THE TOUCH OF NATURE
A sense, when first I fronted him,
Said, “Trust him not!”
After successfully carrying through the purchase of mourning stationery
and attending to other important items connected with sorrow in its
worldly shape, Arthur Agar went back to Cambridge. There was enough of
the woman in his nature to enable him to cherish grief and nurse it
lovingly, as some women (not the best of them) do. In this attitude
towards the world there was none of that dogged going about his business
which characterises the ordinary man from whose life something has
slipped out.
He wandered by the banks of the Cam with mourning in his mien, and his
cherished friends took sympathetic coffee with him after Hall. They spoke
of Jem with that fervid admiration which University men honestly feel for
one a few years their senior who has already “done something.”
“A ripping soldier” they called him and some of them entertained serious
doubts as to whether they had done wisely in choosing the less glorious
paths of peace. And Arthur Agar settled down into the old profitless
life, with this difference--that he could not dine out, that he used
blackedged notepaper, and that his delicate heliotrope neckties were
folded away in a drawer until such time as his grief should be assuaged
into that state of resignation technically called half-mourning.
One afternoon well towards the end of the term Arthur Agar's “gyp” crept
in with that valet-like confidential air which seems to be bred of too
intimate a knowledge of the extent of one's wardrobe.
“There is a gentleman, sir,” he said, “as wants to see you. But in no
wise will he give his name, which, he says, you don't know it.”
“Is he selling engravings?” asked Arthur.
The “gyp” looked mildly offended. As if he didn't know that sort!
“No, sir. Military man, I should take it.”
Arthur Agar had met the Scotch Balaclava veteran in his time too. He
hesitated, and the “gyp,” who felt that his reputation was at stake,
spoke:
“He is eminently a gentleman, sir,” he said.
“Well, then, show him up.”
A moment later a man who might have been the wandering Jew _fin de
siècle_ stood in the doorway. His smart military moustache was small and
evidently trimmed, his face was sunburnt, and in his eyes there gleamed
the restlessness of India.
He bowed, and awaited the exit of the man. Then, coming forward, he was
able for the first time to see Arthur Agar's face distinctly, and his
glance wavered.
At that moment Arthur Agar was staring at him with something in his face
that was almost strong. When this man had entered the room, Arthur felt
his heart give one great bound which almost choked him. There was a
strange physical feeling of vacuity in his breast which seemed to
paralyse his breathing powers, and his temples throbbed painfully.
Arthur Agar's life had been passed in eminently pleasant places. The
seamy side of existence had always been carefully hidden from his eyes.
He therefore did not recognise this strange sense which had leapt into
his being--the sense of superhuman, physical, mortal revulsion.
He was divided between two instincts. One side of his nature urged him to
shriek like a woman. Had he followed the other, he would have rushed at
this man, whom he had never seen before, seeking to do him bodily harm.
He would not have paused to reason that in anything like a struggle he
would stand no chance against the sinewy, dark-eyed soldier who stood
watching him. For there are moments even in this age of self-suppression
when we do not pause to think, when he who cannot swim will leap into
deep water to save another.
This sudden unreasoning hatred, so foreign to his gentle nature, seemed
to stagger Arthur Agar as the sudden intimation of some mortal disease
lurking in his own being would have done. He gripped the back of the
spindle-legged chair, and could find no word to say. The stranger it was
who spoke.
“I presume,” he said, with a pleasant smile, in a voice so musical that
his hearer breathed suddenly as if his head had been lifted from water,
“I presume that you are Mr. Arthur Agar?”
While he spoke he looked past Arthur, out of the silken-draped window. He
did not seem to like the glance of this young man, for even the most
practical of us have a conscience at times.
“Yes.”
The new-comer laid his walking-stick on the table, and turned to make
sure that the door was closed.
“I knew your step-brother,” he explained, “Jem Agar, in India.”
Then the instinct of the gentleman and the host asserted itself over and
above the throbbing hatred.
“Ah! Will you sit down?”
The stranger took the proffered chair and laid aside his hat. But neither
of them was at ease. There was a subtle suggestion that they had met
before and quarrelled--vague, unreasoning, quite impossible if you will;
but it was there. They were as men meeting again with a past between them
(too full of strong passions ever to be forgotten) which each was trying
in vain to ignore.
“I have brought home a few belongings of his,” the stranger went on to
explain. “Just a port-manteau with some clothes and things.”
He paused, and drew a small packet from the pocket of a covert-coat which
he carried over his arm.
“Here,” he went on, “are some papers of his--a diary and one or two
letters. The rest of the things are at my hotel in town.”
Arthur took the packet, and, still in the same dreamy, unreal way, opened
it. He turned to the last entry--dated six weeks back.
“Got out of bed at five, but nothing to be seen in the valley. I feel a
bit chippy this morning. If nothing turns up to-day shall begin to feel
uneasy. The men seem all right. They are plucky little fellows.”
There was a self-consciousness about Jem Agar's diary, a selection of the
right word, which conveyed nothing to Arthur. But it fell into other
hands later on, where it was understood better.
General Michael was watching the undergraduate with the same critical
attention which he had brought to bear on the writer of the diary not two
months before.
“Did you see much of your step-brother?” he asked abruptly, feeling his
way towards his purpose.
Arthur looked up. He was getting accustomed to the loathing that he felt
for this man, as one gets accustomed to an evil odour or a physical pain.
“I saw enough of him to be very fond of him,” he replied.
“And your mother--was she attached to him? Excuse my asking; I have a
reason.”
The little pause was enough. Seymour Michael had expected as much.
He had never forgiven Mrs. Agar the insults she heaped upon his head in
the drawing-room of Jaggery House. It is very difficult to bring shame
home to a Jew, and on that occasion this son of the modern Ishmaelites
had been thoroughly ashamed of himself. The sting of that past ignominy
was with him still, and would remain within his heart until such time as
he could revenge himself.
With that mean, underhand watchfulness for an opportunity which is almost
excusable in one of the unfortunates against whom every man's hand is
raised to-day, he had never parted with his thirst for revenge. The
moment seemed propitious. It was within his power to lay for Anna Agar
one of those spiteful feminine traps of which a woman can only fully
appreciate the sting.
He determined to leave Mrs. Agar in ignorance of the real facts
respecting her step-son. His vengeance was to allow her to
rejoice--almost openly, as she did--in the stroke of fortune by which her
own son, Arthur, had become possessed of Stagholme. He knew the woman
well enough to foresee that in a hundred ways she would heap up ignominy,
meanness, deception, which would crumble in one vast wreck about her head
when Jem Agar returned.
It was a vengeance worthy of the man, and spiteful enough to be fully
comprehended by its victim. But, like others handling petards, Seymour
Michael grew somewhat careless, and forgot that the wrong man is
sometimes hoist.
He knew his position well enough to make all safe as regarded Jem Agar on
his return. It was absolutely necessary to tell Arthur Agar--necessary
for his own safety in the future. The other two persons to whom the
secret was to be imparted were Mrs. Agar and Dora Glynde. From Mrs. Agar
Seymour Michael determined to withhold the news for his own reasons. Dora
was to be kept in the dark because she was a woman, and therefore unsafe.
This was the plan in its original shape with which Michael sought out
Arthur Agar at his rooms in college at Cambridge. It was further assisted
and elaborated by a circumstance which the originator could scarcely have
been expected to foresee--the fact of Arthur Agar's love for Dora, which
was at this time beginning to take to itself a definite existence. It
began, as all love does, with a want more or less elevated according to
the nature of the wanter. Arthur Agar required some one for whom to buy
those small and feminine luxuries which he could not for manly shame
purchase to himself. He delighted in spending money in those
establishments tersely called _magasins de luxe_ in the country from
whence their contents do emanate. He therefore got into the habit of
“picking up little things” for Dora, with the result that she in her turn
picked up that very small object, his heart.
Michael had seen enough of Arthur Agar during this short interview to
endow him with the same need of contempt which he had entertained towards
Anna Agar, the mother. The strong personal resemblance, the obvious
weakness of the boy's face, and, above all, that sense of having the
upper hand, which makes brave men out of cowards, gave him confidence. It
seemed that he had only to play the cards thrust into his hand.
“I knew,” he pursued, “Jem Agar very well. He was a peculiar man: very
quiet, very reserved, and just the man to make a difficult position
rather more difficult.”
Arthur's intelligence was not keen enough to follow the drift of this
remark.
“Yes,” he said gently.
“He hinted to me once or twice,” went on Seymour Michael, “that things
were not very harmonious at home.”
“I was not aware of it,” answered Arthur, whose innate gentlemanliness
told him that this should be held sacred ground.
The General shifted his position.
“He was a first-rate soldier,” he said warmly.
It was obvious to both that they were not getting on. Something
seemed to hold them both back, paralysing the _savoir-faire_ which
both had acquired in their intercourse with the world. Seymour Michael
was puzzled. He was not afraid of this boy. He knew himself to be
stronger--capable of over-mastering him entirely. But for the first time
in his life he felt awkward and ill at ease.
Arthur Agar only wanted this man to go. He felt that he could forego the
news which he must undoubtedly be in a position to give if only he could
be rid of this hated presence. At moments the loathing came to him again,
like a cold hand laid upon his heart.
“Were you with him,” inquired the undergraduate, “at the time of
his--death?”
“No. I was at head-quarters, forty miles to the rear.”
There was a little pause, then suddenly Seymour Michael leant forward
with his two hands on the table that stood between them.
“Mr. Agar,” he said, “are you able to keep a secret?”
“I suppose so,” answered Agar apprehensively.
“Then I am going to tell you something which you must swear by all that
you hold most sacred to keep a strict secret until such time as I give
you leave to reveal it.”
Arthur looked at him with a vague fear in his face. It seemed suddenly as
if this man had always been in his life--as if he would never go out of
it again.
“I am not sure that I care to hear it,” he wavered.
“You must hear it. Almost the last words that Jem Agar spoke to me were
requesting me to tell you this.”
“You promise that that is true?”
Arthur was surprised at his own suspicions. It was so unlike him, whose
nature, too weak to compass vice, had never allowed the suspicion of vice
or deceit in others to trouble him.
“I promise,” replied Seymour Michael.
Arthur gathered himself together for an effort. His distrust of this man
was almost a panic.
“Then tell me,” he said.
Michael leant back in his chair, fixing his pleasant eyes on Arthur's
pale face.
“The estate is not yours,” he said. “Your step-brother, Jem Agar, is not
dead.”
“Not dead!” repeated Arthur, without any joy in his voice. “Not dead!
Then who are you? Tell me who you are!”
“Ah! That I cannot tell you.”
And Seymour Michael sat smiling quietly on Anna Agar's son.