DIEU DISPOSE
I thought to promote thee unto great honor, but, lo, the Lord hath
kept thee back from honor.--NUMBERS.
At the moment when Lettice and Dorothea were sitting down to bread and
salt in Canning Street, Denis was leaning over a rustic bridge in the
garden of Mrs. Byrne's week-end cottage.
By what difficult, obscure, and tortuous paths he had been wandering
in those days he could not have told, nor could any one have followed.
Dorothea had done him the worst injury; she had broken his faith.
His love and his religion were so closely intertwined that they fell
together, with a crash that numbed sensation. The world turned gray and
all the lamps went out. If he could not believe in God, Denis could
believe in nothing and love nothing. He did not know what was wrong
with him; he was not actively and consciously unhappy, but he was
bored--sick of himself, sick of his work, sick of all he had been and
done in all his life before.
He stayed on at Bredon from force of habit, because it was too much
trouble to make up his mind to go elsewhere. The trial at Westby broke
this routine; and the heavy sentence on his friend, outraging his sense
of justice, snapped another of the links that held him to his former
life. What was the good of virtue, he asked himself (seriously, as a
novel idea), if this was to be its reward? What had he ever got by it
himself? Why shouldn't he try pleasure for a change? Why not, indeed?
Conscience made no protest; that was one of the lamps which had gone
out. When he left Westby he did not go back to Bredon; he stayed in
town, with the deliberate intention of "seeing life."
In pursuit of this ambition he visited music halls, which he regarded
as temples of gay vice, and tried to cultivate the more frivolous
of his male acquaintance, and even went so far as to put in an
appearance at a night club--and was more profoundly bored than ever.
One evening he laid himself out conscientiously to get drunk. This
was not a success; it ended in a bilious attack and a long distaste
for whisky. Another time he sat down to play "chimmy" with the most
inveterate gamblers he knew. Beginner's luck helped him at first to
win five pounds, which didn't excite him; then he lost twenty, and was
disproportionately annoyed. Nature had not cut out Denis for a _roué_.
He did not amuse himself or any one else. Even Bredon and the seaplane
were better than this. He would have given up and gone back to them in
despair, if he had not happened to fall in with Mrs. Byrne.
She was sitting in her car in a lonely lane at ten o'clock at night
when he saw her first, weeping tears of rage because her chauffeur
had sunk down, snoring drunk, and she could not stir him. Such things
did happen to Mrs. Byrne. Denis came to the rescue; he ejected the
chauffeur by the wayside, and took the lady home himself. She was
very grateful, and invited him to dinner. It was a pleasant house,
and one met amusing people--literary, artistic, a little out of the
usual set which had bored Denis so desperately. He liked his pretty,
feather-witted hostess, too, and she liked him; indeed, before long it
was plain that she more than liked him. It was not plain to Denis, who
remained virtuously stiff as a ramrod long after the clubs were betting
on Byrne's chance of bringing off his divorce this time. Mrs. Byrne had
fallen headlong in love, and she was incapable of discretion.
When at last the truth dawned on Denis, his first impulse was to bolt.
But he did not allow himself to do so. He stayed on, deliberately
exposing himself to temptation in the hope that it would tempt him. He
found it a hard struggle to be wicked. So far, then, Lettice was right;
he had not yet committed himself. She was right, too, in thinking that
the scene at Olympia would decide things one way or another. Denis
believed himself to be quite indifferent to Dorothea; yet her face (he
could not have said how) had given him the slight deciding push, and he
returned to Mrs. Byrne with his mind made up.
The brook by which he stood, patched with silver by the young March
moon, found its way between bronze-stemmed alders, past willows cloudy
in pollen-yellow, under banks where the kingcups spread their nosegays
of burnished green and gold. Violets, invisible but sweet, clustered
at the root of every rose. The scene was set for lovers, and Denis
had been making love. Did he do it well? It might have been worse.
There had been opposition to overcome, unexpected, stimulating: Evey
Byrne with a conscience, forsooth! Denis had tasted the first-fruits
of pleasure in crushing down her scruples and making her own she loved
him. He had wrung out the confession without mercy. She tried to hold
him off with her weak little hands against his breast.
"Ah, but ye don't truly love me, Denis!"
"Don't I?" said Denis, kissing her fawn-soft eyes and sweet,
half-reluctant lips.
"Ah, but 'tis so wicked! God'll never forgive us!"
"There is no God that counts," Denis answered. He kissed her again. He
had no idea that in his heart he was kissing Dorothea.
That was ten minutes ago. Was it time yet? Hardly, he decided; he might
allow himself to finish his cigar. Alas! out of her presence the blaze
had all too quickly died down. Mrs. Byrne was sweet, but she bored
him like everything else. Still, he would go to her; yes, he would
certainly go in a minute. It was his duty to see the thing through.
(_Naturam expellas furca_--it seemed that Denis could not get away from
that word!)
What a fool he was! Who would believe that he had reached his present
age in his present state of innocence? He hoped Mrs. Byrne hadn't found
it out, but he was rather afraid she had. If Denis had been honest with
himself he would have had to admit that one reason why he lingered
here by the river, instead of seeking the welcome that awaited him,
was that he was shy. Too ignominious, that; he shuffled away from the
thought. He was dissatisfied with himself all round. Why couldn't he
behave like other men? In the old days at Bredon how gloriously happy
he had been, with the delicate engine of his brain working at full
pressure, solving problems faster than his pencil could write them
down! Now, it seemed, he could neither play nor work. What was it he
had been sticking over, that last evening before he went to Westby? The
everlasting difficulty, speed _versus_ safety. There had been one or
two rather clever things in the show to-day. The Sturt bus, that used
I-struts, as he had meant to do; but the chord of the wings was too
large, the stresses would be impossibly high. Why on earth couldn't
Sturt see--
Who can tell whence ideas come? Inter-stellar drift? Some beam from
the eternal verities shone suddenly in Denis's brain. He pulled out
an old envelope and began covering it with rapid calculations. Ten
minutes later, when he next looked up, there was scarcely room for
another figure. He had come to a halt; he could go no further without
referring to his old work. What time was it? He peered at his watch
in the moonlight. Half-past ten: if he got up to town to-night, and
slept at the Grosvenor, he could catch the five-forty down and be at
Bredon in time for breakfast. He thrust the sheet of calculations into
his pocket, and, with about one-twentieth of his mind upon the scene,
started for the house. Coming in sight of its lighted windows, however,
he slackened and stopped. Mrs. Byrne. There was not much sense left in
his head, but it had occurred to him that his errand might be awkward
to explain in person.
Denis never had been, or would be, afflicted with self-consciousness.
He turned back from the lawn, skulked like a burglar through
shrubberies and behind trees, and climbed in at the window of the room
where they had dined. Still without a thought of false shame, he sat
down at Mrs. Byrne's own writing-table, and wrote with Mrs. Byrne's
own pen, on her own paper. Another man might have found some difficulty
in putting into words what he had to say; to Denis it seemed quite
simple.
"MY DEAREST EVEY,--I was standing on your bridge just
now, thinking of nothing else likely, when suddenly an idea
flashed into my head which settles a problem that has worried me
for years. If it works out as it should, it will make a revolution
in aircraft design. There's been nothing like it since the
Wrights. So I shall have to get straight back into harness. You'll
forgive me, I know." Here he paused, and debated whether to quote,
"I could not love thee, dear, so much," but decided against it.
Mrs. Byrne was not literary. "One has to put the big things first,
hasn't one? And after all, this hits me even harder than it hits
you." Denis was pleased with this phrase. "If all goes well, I
will come back and make my apologies in person. I am not waiting
now, because I am afraid if I saw you I might not go." He was even
better pleased with this. A satisfied smile overspread his face as
he signed himself, "Devotedly yours," a form which he had never
used before, and which took him some time to excogitate. Then
he rang the bell, gave the note to a servant, and took himself
off--again by the window.
"Make my apologies in person." Denis, it will be seen, was not
repentant. He returned, as he had promised, a week later, prepared
to pick up the thread of his adventure and do his duty to its
boring end. He was surprised--surprised and aggrieved--to learn
that Mrs. Byrne was not at home. "But she was expectin' me!" he
said, quite indignant, to the model of decorum who stood guardian
at the gate.
"Yes, sir. She asked me to give you this note," said the model
without moving an eyelid. But he scanned Denis's face very
inquisitively as he tore open the paper and read:
"Denis darling, this is God. I tried to steal you away from Him,
but He won't let me have you. I knew all the time how wrong it
was. It has all been my fault. I am going where I can pray for you
and pray to be forgiven. Oh! don't be angry with me, and don't let
_her_ be angry with me. I have been very wicked, but I did love
you so.
"EVEY."
The decorous Morris, who read this note (for of course Mrs. Byrne had
omitted to seal it), got little by his scrutiny. The visitor did not
stamp, nor swear, nor turn red, nor pale; he read through his dismissal
with a very singular expression of gravity, turned away, came back
absently to slip a tip into the man's hand, and finally strode off down
the drive, carrying his handsome head, as poor Camille said of his
enemy, like the _saint sacrament_, his dark blue Irish eyes fixed on
far distant horizons.