"AND so I look in to see her whenever I can spare half an hour. I fancy
it cheers her up a bit to have some one to talk to about Edinburgh--and
all that. You say you're going to tell her about its having been my
doing, your getting that berth. Now, I won't have it. You promised you
wouldn't. I hate jaw, as you know, and I don't want to have her gassing
about gratitude and all that rot. I don't like it, even from you. So
stow all that piffle. You'd do as much for me, any day. I suppose
Edinburgh _is_ a bit dull, but you've got all the higher emotions of our
fallen nature to cheer you up. Essex Court is dull, if you like! It's
three years since I had the place to myself, and I tell you it's pretty
poor sport. I don't seem to care about duchesses or the gilded halls
nowadays. Getting old, I suppose. Really, my sole recreation is going to
see another man's girl, and letting her prattle prettily about him.
Lord, what fools these mortals be! Sorry I couldn't answer your letter
before. I suppose you'll be running up for Christmas! So long! I'm
taking her down those Ruskins she wanted. Here's luck!"
The twisted knot of three thin initials at the end of the letter stood
for one of the set of names painted on the black door of the Temple
Chambers. The other names were those of Tom, who had strained a slender
competence to become a barrister, and finding the achievement
unremunerative, had been glad enough to get the chance of sub-editing a
paper in Edinburgh.
Dick enveloped and stamped his letter, threw it on the table, and went
into his bedroom. When he came back in a better coat and a newer tie he
looked at the letter and shrugged his shoulders, and he frowned all the
way down the three flights and as far as Brick Court. Here he posted the
letter. Then he shrugged his shoulders again, but after the second shrug
the set of them was firmer.
As his hansom swung through the dancing lights of the Strand, he
shrugged his shoulders for the third time.
And, at that, his tame devil came as at a signal, and drew a pretty
curtain across all thoughts save one--the thought of the "other man's
girl." Indeed, hardly a thought was left, rather a sense of her--of
those disquieting soft eyes of hers--the pretty hands, the frank
laugh--the long, beautiful lines her gowns took on--the unexpected
twists and curves of her hair--above all, the reserve, veiling
tenderness as snowflakes might veil a rose, with which she spoke of the
other man.
Dick had known Tom for all of their men's lives, and they had been
friends. Both had said so often enough. But now he thought of him as the
"other man."
The lights flashed past. Dick's eyes were fixed on a picture. A pleasant
room--an artist's room--prints, sketches, green curtains, the sparkle of
old china, fire and candle light. A girl in a long straight dress; he
could see the little line where it would catch against her knee as she
came forward to meet him with both hands outstretched. Would it be both
hands? He decided that it would--to-night.
He was right, even to the little line in the sea-blue gown.
Both hands; such long, thin, magnetic hands.
"You _are_ good," she said at once. "Oh--you must let me thank you.
Tom's told me who it was that got him that splendid berth. Oh--what a
friend you are! And lending him the money and everything. I can't tell
you--It's too much--You are--"
"Don't," he said; "it's nothing at all."
"It's everything," said she. "Tom's told me quite all about it, mind! I
know we owe everything to you."
"My dear Miss Harcourt," he began. But she interrupted him.
"Why not Harry?" she asked. "I thought--"
"Yes. Thank you. But it was nothing. You see I couldn't let poor old Tom
go on breaking his heart in silence, when just writing a letter or two
would put him in a position to speak."
She had held his hands, or he hers, or both, all this time. Now she
moved away to the fire.
"Come and sit down and be comfortable," she said. "This is the chair you
like. And I've got some cigarettes, your very own kind, from the
Stores."
She remembered a time when she had thought that it was he, Dick, who
might break his heart for her. The remembrance of that vain thought was
a constant pin-prick to her vanity, a constant affront to her modesty.
She had tried to snub him in those days--to show him that his hopes were
vain. And after all he hadn't had any hopes: he'd only been anxious
about Tom! In the desolation of her parting from Tom she had longed for
sympathy. Dick had given it, and she had been kinder to him than she had
ever been to any man but her lover--first, because he was her lover's
friend, and, secondly, because she wanted to pretend to herself that she
had never fancied that there was any reason for not being kind to him.
She sat down in the chair opposite to his.
"Now," she said, "I won't thank you any more, if you hate it so; but you
are good, and neither of us will ever forget it."
He sat silent for a moment. He had played for this--for this he had
delayed to answer the letter wherein Tom announced his intention of
telling Harriet the whole fair tale of his friend's goodness. He had won
the trick. Yet for an instant he hesitated to turn it over. Then he
shrugged his shoulders--I will not mention this again, but it was a
tiresome way he had when the devil or the guardian angel were working
that curtain I told you of--and said--
"Dear little lady--you make me wish that I _were_ good."
Then he sighed: it was quite a real sigh, and she wondered whether he
could possibly not be good right through. Was it possible that he was
wicked in some of those strange, mysterious ways peculiar to men:
billiards--barmaids--opera-balls flashed into her mind. Perhaps she
might help him to be good. She had heard the usual pretty romances about
the influence of a good woman.
"Come," she said, "light up--and tell me all about everything."
So he told her many things. And now and then he spoke of Tom, just to
give himself the pleasure-pain of that snow-veiled-rose aspect.
He kissed her hand when he left her--a kiss of studied brotherliness.
Yet the kiss had in it a tiny heart of fire, fierce enough to make her
wonder, when he had left her, whether, after all.... But she put the
thought away hastily. "I may be a vain fool," she said, "but I won't be
fooled by my vanity twice over."
And she kissed Tom's portrait and went to bed.
Dick went home in a heavenly haze of happiness--so he told himself as he
went. When he woke up at about three o'clock, and began to analyse his
sensations, he had cooled enough to call it an intoxication of
pleasurable emotion. At three in the morning, if ever, the gilt is off
the ginger-bread.
Dick lay on his back, his hands clenched at his sides, and, gazing
open-eyed into the darkness, he saw many things. He saw all the old
friendship: the easy, jolly life in those rooms, the meeting with
Harriet Harcourt--it was at a fancy-ball, and she wore the
white-and-black dress of a Beardsley lady; he remembered the contrast of
the dress with her eyes and mouth.
He saw the days when his thoughts turned more and more to every chance
of meeting her, as though each had been his only chance of life. He saw
the Essex Court sitting-room as it had looked on the night when Tom had
announced that Harriet was the only girl in the world--adding, at
almost a night's length, that impassioned statement of his hopeless,
financial condition. He could hear Tom's voice as he said--
"And I _know_ she cares!"
Dick felt again the thrill of pleasure that had come with the impulse to
be, for once, really noble, to efface himself, to give up the pursuit
that lighted his days, the dream that enchanted his nights. His own
voice, too, he heard--
"Cheer up, old chap! We'll find a lucrative post for you in five
minutes, and set the wedding bells a-ringing in half an hour, or less!
Why on earth didn't you tell me before?"
The glow of conscious nobility had lasted a long while--nearly a week,
if he recollected aright. Then had come the choice of two openings for
Tom, one in London, and one, equally good, in Edinburgh. Dick had chosen
to offer to his friend the one in Edinburgh. He had told himself then
that both lovers would work better if they were not near enough to waste
each other's time, and he had almost believed--he was almost sure, even
now, that he had almost believed--that this was the real reason.
But when Tom had gone there had been frank tears in the lovers' parting,
and Dick had walked up the platform to avoid the embarrassment of
witnessing them.
"You beast, you brute, you hound!" said Dick to himself, lying rigid and
wretched in the darkness. "You knew well enough that you wanted him out
of the way. And you promised to look after her and keep her from being
dull. And you've done all you can to keep your word, haven't you? She
hasn't been dull, I swear. And you've been playing for your own
hand--and that poor stupid honest chap down there slaving away and
trusting you as he trusts God. And you've written him lying letters
twice a week, and betrayed him, as far as you got the chance, every day,
and seen what a cur you are, every night, as you see it now. Oh,
yes--you're succeeding splendidly. She forgets to think of Tom when
she's talking to you. How often did _she_ mention him last night? It was
_you_ every time. You're not fit to speak to a decent man, you reptile!"
He relaxed the clenched hands.
"Can't you stop this infernal see-saw?" he asked, pounding at his
pillow; "light and fire every day, and hell-black ice every night. Look
at it straight, you coward! If you're game to face the music, why, face
it! Marry her, and friendship and honesty be damned! Or perhaps you
might screw yourself up to another noble act--not a shoddy one this
time."
Still sneering, he got up and pottered about in slippers and pyjamas
till he had stirred together the fire and made himself cocoa. He drank
it and smoked two pipes. This is very unromantic, but so it was. He
slept after that.
When he woke in the morning all things looked brighter. He almost
succeeded in pretending that he did not despise himself.
But there was a letter from Tom, and the guardian angel took charge of
the curtain again.
He was tired, brain and body. The prize seemed hardly worth the cost.
The question of relative values, at any rate, seemed debatable. The day
passed miserably.
At about five o'clock he was startled to feel the genuine throb of an
honest impulse. Such an impulse in him at that hour of the day, when
usually the devil was arranging the curtain for the evening's
tragi-comedy, was so unusual as to rouse in him a psychologic interest
strong enough to come near to destroying its object. But the flame of
pleasure lighted by the impulse fought successfully against the cold
wind of cynical analysis, and he stood up.
"Upon my word," said he, "the copy-books are right--'Be virtuous and you
will be happy.' At least if you aren't, you won't. And if you are....
One could but try!"
He packed a bag. He went out and sent telegrams to his people at King's
Lynn, and to all the folk in town with whom he ought in these next weeks
to have danced and dined, and he wrote a telegram to her. But that went
no further than the floor of the Fleet Street Post Office, where it lay
in trampled, scattered rhomboids.
Then he dined in Hall--he could not spare from his great renunciation
even such a thread of a thought as should have decided his choice of a
restaurant; and he went back to the gloomy little rooms and wrote a
letter to Tom.
It seemed, until his scientific curiosity was aroused by the seeming,
that he wrote with his heart's blood. After the curiosity awoke, the
heart's blood was only highly-coloured water.
"Look here. I can't stand it any longer. I'm a brute and I know
it, and I know you'll think so. The fact is I've fallen in love
with your Harry, and I simply can't bear it seeing her every
day almost and knowing she's yours and not mine" (there the
analytic demon pricked up its ears and the scratching of the
pen ceased). "I have fought against this," the letter went on
after a long pause. "You don't know how I've fought, but it's
stronger than I am. I love her--impossibly, unbearably--the
only right and honourable thing to do is to go away, and I'm
going. My only hope is that she'll never know.
"Your old friend."
As he scrawled the signatory hieroglyphic, his only hope was that she
_would_ know it, and that the knowledge would leaven, with tenderly
pitying thoughts of him, the heroic figure, her happiness with Tom, the
commonplace.
He addressed and stamped the envelope; but he did not close it.
"I might want to put in another word or two," he said to himself. And
even then in his inmost heart he hardly knew that he was going to her.
He knew it when he was driving towards Chenies Street, and then he told
himself that he was going to bid her good-bye--for ever.
Angel and devil were so busy shifting the curtain to and fro that he
could not see any scene clearly.
He came into her presence pale with his resolution to be noble, to leave
her for ever to happiness--and Tom. It was difficult though, even at
that supreme moment, to look at her and to couple those two ideas.
"I've come to say good-bye," he said.
"_Good-bye?_" the dismay in her eyes seemed to make that unsealed letter
leap in his side pocket.
"Yes--I'm going--circumstances I can't help--I'm going away for a long
time."
"Is it bad news? Oh--I _am_ sorry. When are you going?"
"To-morrow," he said, even as he decided to say, "to-night."
"But you can stay a little now, can't you? Don't go like this. It's
dreadful. I shall miss you so--"
He fingered the letter.
"I must go and post a letter; then I'll come back, if I may. Where did I
put that hat of mine?"
As she turned to pick up the hat from the table, he dropped the
letter--the heart's blood written letter--on the floor behind him.
"I'll be back in a minute or two," he said, and went out to walk up and
down the far end of Chenies Street and to picture her--alone with his
letter.
She saw it at the instant when the latch of her flat clicked behind him.
She picked it up, and mechanically turned it over to look at the
address.
He, in the street outside, knew just how she would do it. Then she saw
that the letter was unfastened.
How often had Tom said that there were to be no secrets between them!
This was _his_ letter. But it might hold Dick's secrets. But then, if
she knew Dick's secrets she might be able to help him. He was in
trouble--anyone could see that--awful trouble. She turned the letter
over and over in her hands.
He, without, walking with half-closed eyes, felt that she was so turning
it.
Suddenly she pulled the letter out and read it. He, out in the gas-lit
night, knew how it would strike at her pity, her tenderness, her strong
love of all that was generous and noble. He pictured the scene that must
be when he should re-enter her room, and his heart beat wildly. He held
himself in; he was playing the game now in deadly earnest. He would give
her time to think of him, to pity him--time even to wonder whether,
after all, duty and honour had not risen up in their might to forbid him
to dare to try his faith by another sight of her. He waited, keenly
aware that long as the waiting was to him, who knew what the ending was
to be, it must be far, far longer for her, who did not know.
At last he went back to her. And the scene that he had pictured in the
night where the east wind swept the street was acted out now, exactly as
he had foreseen it.
She held in her hand the open letter. She came towards him, still
holding it.
"I've read your letter," she said.
In her heart she was saying, "I must be brave. Never mind modesty and
propriety. Tom could never love me like this. _He's_ a hero--my hero."
In the silence that followed her confession he seemed to hear almost the
very words of her thought.
He hung his head and stood before her in the deep humility of a chidden
child.
"I am sorry," he said. "I am ashamed. Forgive me. I couldn't help it. No
one could. Good-bye. Try to forgive me--"
He turned to go, but she caught him by the arms. He had been almost sure
she would.
"You mustn't go," she said. "Oh--I _am_ sorry for Tom--but it's not the
same for him. There are lots of people he'd like just as well--but
you--"
"Hush!" he said gently, "don't think of me. I shall be all right. I
shall get over it."
His sad, set smile assured her that he never would--never, in this world
or the next.
Her eyes were shining with the stress of the scene: his with the charm
of it.
"You are so strong, so brave, so good," she made herself say. "I can't
let you go. Oh--don't you see--I can't let you suffer. You've suffered
so much already--you've been so noble. Oh--it's better to know now. If
I'd found out later--"
She hung her head and waited.
But he would not spare her. Since he had sold his soul he would have the
price: the full price, to the last blush, the last tear, the last
tremble in the pretty voice.
"Let me go," he said, and his voice shook with real passion, "let me
go--I can't bear it." He took her hands gently from his arms and held
them lightly.
Next moment they were round his neck, and she was clinging wildly to
him.
"Don't be unhappy! I can't bear it. Don't you see? Ah--don't you see?"
Then he allowed himself to let her know that he did see. When he left
her an hour later she stood in the middle of her room and drew a long
breath.
"_Oh!_" she cried. "What have I done? What _have_ I done?"
He walked away with the maiden fire of her kisses thrilling his lips.
"I've won--I've won--I've won!" His heart sang within him.
But when he woke in the night--these months had taught him the habit of
waking in the night and facing his soul--he said--
"It was very easy, after all--very, very easy. And was it worth while?"
But the next evening, when they met, neither tasted in the other's
kisses the bitterness of last night's regrets. And in three days Tom was
to come home. He came. All the long way in the rattling, shaking train a
song of delight sang itself over and over in his brain. He, too, had his
visions: he was not too commonplace for those. He saw her, her bright
beauty transfigured by the joy of reunion, rushing to meet him with
eager hands and gladly given lips. He thought of all he had to tell her.
The fifty pounds saved already. The Editor's probable resignation, his
own almost certain promotion, the incredibly dear possibility of their
marriage before another year had passed. It seemed a month before he
pressed the electric button at her door, and pressed it with a hand that
trembled for joy.
The door opened and she met him, but this was not the radiant figure of
his vision. It seemed to be not she, but an image of her--an image
without life, without colour.
"Come in," she said; "I've something to tell you."
"What is it?" he asked bluntly. "What's happened, Harry? What's the
matter?"
"I've found out," she said slowly, but without hesitation: had she not
rehearsed the speech a thousand times in these three days? "I've found
out that it was a mistake, Tom. I--I love somebody else. Don't ask who
it is. I love him. Ah--_don't_!"
For his face had turned a leaden white, and he was groping blindly for
something to hold on to.
He sat down heavily on the chair where Dick had knelt at her feet the
night before. But now it was she who was kneeling.
"Oh, _don't_, Tom, dear--don't. I can't bear it. I'm not worth it. He's
so brave and noble--and he loves me so."
"And don't _I_ love you?" said poor Tom, and then without ado or
disguise he burst into tears.
She had ceased to think or to reason. Her head was on his shoulder, and
they clung blindly to each other and cried like two children.
* * * * *
When Tom went to the Temple that night he carried a note from Harry to
Dick. With sublime audacity and a confidence deserved she made Tom her
messenger.
"It's a little secret," she said, smiling at him, "and you're not to
know."
Tom thought it must be something about a Christmas present for himself.
He laughed--a little shakily--and took the note.
Dick read it and crushed it in his hand while Tom poured out his full
heart.
"There's been some nonsense while I was away," he said; "she must have
been dull and unhinged--you left her too much alone, old man. But it's
all right now. She couldn't care for anyone but me, after all, and she
knew it directly she saw me again. And we're to be married before next
year's out, if luck holds."
"Here's luck, old man!" said Dick, lifting his whisky. When Tom had gone
to bed, weary with the quick sequence of joy and misery and returning
joy, Dick read the letter again.
"I can't do it," said the letter, "it's not in me. He loves me too much.
And I _am_ fond of him. He couldn't bear it. He's weak, you see. He's
not like you--brave and strong and noble. But I shall always be better
because you've loved me. I'm going to try to be brave and noble and
strong like you. And you must help me, Dear. God bless you. Good-bye."
"After all," said Dick, as he watched the white letter turn in the fire
to black, gold spangled, "after all, it was not so easy. And oh, how it
would have been worth while!"