"If she is not, she will be soon," said he quietly, between his clenched teeth. "Gentlemen, if you'll excuse me for five minutes, and see to my father:"--and he walked straight out of the room, closing the door behind him--to find Grace waiting in the passage.
She was trembling from head to foot, stepping to and fro, her hands and face all but convulsed; her left hand over her bosom, clutching at her dress, which seemed to have been just disarranged; her right drawn back, holding something; her lips parted, struggling to speak; her great eyes opened to preternatural wideness, fixed on him with an intensity of eagerness;--was she mad?
At last words bubbled forth: "There! there! There it is!--the belt!-- your belt! Take it! take it, I say!"
He stood silent and wondering; she thrust it into his hand.
"Take it! I have carried it for you--worn it next my heart, till it has all but eaten into my heart. To Varna, and you were not there!--Scutari, Balaklava, and you were not there!--I found it, only a week after!--I told you I should! and you were gone!--Cruel, not to wait! And Mr.
Armsworth has the money--every farthing--and the gold:--he has had it these two years!--I would give you the belt myself; and now I have done it, and the snake is unclasped from my heart at last, at last, at last!"
Her arms dropped by her side, and she burst into an agony of tears.
Tom caught her in his arms: but she put him back, and looked up in his face again.
"Promise me!" she said, in a low clear voice; "promise me this one thing only, as you are a gentleman; as you have a man's pity, a man's gratitude in you"
"Anything!"
"Promise me that you will never ask, or seek to know, who had that belt."
"I promise: but, Grace!--"
"Then my work is over," said she in a calm collected voice. "Amen. So lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace. Good-bye, Mr. Thurnall. I must go and pack up my few things now. You will forgive and forget?"
"Grace!" cried Tom; "stay!" and he girdled her in a grasp of iron. "You and I never part more in this life, perhaps not in all lives to come!"
"Me? I?--let me go! I am not worthy of you!"
"I have heard that once already;--the only folly which ever came out of those sweet lips. No! Grace, I love you, as man can love but once; and you shall not refuse me! You will not have the heart, Grace! You will not dare, Grace! For you have begun the work; and you must finish it."
"Work? What work?"
"I don't know," said Tom. "How should I? I want you to tell me that."
She looked up in his face, puzzled. His old self-confident look seemed strangely past away.
"I will tell _you_" he said, "because I love you. I don't like to show it to them; but I've been frightened, Grace, for the first time in my life."
She paused for an explanation; but she did not straggle to escape from him.
"Frightened; beat; run to earth myself, though I talked so bravely of running others to earth just now. Grace, I've been in prison!"
"In prison? In a Russian prison? Oh, Mr. Thurnall!"
"Ay, Grace, I'd tried everything but that; and I could not stand it.
Death was a joke to that. Not to be able to get out!--To rage up and down for hours like a wild beast; long to fly at one's gaoler and tear his heart out;--beat one's head against the wall in the hope of knocking one's brains out;--anything to get rid of that horrid notion, night and day over one--I can't get out!"
Grace had never seen him so excited.
"But you are safe now," said she soothingly. "Oh, those horrid Russians!"
"But it was not Russians!--If it had been, I could have borne it.--That was all in my bargain,--the fair chance of war: but to be shut up by a mistake!--at the very outset, too--by a boorish villain of a khan, on a drunken suspicion;--a fellow whom I was trying to serve, and who couldn't, or wouldn't, or daren't understand me--Oh, Grace, I was caught in my own trap! I went out full blown with self-conceit. Never was any one so cunning as I was to be!--Such a game as I was going to play, and make my fortune by it!--And this brute to stop me short--to make a fool of me--to keep me there eighteen months threatening to cut my head off once a quarter, and wouldn't understand me, let me talk with the tongue of the old serpent!"
"He didn't stop you: God stopped you!"
"You're right, Grace; I saw that at last! I found out that I had been trying for years which was the stronger, God or I; I found out I had been trying whether I could not do well enough without Him: and there I found that I could not, Grace;--could not! I felt like a child who had marched off from home, fancying it can find its way, and is lost at once. I felt like a lost child in Australia once, for one moment: but not as I felt in that prison; for I had not heard you, Grace, then. I did not know that I had a Father in heaven, who had been looking after me, when I fancied that I was looking after myself;--I don't half believe it now--If I did, I should not have lost my nerve as I have done!--Grace, I dare hardly stir about now, lest some harm should come to me. I fancy at every turn, what if that chimney fell? what if that horse kicked out?--and, Grace, you, and you only, can cure me of my new cowardice. I said in that prison, and all the way home,--if I can but find her!--let me but see her--ask her--let her teach me; and I shall be sure! Let her teach me, and I shall be brave again! Teach me, Grace! and forgive me!"
Grace was looking at him with her great soft eyes opening slowly, like a startled hind's, as if the wonder and delight were too great to be taken in at once. The last words unlocked her lips.
"Forgive you? What! Do you forgive me?"
"You? It is I am the brute; ever to have suspected you. My conscience told me all along I was a brute! And you--have you not proved it to me in this last minute, Grace?--proved to me that I am not worthy to kiss the dust from off your feet?"
Grace lay silent in his arms: but her eyes were fixed upon him; her hands were folded on her bosom; her lips moved as if in prayer.
He put back her long tresses tenderly, and looked into her deep glorious eyes.
"There! I have told you all. Will you forgive my baseness; and take me, and teach me, about this Father in heaven, through poverty and wealth, for better, for worse, as my wife--my wife?"
She leapt up at him suddenly, as if waking from a dream, and wreathed her arms about his neck.
"Oh, Mr. Thurnall! my dear, brave, wise, wonderful Mr. Thurnall! come home again!--home to God!--and home to me! I am not worthy! Too much happiness, too much, too much:--but you will forgive, will you not,--and forget--forget?"
And so the old heart passed away from Thomas Thurnall: and instead of it grew up a heart like his father's; even the heart of a little child.