JUST AN OBVIOUS DUTY
But it was she who gave him an opening.
"Luke," she said, "it's all very well, but the matter does concern you
in a way; far more so, in fact, than it does Lord Radclyffe. Nothing
can make any difference to Lord Radclyffe, but if what this young man
asserts is all true, then it will make a world of difference to you."
"I know that. That's just the trouble."
"You were thinking of yourself?"
"No. I was thinking of you."
"Of me?"
"Yes," he said now very abruptly, quite roughly and crudely, not
choosing his words lest they helped to betray what he felt, and all
that he felt. "If what this man says is true, then I am a penniless
nonentity whom you are not going to marry."
"You are talking nonsense, Luke, and you know it," was all she said.
And she said it very quietly, very decisively. He was talking
nonsense, of course, for, whatever happened or didn't happen, there
was one thing in the world that was absolutely, undeniably impossible,
and that was that she should not marry Luke.
Whilst she Louisa Harris, plain, uninteresting, commonplace Louisa
Harris was of this world, her marriage with Luke must be. People, in
this present day, matter-of-fact world, didn't have their hearts
wrenched out of them; they were not made to suffer impossible and
unendurable tortures; then why should she Louisa Harris, be threatened
with such a cataclysm?
"I am not," he was saying rather tonelessly, "talking nonsense, Lou. I
have thought all that over. It's over eight days since that letter
came; eight times twenty-four hours since I seemed in a way to see all
my future through a thick, black cloud, and I've had time to think. I
saw you too, through that thick, black cloud--I saw you just as you
are, exquisite, beautiful, like a jewel that should forever remain in
a perfect setting. I----"
He broke off abruptly, and, mechanically, his hand went up to his
forehead and eyes. Where was he? He gave a sudden, quaint laugh.
"What a drivelling fool you must think me, Lou."
She looked straight at him, pure of soul, simple of heart, with a
passion of tenderness and self-abnegation as yet dormant beneath the
outer crust of a conventional education and of commonplace
surroundings, but with the passion there nevertheless. And it was
expressed in the sudden, strange luminosity of her eyes--I would not
have you think that they were tears--as they met and held his own.
They didn't say anything more just then. People of their type and
class in England do not say much, you know, under such circumstances.
They have been drilled not to: drilled and drilled from childhood
upward, from the time when, after a fall and a cut lip or broken
tooth, the tears have to be held back, lest the words "snivel" or
"cry-baby" be mentioned. But quietude does not necessarily mean
freedom from pain. A cut lip hurts worse when it is not wetted with
tears.
It was only the shadow that was hovering over these two as yet:
nothing really tangible. And the shadow was not between them. She
would not let it come between them. If it covered him, it should wrap
her too. The commonplace woman had no fear of its descent, only as far
as it affected him.
"Nothing," she said after awhile, "could make a difference to our
marriage, Luke. Except, of course, if you ceased to care."
"Or you, Lou," he suggested meekly.
"Do you think," she retorted, "that I should? Just because you had no
money?"
"Not," he owned, "because of that. But I should be such a nonentity. I
have no real profession, and there are the others. Jim in the Blues
costs a fearful lot a year, and Frank in the diplomatic service must
have his promised allowance. I have read for the bar, but beyond that
what am I?"
"Your uncle's right hand," she retorted firmly, "his agent, his
secretary, his factotum, all rolled into one. You manage his estates,
his charities, his correspondence. You write his speeches and control
his household. Lord Radclyffe--every one says it in London--would not
be himself at all without Luke de Mountford behind him."
"That's not what I mean, Lou."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that--"
He paused a moment then added with seeming irrelevance:
"We all know that Uncle Rad is a curious kind of man. If this story
turns out to be true, he would still say nothing, but he would fret
and fret and worry himself into his grave."
"The story," she argued obstinately, "will not turn out to be true.
It's not like you, Luke, to jump at conclusions, or to be afraid of a
nightmare."
"I am not afraid," he rejoined simply. "But I must look at
possibilities. Yes, dear," he continued more forcibly, "it is possible
that this story is true. No good saying that it is impossible:
improbable if you like, but not impossible. Look at it how you like,
you must admit that it is not impossible. Uncle Arthur may have
married in Martinique; he was out there in 1881; he may have had a
son; his telling no one about his marriage is not to be wondered at;
he was always reticent and queer about his own affairs. This Philip
may possibly be Uncle Rad's sole and rightful heir, and I may possibly
be a beggar."
She uttered an exclamation of incredulity. Luke, a beggar! Luke the
one man in all the world, different from every other man! Luke ousted
by that stranger upstart!
God hath too much sense of humour to allow so ridiculous a Fate to
work her silly caprice.
"And," she said with scorn, "because of all these absurd possibilities
you talk of breaking off your engagement to me. Do you care so little
as all that, Luke?"
He did not reply, but continued to walk beside her, just a yard or so
apart from her, turning his steps in the direction of the gates,
toward the Albert Bridge, their nearest way home. She--meekly now, for
already she was sorry--turned to look at him. Something in his
attitude, the stoop of the shoulders, usually so square and erect,
the hands curiously clasped behind his back, told her that her
shaft--very thoughtlessly aimed--had struck even deeper than it
should.
"I am so sorry, dear," she said gently.
His look forgave her, even before the words were fully out of her
mouth, but with characteristic reticence, he made no reply to her
taunt. Strangely enough she was satisfied that he should say nothing.
The look, which did not reproach even whilst it tried to conceal the
infinite depth of the wound so lightly dealt, had told her more than
any words could do. Whatever Luke decided to do, it would be from a
sense of moral obligation, that desire for doing the right thing--in
the worldly sense of the term--which is inherent in Englishmen of a
certain class. No sentiment save that of a conventional one of honour
would be allowed to sway her destiny and his.
Conventionality--that same strained sense of honour and duty--decreed
that under certain mundane circumstances a man and woman should not
mate. Differences of ancestry, of parentage, of birth and of country,
divergence of taste, of faith, of belief--all these matter not one
jot. But let the man be beggared and the woman rich, and convention
steps in and says, "It shall not be!"
These two bowed to that decree: unconventional, in so far that they
both made the sacrifice out of the intense purity of their sentiment
to one another. They made an absolutely worldly sacrifice for a wholly
unworldly motive. Luke would as soon have thought of seeing Louisa in
a badly fitting serge frock, and paying twopence for a two-mile ride
in an omnibus, as he would expect to see a diamond tiara packed in a
card-board box, it would be unfair on the jeweller who had made the
tiara thus to subject it to rough treatment; and it would be equally
unfair on the Creator of Louisa to let her be buffeted about by the
cruder atoms of this world.
Louisa only thought of Luke and that perhaps he would feel happier in
his mind if she allowed him to make this temporary sacrifice.
There is such wonderful balm in self-imposed sacrifice.
"What," she asked simply, "do you want me to say, Luke?"
"Only that--that you won't give me up altogether unless----"
Here he checked himself abruptly. Was there ever an Englishman born
who could talk sentiment at moments such as this? Luke was no
exception to that rule. There was so much that he wanted to say to
Louisa, and yet the very words literally choked him before he could
contrive to utter them.
"Don't," she said quietly, "let us even refer to such things, Luke. I
do not believe in this shadow, and I cannot even understand why you
should worry about it. But whatever happens, I should never give you
up. Never. We will put off fixing the day of our wedding; since we
have made no announcement this won't matter at all: but I only agree
to this because I think that it is what you would like. I fancy that
it would ease your mind. As for breaking our engagement in the
future--in case the worst happens--well it shall not be with my
consent, Luke, unless you really cease to care."
They had reached the gate close to the bridge. Life pulsated all round
them, the life of the big city, callous, noisy, and cruel. Omnibuses,
cabs, heavy vans, rattled incessantly past them. People jostled one
another, hurrying and scurrying, pigmies and ants adding their tiny
load of work, of care, of sorrow to the titanic edifice of this living
world.
Louisa's last words remained unanswered. Luke had, by his silence,
said everything there was to say. They stood on the pavement for a
moment, and Luke hailed a passing taxicab.
At the corner opposite, an omnibus pulled up on its way westward. A
man stepped off the curb ready to enter it. Louisa caught his eye, and
he raised his hat--the man who had passed them in the park just now.