will you have the truth?"

Again she made no answer. She waited for his words.

"Are you rejoiced that mine's my own again, that I'm back in my place, that I'm Tristram of Blent, that it belongs to me? That I take it by my own incontestable right and not of your hand, by your bounty and your charity? Are you so rejoiced at that that you can forgive me anything, forgive the man you love anything? Yes, you do love me--You're welcome to that, if you think it makes it any better. It seems to me to make it worse. No, you can't forgive me anything, you can't forgive the man you love! Why not? I'll tell you why! Shall I? Shall I go on?"

She bowed her head and clasped her hands together.

"You hate my having come to my own again. You hate its being mine by right and not by your bounty. You hate being Lady Tristram only because I've chosen to make you so. And because you hate that, you won't forgive me, and you say you won't live with me. Yes, you're angry because I've come to my own again. You hate it. Look in your heart, I say, and tell me that what I say isn't true, if you can."

She made no answer still. He came a step closer and smote his fist on the palm of his other hand, as he ended: