He went downstairs, and out on to the quay, turning southward along the
river towards the Fövámház.
For a foreigner he knew Pest well, but his knowledge only led him now
by its loneliest avenue. He stood for a long while, his back to the
empty market-place--which glowed by day with the red and orange of
autumn ripeness--his elbows on the broad stone embankment, gazing out
across the swirling river on which the starlight slid and shivered in
darting streaks of gold.
He hated himself for what had taken place that evening, as he had often
with equal reason hated himself before.
Somehow he seemed to lack the personal seriousness which saved men from
treating their own affairs with the humorous tolerance which they
extended to their neighbours! Life appeared to him the same comic
spectacle from whatever point one saw it. Fate was often just as funny
when it killed as when it crowned you, and however intimately they
might annoy him, he never could keep back a laugh at its queer ways.
It was Fate's whim at present to make him look like a scoundrel by a
deed that was probably as decent as any he would ever do, and the irony
of his ill-luck so tickled him that, in laughing at it, he had become
really abominable.
A sentimentalist with a sense of humour cut, as he could see, a very
poor figure; it were better, so far as appearances went, to be a
pompous fool.
Self-esteem is so widespread a virtue that the world, whatever it may
say, is always impressed even by ridiculous dignity, and its one
universally unconvincing spectacle is the man laughing at himself.
Besides, when a man finds himself absurd, what is he likely to think
imposing?
Yet, for all his humour, Caragh sighed. For the moment, as on many
previous moments, he craved the solemn personal point of view to make
life seem for once of some importance and give him a taste of undiluted
tears.
His reflections were interrupted by something rubbing against his leg.
It proved to be a little white dog, and he addressed some whimsical
advice to it about the time of night before looking out again upon the
river. But as the animal made no sign of movement, but merely shivered
against his ankle, he lifted it up and set it on the parapet before him.
From an inspection there he found it to be all but starved, with just
strength enough to stand.
He was indifferent to dogs, and felt that the wisest course, as he
explained to it, would be to drop the trembling creature into the water
and out of a world that had used it so ill.
But he was very far from indifferent to the waif-like loneliness that
gazed at him from its eyes, and, tucking it resignedly under his wrap,
he turned back to the hotel.
He spent an hour there, feeding it with some biscuits that remained
from his raft journey, soaked in whisky and water, and then, since the
little thing refused to rest but on the bed, he made the best of its
odorous presence beside him, and only cursed his own soft-heartedness
when waked occasionally by its tongue.
On the morrow he began to show Ethel Vernon the city, and for two days
she was too interested and fatigued to find fault with him. She had
discovered the terrier, and enthusiastically adopted it, to Caragh's
relief, being as devoted to dogs as he was apathetic.
But on the third evening, when they were sitting again together upon
the balcony after a quiet afternoon, she spoke her disappointment.
The night was as splendidly blue as it had been when they sat there
before; and she, dressed in black, with blue-black sequins woven over
her bodice and scattered upon her skirt, looked to be robed in some
dark cluster of starlight in her corner of the balcony.
They had been talking of matters in which neither took much interest;
then after a long pause she said quietly, "Why are you so different?"
"I?" he exclaimed.
"Oh, please don't pretend," she sighed. "What is it?"
"I told you," he said doggedly, "the other night."
"The other night?" she repeated. "What, when we were here?"
"Yes," he said.
She reflected for a moment. "About that girl, the one in Ireland? Do
you mean that?"
"I do," he said.
"Do you mean it was true?" she asked with increasing tenseness.
"Quite true," he said.
"But you were laughing," she protested incredulously. "I took it for a
joke."
"I'm always laughing," he said grimly; "but I wish I hadn't been then.
It was so serious that I couldn't be. But it's no good explaining
that; you can't understand."
Her mind was set on something different--on something to her of more
moment than a man's absurd reasons for being trivial. It was some time
before she spoke.
"You asked her to marry you?" she pondered slowly, only half in
question, as though scarcely able to realize what he had done.
"I did," he said; "how else should we be engaged?"
"Oh, dozens of ways," she answered: "she might have asked you."
"Well, she didn't," he said stoutly.
"I wonder if you know," she mused; "men don't. And did you want to
marry her?"
"Would I have asked her otherwise?" he demanded.
"Oh, yes," she sighed; "very possibly. Men often propose because they
can think of nothing else to say. And have you wanted to be married
long?"
"What do you mean?" he said.
"Three months?" she queried.
The light little head was tilted sideways in old fascinating way. It
was not so dark but he might have seen it had he not been staring at
the stars. He might even have noticed, had he looked closer, how wide
her eyes were, and how unsteady the small mouth.
"Why three months?" he said.
"Wasn't it three months ago we were at Bramley Park?" she went on
reflectively. "Can you still remember what you told me there?"
"Was it different from what I'd told you everywhere?" he parried.
"No--o!" she murmured, with a long wavering breath; "not until
to-night. You said you could never, while I lived, think of marrying
another woman."
"Yes," he assented; "I remember. We were looking down at the moonlight
on the lake."
"We were," she said. "And you had your hand on mine. You put it
there; you put it there as you spoke. Were you thinking how
wonderfully easy it was to fool a woman?"
"I've never fooled you, nor tried to fool you," he answered quietly.
"I've cared for you too much for that. No, not in the common way; but
because you've always been such an honest and good friend to me. Some
women insist on being fooled; they make any sort of truth to them
impossible. You made a lie."
"So it seems now," she said wistfully.
"No," he replied, "it seems now just the opposite. But I can't help
that."
"You could have helped it ... once," she said.
"Oh, we can always help things once," he objected.
"Did you know her when we were at Bramley?"
"Yes, very slightly."
"Very slightly, only three months ago," she repeated incredulously.
"Yes," he said.
There was a pause. Ethel Vernon's fingers were playing nervously with
a ring.
"When did you want to marry her?" she asked at length.
He hesitated in his turn.
"I can't tell you that," he said.
"Why?" she questioned. "Don't you know?"
"I know perfectly," he said.
"Well?" she queried. Then, as he made no response, "Haven't I the
right to know?"
"I can't say," he answered. "I haven't the right to tell you."
"Why?"
"It isn't only mine to tell," he said.
"It's hers, you mean?" she exclaimed. "Everything's hers, I suppose,
now; everything that you once could call your own! Did you ever share
your life with _me_ in that fashion?"
"You forget," he said gravely. "_She_ shares herself."
Ethel Vernon leaned towards him fiercely. "Do you mean----" she began
impetuously, and stopped.
He turned and looked steadily into her angry eyes. Her quick breath
spread the starlight to a vague and smoky blueness among the gleaming
sequins on her breast. "Yes," he said, "that is probably what I _do_
mean. First or last, whatever you may call her, it's the woman's self
that counts."
She remained for a moment with her eyes still passionately alight, and
something visible even in the dusk upon her face which she would and
would not say. Then her mouth hardened, and she flung herself back in
her chair.
"I hate you," she cried.
"No," he said with a sigh; "you hate the fact. Every woman does whom
it doesn't profit."
There was nothing said between them for some minutes, and Caragh could
hear the silk ripple as her foot swung to and fro among the ruchings of
her skirt. The sound brought back another silence, when she had sat
beside him on an English summer evening in a dusk almost as deep;
brought back the hour from that scented night when, with the spells of
strangeness still upon her charm, he had listened to her ankles' silken
whisper, and felt in the dark the unendurable sweetness of her presence
rob his life of its desires.
He was carried so far by the memory that the change in her voice
startled him when she spoke again.
"What did you tell her about me," she demanded.
"I didn't tell her anything," he said.
"She hasn't asked about your past?"
"Not yet."
"You think she won't?"
"Oh, no, I don't," he smiled.
"And when she does! Will you tell her the usual lie?"
"Did I tell it to you?"
"You didn't ask me to marry you," she thrust back. "One treats the
woman differently that one's going to _share_."
"Yes," he admitted doubtfully, "it's very possible one does. Only I
think the sharing works the other way. One tells her the truth in
common honesty."
"Never!" she exclaimed. "You tell her the truth in transcendental
lunacy, and wish you'd bitten your tongue out five minutes later when
you see she thinks you a sweep."
He turned towards her with a smile. "I'm afraid my transcendental
lunacies are about done," he said.
She laughed. "To judge by the last of them," she retorted.
"The last of them!" he exclaimed reprovingly. "You shouldn't speak of
marriage by so wild a name."
"I don't," she said shortly; "only of yours. Will you swear to me that
you love her?"
"Willingly," he answered, "if you're unwise enough to ask."
"To ask for an oath which would have no meaning?"
"None whatever," he replied. "What would you expect?"
"The truth!" she said. "Isn't it due to me?"
"Yes," he admitted, "and you've had it; though it hasn't been easy.
Consider if a man is likely to relish the sort of confession that I've
made to you?"
"You couldn't very well avoid it," she reminded him.
"Oh, yes, I could," he said. "I might have quarrelled with you--you're
uncommonly easy to quarrel with--and then ... when you heard of my
engagement you'd have put it down to pique."
"You thought of doing that?" she asked distrustfully.
"Yes, I thought of that and of a dozen other ways of--well, of taking
you in," he admitted, "and of getting out of it myself."
"It doesn't sound very brave," she said softly.
"No, it sounds uncommon paltry, I've no doubt," he agreed. "I funked
it, and I tried to think it would have been kinder as well as
pleasanter to keep you in the dark. Would it?"
She shook her head.
"Well, I don't know," he reflected doubtfully; "I fancy you'd sooner
have thought that you had done it than that I had, however little you
might have liked it. And you'd have been a bit sorry for me, instead
of thinking me a beast."
"I'm sorry for you as it is," she answered quietly.
"What do you mean?" he exclaimed.
"I don't believe you love her," she said unsteadily.
"Oh, well," he murmured with a shrug; "then I can't persuade you."
She shook her head again--the little tossing shake which reminded
Caragh sharply of how she used to tease him, through the curls that
sometimes fall across her eyes. He was looking at the stars before she
spoke again.
"I think there's one thing you might tell me which wouldn't hurt her if
I knew," she said persuadingly. "Was it because you'd come to care
less for me that ... that you ... that you asked her?"
He rose from his seat, and leant against the iron trellis of the
balcony, looking out across the river.
"Was it?" she pleaded.
"No!" he said to the night. He turned presently and took a step to
enter the room. "Time I went," he said, checking his progress as he
passed her chair.
She laid her fingers upon his sleeve. "Morrie!" she whispered.
He stooped and kissed her face, while her detaining hand slipped with a
soft pressure into his.
Then she let it go, and sat, listening, as the sound of his footsteps
died away beyond the room; sat gazing out at the moving sky, with a
face from which the light had faded, till Henry Vernon's voice
surprised her dreams.