THE DECISION
As soon as Antony left the office, he walked down into the Strand, where
he took an omnibus as far as Pimlico. There he dismounted, and made his
way to the embankment, intending to walk back to his rooms in Chelsea. He
had spent the previous evening hunting for rooms solely on Josephus's
account. Dogs, and more especially puppies, are not welcomed at hotels;
also, Antony considered the terms demanded for this special puppy's
housing and maintenance entirely disproportionate to Josephus's size and
requirements.
As he walked along the embankment he reviewed the situation and
conditions recently placed before him. At first sight they appeared
almost amusing and absurd. The whole thing presented itself to the mind
in the light of some huge joke; and yet, behind the joke, lay a curious
sense of inexorableness. At first he did not in the least realize what
caused this sense, he was merely oddly aware of its existence. He walked
with his eyes on the river, watching a couple of slowly moving barges.
It was a still, sunny day. The trees on the embankment were in full leaf.
Scarlet and yellow tulips bedecked the window-boxes in the houses on his
right. An occasional group of somewhat grubby children, generally
accompanied by an elder sister and a baby in a perambulator, now and
again occupied a seat. A threadbare and melancholy-looking man flung
pieces of bread to a horde of sea-gulls. Antony watched them screaming
and whirling as they snatched at the food. They brought the _Fort
Salisbury_ to his mind. And then, in a sudden flash of illumination, he
saw precisely wherein that sense of inexorableness lay. With the
realization his heart stood still; and, with it, for the same brief
second, his feet. The next instant he had quickened his steps, fighting
out the new idea which had come to him.
It was not till he had reached his rooms, and partaken of a lunch of cold
meat and salad, that he had reduced it to an entirely business-like
statement. Then, in the depths of an armchair, and fortified by a pipe,
he marshalled it in its somewhat crude form before his brain. Briefly, it
reduced itself to the following:--
Should he refuse the conditions attached to the will, he remained in
exactly the same position in which he had found himself some four or five
weeks previously; namely, in the position of owner of a small farm on the
African veldt, which farm brought him in an income of some two hundred a
year. In that position the dream, which had dawned within his heart on
the _Fort Salisbury_, would be impossible of fulfilment. His life and
that of the Duchessa di Donatello must lie miles apart, separated both by
lack of money and the ocean. If, on the other hand, he accepted the
conditions, a year must elapse before he made that dream known to her;
and--and here lay the meaning of that sense of inexorableness he had
experienced--he could give her no explanation of the extraordinary
situation in which he would find himself, a situation truly calculated to
create any amount of misunderstanding. To all appearances the adventure
on which he had started out had brought him to an impasse, a blind alley,
from which there was no favourable issue of any kind.
"The whole thing is a deuced muddle," he announced gloomily, addressing
himself to Josephus.
Josephus put his paws on Antony's knees, and licked the hand which was
not holding the pipe.
"To refuse the conditions," went on Antony aloud, and still gloomily, and
stroking Josephus's head, "is to bring matters to an absolute deadlock,
one from which I can never by the remotest atom of chance extricate
myself. To accept them--well, I don't see much better chance there. How
on earth am I to explain the situation to her? How on earth will she
understand the fact that I remain in England, and make no attempt to see
her for a year? I can't even hint at the situation. Oh, it's
preposterous! But to accept gives me the only possible faintest hope."
And then, suddenly, a memory sprang to life within his soul. He saw again
a courtyard set with small round tables and orange trees in green tubs.
He heard his own voice putting a question.
"What is the foundation of friendship?" it asked.
"Trust," came the reply, in the Duchessa's voice.
Yet, was her friendship strong enough to trust him in such a matter?
Strong enough not to misunderstand his silence, his--his oddness in the
whole business? And yet, was it not something like a confession of
weakness of friendship on his own part, to question the endurance of
hers? She had said they were friends. Perhaps the very test of the
strength of his own friendship was to lie in his trust of the strength of
hers. And, at all events, he could write her some kind of a letter,
something that would tell her of his utter inability to see her, even
though he might not give the smallest hint of what that inability was. At
least he could let her perceive it was by no wish of his own that he
stayed away.
Hope revived within his heart. On the one hand there would be temporary
banishment, truly. But it would be infinitely preferable to life-long
exile. A year, after all, was only a year. To him the moments might, nay
would, drag on leaden feet; but to her it would be but as other years,
and, ordinarily speaking, they speed by at an astonishing rate. He must
look to that assurance for comfort. A little odd smile twisted his lips.
What, after all, did a grey year signify to him, as long as its greyness
did not touch her. And why should it? The fact of his absence could not
possibly bring the same blank to her as it would to him. She might wonder
a little, she might even question. But had not she herself spoken of
trust?
With the memory of that one word for his encouragement, he took his
resolution in both hands and made his decision.
* * * * *
Perhaps, if Antony had attempted to pen his letter to the Duchessa before
making his decision, he might have hesitated regarding making it. It was,
however, not till the evening before he left town to take up his new
life, that he attempted to write to her. Then he discovered the
extraordinary difficulty of putting into anything like coherent and
convincing words the statement he had to make. He drafted at least a
dozen attempts, each, to his mind, more unsatisfactory than the last.
Finally he wrote as follows:
"Dear Duchessa:
"Since I said good-bye to you at Plymouth, my affairs have undergone
unexpected and quite unforeseen changes. As matters stand at present, I
shall be remaining in England for some time. I had hoped to see you when
you returned from Scotland, but find, deeply to my regret, that I will be
unable to do so, for a considerable time at all events. Need I tell you
that this is a great disappointment to me? I had been looking forward to
seeing you again, and now fate has taken matters out of my hands. When
the time comes that I am able to see you, I will write and let you know;
and perhaps, if by then you have not forgotten me, you will allow me to
do so.
"I would like to thank you for your kindness and comradeship to me during
the voyage. Those days will ever remain as a golden memory to me.
"Having in mind your words when we lunched together in the garden of that
little hotel at Teneriffe, I dare to inscribe myself,
"Always your friend,
"Antony Gray."
It was not the letter he longed to write, yet he dared not write more
explicitly. Honour forbade the smallest hint at the strange position in
which he found himself; diffidence held him back from writing the words
his heart was crying to her. Bald and flat as he felt the letter to be,
he could do no better. It must go as it stood. He headed it with the
address of his present rooms, giving his landlady instructions to forward
all letters to the post office at Byestry.
One letter, bearing a Scottish postmark, alone came for him after his
departure. It remained for close on two months on the table of the dingy
little hall. Then, fearing lest Antony's receipt of it should betray her
own carelessness, Mrs. Dobbin consigned it unopened to the kitchen fire.