MERCURY
_The evil is sown, but the destruction thereof is not yet come._
James Edward Makerstone Agar was not at the age of five the material
from which the heroes of children's stories are evolved. He was not a
good boy, nor a clean, nor particularly interesting. He was, however,
honest--and that is _déjà quelque chose_. He was as far removed from the
“misunderstood” type as could be wished; and he was quite happy.
Before his stepmother had laid aside the title and glory of a bride, he
had, by his deadly honesty, made her understand that even a child of five
requires what she could not give him--namely, logic. Had she been clever
enough to reason logically she might have undermined the little fellow's
innate honesty of character, despite the fact that he lacked a child's
chief incentive to learn from its mother, namely, the sympathy of
heredity.
Gradually and steadily Mrs. Agar “gave him up,” to make use of her own
expression. She was one of those women who either fear or despise that
which they do not understand. She could scarcely fear Jem, so she
persuaded herself that he was stupid and unattractive. At this time there
came another influence to militate against any excess of love between Jem
and his stepmother. It came to her, for he was ignorant of it. And this
was the knowledge that before long the little heir's undisputed reign in
the nursery would come to an end.
With a suburban horror of being a long distance from the chemist, Mrs.
Agar protested that she could not possibly remain at Stagholme during the
ensuing winter, and that her child must be born at Clapham. It was vain
to argue or reason, and at last the Squire was forced to swallow this
second humiliation, which was quite beyond his wife's comprehension. He
only dared to hint that all the Agars had seen the light at Stagholme
since time immemorial; but feelings of this description found no
answering note in her practical and essentially commonplace mind. So Mr.
And Mrs. Agar emigrated to Clapham, leaving Jem behind them.
It happened that a few days after their arrival at the stately house
overlooking the Common, a young officer called to see Mr. Hethbridge,
who was at that time one of the Directors of the East India Company.
Now it furthermore happened that this young soldier was he whom we last
saw smoking a cheroot in the doorway of Seymour Michael's bungalow in
India. As chance would have it, he called in the evening, and the
estimable Mr. Hethbridge, warmed into an unusual hospitality by the
fumes of his own port wine, pressed him to pass into the drawing-room and
take a dish of tea with the ladies. The subaltern accepted, chiefly
because it was the Director's self that pressed, and presently followed
that short-winded gentleman into the drawing-room--thereby shaping lives
yet uncreated--thereby unconsciously helping to work out a chain of
events leading ultimately to an end which no man could foresee.
“Yes,” he said, in reply to Mrs. Agar's question, “I am just back from
India.”
It happened that these two were left almost beyond earshot at the far end
of the room. The old people, among whom was Mrs. Agar's husband, were
settling down to a game of whist. Mrs. Agar was leaning forward with
considerable interest. This was not a mere passing curiosity to hear
further of a country and of an event which have not lost their glamour
yet.
The very word “India” had stirred something up within her heart of the
presence of which she had been unsuspicious. She was as one who, having a
closed room in her life, and thinking the door thereof securely barred,
suddenly finds herself within that room.
“Whereabouts in India were you?” she asked, with a sudden dryness of the
lips.
“Oh--I was north of Delhi.”
“North of Delhi--oh, yes.”
She moistened her lips, with a strange, sidelong glance round the room,
as if she were preparing to jump from a height.
“And--and I suppose you saw a great deal of the Mutiny?”
Even then--after many months, in a drawing-room in peaceful Clapham--the
young man's eyes hardened.
“Yes, I saw a good deal,” he answered.
Mrs. Agar leant back in her chair, drawing her handkerchief through her
fingers with jerky, unnatural movements.
“And did you lose many friends?” she asked.
“Yes,” answered the young fellow, “in one way and another.”
“How? What do you mean?” She had a way of leaning forward and listening
when spoken to, which passed very well for sympathy.
“Well, a time like the Mutiny brings out all that is in a man, you
know. And some men had less in them than one might have thought, while
others--quiet-going fellows--seemed to wake up.”
“Yes,” she said; “I see.”
“One or two,” he continued, “betrayed themselves. They showed that there
was that in them which no one had suspected. I lost one friend that way.”
“How?”
It was marvellous how the merest details of India interested this woman,
who, like most of us, did not know herself. Moreover, she never learnt to
do so thoroughly, thereby being spared the horrid pain of knowing oneself
too late.
“I made a mistake,” he explained. “I thought he was a gentleman and a
brave man. I found that he was a coward and a cad.”
Something urged her to go on with her pointless questions--the same
inevitable Fate which, according to the Italians, “stands at the end of
everything,” and which had prompted Mr. Hethbridge to bring this stranger
into the drawing-room.
“But how did you find it out?”
“Oh, I did not do it all at once. I first began by a mere trifle. It
happened that this man was reported dead in the Gazette--I showed it to
him myself.”
The young officer, who was not accustomed to ladies' society, and felt
rather nervous at his own loquaciousness, kept his eyes fixed on his
boots, and did not notice the deathly pallor of Mrs. Agar's face, nor the
convulsive clutch of her fingers on the velvet arm of the chair.
She turned right round, with a peculiar movement of the throat as if
swallowing something, and made sure that the whist-players were
interested in their game. In that position she heard the next words.
“He did not even take the trouble to write home to his friends. I thought
it rather strange at the time, and told him so. Later on I heard the
truth of it. I heard him tell some one else that he was engaged to a girl
in England, and he thought it a very good way of getting out of the
engagement.”
“You heard him tell that, with your own ears?”
“Yes; and he seemed to think it a good joke.”
Mrs. Agar was shuffling about in the chair as if in pain.
Then she asked again in a strangely metallic voice, “Did he say that
he--did not love her?”
“Yes, the cad!”
“He cannot have been a nice man,” she said, with that evenness of
enunciation which betrays that the tongue is speaking without the direct
aid of the mind.
The young officer rose with a glance towards the clock.
“No,” he said, “he was not. He did other things afterwards which made it
quite impossible for a man with any self-respect whatever to look upon
him as a friend.”
“Did he,” asked Mrs. Agar, “say anything about her personal appearance?
Was it that?”
The subaltern looked puzzled. It was as well for Mrs. Agar that he was
not a man of deep experience. Instead of being puzzled he might suddenly
have seen clear.
“No--no,” he replied. “It was not that. It was merely a matter of
expediency, I believe.”
But, womanlike, Mrs. Agar did not believe him. She sat while he made his
farewell speech over the whist-table, but as he went to the door she rose
and followed him slowly.
In the hall she watched the servant help him on with his coat--her
features twisted into a stereotype smile of polite leave-taking.
“By the way,” she said, with a sickening little laugh, “what was the
man's name--your friend, whom you lost?”
“Michael--Seymour Michael.”
“Ah! Good-night--good-night.”
Then she turned and walked slowly upstairs.
We are apt to read indifferently of human ills, whether of the flesh or
the soul. We are apt to overlook the fact that what we read may apply to
us. Some of us even bear upon us the mark of hereditary disease and
refuse to believe in it. Then suddenly comes a day when a pain makes
itself felt--a dumb, little creeping pain, which may mean nothing. We sit
down and, so to speak, feel ourselves. Before long all doubt goes. We
have it. The world darkens, and behold we are in the ranks of those upon
whom we looked a little while back with a semi-indifferent pity.
It was thus with Mrs. Agar. As some play with nature, so had she played
with her own heart. She had heard of a consuming love which is near akin
to hatred. She had read of passion which is stronger than the strongest
worldliness. She had smilingly doubted the existence of the broken heart
pure and simple. And now she sat in her own room, numbly, blindly feeling
herself, like one to whom the first warning of an internal deadly disease
has been manifested. She was conscious of something within herself which
she could not get at, over which she had no control.
With quivering lips she sat and wondered what she could do to hurt this
man. She did not only want to inflict bodily pain, but that other
gnawing pain of the heart which she herself was now feeling for the first
time. And through it all there ran the one thought that he must die. It
was strange that hate should first teach her that love is a living,
undeniable reality in the lives of all of us. She had never realised
this before. Her bringing-up, her surroundings, all her teaching had
been that money and a great house, and servants, and carriages were the
good things of this life, the things to be sought after.
She had been conscious of a vague admiration for Seymour Michael, and
that was the full extent of her knowledge of herself. This admiration
took the worldly form of a conviction that he was destined one day to be
a great man, and she had a strongly developed, common-minded desire to be
a great lady.
There are some things in this life which to a moderate intelligence are
quite unmistakable. Most of us, having left childhood behind, recognise
at once an earthquake, and death. Love is as unmistakable when it really
comes. And Anna Agar, having suddenly learnt to hate Seymour Michael,
knew that she had loved him with that one all-absorbing love which comes
but once to a woman.
She was not a deep-thinking or a subtle woman. Her actions were usually
based upon impulse, and her one all-absorbing desire now was to see him,
to speak to him face to face. In this indefinite longing there was
probably a vulgar love of vituperation--the taint of her low-born
ancestors.
She wanted to shout and shriek her hatred into the evil face of the man
who had tricked her. She wanted to frighten him, to threaten, to lash him
with her tongue. For she was conscious all the while of her own inability
to harm him. Without defining the thought, her common-sense taught her
one lamentable, unjust fact; namely, that unless a woman is loved by the
object of her wrath she can hardly make him suffer.
She rose at last, and, lighting the candles on the writing-table, she
proceeded to write to Seymour Michael. Even in this epistle the natural
cunning of her nature appeared.
“DEAR SEYMOUR “--she wrote on a sheet of paper bearing the address of the
house in which she was staying, the roof under which Seymour Michael had
first paid his careless tribute to her wealth--“I learnt by accident this
evening that your regiment has returned to England. If you are in London,
I hope you will make time to come and see me. Come to-morrow evening at
four, if that time is convenient to you. ANNA.”
She purposely signed her Christian name only, purposely refrained from
vouchsafing any personal news. She did not know how much or how little he
might know.
Ringing for her maid, she sent the letter to the post, addressed to
Seymour Michael, at the Service Club, of which she knew him to be a
member. Then she went to bed to toss and turn all night. The doctors,
good, portly Clapham practitioners, had warned her in the usual way to
spare herself all bodily fatigue and mental worry for the sake of the
little one. It is so easy to urge each other to spare all mental worry,
and so eminently useful.