AS far as I could see in the dim light of the Hallidays' hall, whose
house in Cheyne Walk I was just that moment leaving after one of
their too crowded and rather tiresome parties, the owner of the voice
which had asked me from the stairs if I was walking "Mayfair way" was
of about my age, too near fifty, and of a genial and polished air,
rare in these days of careless manners and--can one say it?--mannered
carelessness; the sort of man who had long since overcome his shyness
on meeting strangers, and, at a glance, seemed without that wretched
self-consciousness which so gets between a man and his power to
entertain; altogether, a cultivated and comfortable person, I thought.
But I am afraid that I was not in the best of tempers that night; for
as we walked away from the house I made very little attempt to justify
my companion's courteous invitation to share the walk. We had turned
into the King's Road on our way Eastward before his talk, which had
almost died down in the face of my wretched monosyllables, abruptly
began again with:--
"A tragic pity, that Carew business!"
At that I quite woke up.
"What! Did you know her?" I asked, and immediately felt ashamed of my
complete boorishness.
"Oh, ever so slightly," he gently waived my question; then turned to
me, as though confidingly: "but just well enough to be terribly shocked
at the sort of death she chose for herself.... As aimless, foolish, and
certainly as useless as you like, she had after all lived a wonderful,
perhaps a beautiful life--only to die as any damned bankrupt might die
in a 15th floor-flat in a Manhattan block!"
The sudden bitterness in his voice made me look sharply at him, but he
was too quick for me, and retrieved himself with a frank and altogether
engaging smile which deprecated his involuntary--as he naïvely showed
it to have been--seriousness. By this time I had quite recovered from
my bad-tempered stupor, and was acutely interested. I just waited.
"Curiously enough," he said, after a short silence, "when I read about
her suicide in the paper the other day it was not so much about her
that I thought, as about an incident which arose from my acquaintance
with her, years ago.... But are you sure I am not being very tedious?"
"Each word you say is shortening this walk," I answered quickly; how
seldom can one dress the truth in purple and fine linen!
"Well, then," he went on genially, "in connection with Consuelo's
name came to my mind an incident in which an acquaintance, almost a
stranger, stood me in better stead than a friend has ever done. I have
never seen him since, I have never thanked him--nor cursed him, as I
will explain--for his startling help in that really cruel emergency.
But I can't give you the incident without its background; for standing
alone it means almost nothing, it is just a trick, one of destiny's
sleights of hand. It takes its colour from a, well, imperfect passion,
its background. And its background is Consuelo Carew, as I knew her
twenty years ago.
"I met her just after she had married my friend Tristram Carew. She may
have been, at the outside, twenty years old, then, but though there
was nothing of the precocious young minx about her, she was more fully
developed, more complete, than any other young woman of that age that I
am now likely to meet. The only thing that was clear about her was her
complexion. She wasn't what we mean by a 'girl' except in freshness,
colouring, and zest--and what an amazing, embracing zest for life that
was! She never lost it, she can't ever have lost it, it was her very
being. I almost believe that, if we but knew the secret, this last
impulsive stupidity of hers might somehow take on the splendour of an
enthusiasm--but for what, for what?
"Tristram Carew was of my age, we had been friends at school and had
gone up together to Balliol. And we had come down only a very few
months before he ran amok and married the local parson's daughter, the
beautiful Consuelo Trent. I was living in London at that time, and was
too busy--I forget what about--to go down to Wiltshire to stay with
him, and so I never saw him or her in the 'engaged couple' state. But
I tried to imagine him in the role and drew a good deal of innocent
amusement from my imaginings--for Tristram, somehow, very definitely
didn't fit into the picture as either fiancé or husband. But though I
laughed, I was fond enough of him to be a little anxious--one didn't
see how it could turn out happily, come what would! For when I say
that Carew ran amok in marrying, I mean that in the ordinary way he
was intelligent enough about himself to know that his devil's temper
and insane jealousy would ruin the life and sour the love of any young
woman who had the misfortune to marry him.
"Though, mind you, no woman could be blamed for being carried away by
the man. That presence of his, that shock of auburn hair, those wild
eyes, and that infernally fluent tongue--why, the deuce take it, I, his
best friend of that time, spent my days in loving him and being jealous
of him! And though it sounds a fatuous thing to say about oneself, I
haven't an atom of jealousy in my nature--I'm quite proud to say that
I've never in my life envied any man his particular luck since that
Saturday, down at Tristram Carew's place, on which I first met his
young wife Consuelo, on their return from their honeymoon, and envied
him his possession of her. But then that probably because I've never
met another Consuelo.
"Consuelo wasn't made for a comfortable happiness, you understand. But
neither was she strange, nor exotic, nor bizarre, nor Belladonnaish,
nor any of those things that make a man think twice before introducing
a woman to a superior sister at the Bath Club--but even so no man,
unless he were a Tristram Carew, would too easily dare to marry her. I
don't know why, but it was so, for since she divorced Carew she has
had the pick of a thousand lovers, but not of many solid husbands. It
sounds a cruel thing to say, but I don't mean it cruelly; it is just
interesting as an instance of the curiously similar effect which one
woman may have on a thousand different, very different men. You just
loved her--and if you weren't turned down at the start you were certain
to be turned down after a while; and then you went your way, and you
knew why Menelaus had made such a nuisance of himself about Helen, for,
like him, you had known, and loved, and had been loved by a marvellous
woman; but, unlike that persistent Argive, you dimly realised that
if she turned you down in the quick end, then that was probably your
fault--and, anyway, it is only an indecent sort of man who quibbles
about the pain after the pleasure. And for many years after that,
long after you had married a steady young woman, you were Consuelo's
devoted friend--and, by God, she was your devoted friend too! I never
knew a woman break so many hearts and patch up so many quarrels as
Consuelo; but it is generally the sort of woman who looks on fidelity
and infidelity as moods rather than principles who makes the truest and
sincerest friend....
"But I envied my friend Carew overmuch, as even my English denseness
about these things found out soon enough. She loved him for six months,
and she detested him for years. And she grew to hate him so bitterly
that Tristram Carew, the most jealous and unrestrained man I ever knew,
was at last persuaded to let her divorce him. For, mind you, that woman
was strong. She had personality at the back of her power to charm--and
a rare, dangerous kindliness which makes it impossible for one's love
for her to be goaded into dislike. There wasn't a drop of affectation
in her, she was just an almost perfect type of that 'modern' woman who
has held her place in the life and poetry and prose of ages, from the
wife of Uriah to Mary Stuart, and onwards to Consuelo; women born with
just that mixture of essential breeding and adventurousness which will
turn the heads of most normal and decent men, and leave them gaping
and grovelling and smiling at their own damn-foolishness in thinking
that such a woman could ever have loved them! I said 'normal and decent
men' because it seems almost invariably to be the poor old _sahibs_ who
fall in love with this type of woman--while the outsiders step in and
take them, and leave them. Anyway, it seems always to be your 'manly'
man who odes the grovelling and the effeminate man to be the master of
women. Just a theory, of course....
"But I've been wandering disgracefully all over the place, for I set
out to tell you that, at the end of a few years, Tristram at last
realised what a mess she and he had made of it together, and then, dear
fellow that he really was, he sat up and swallowed his gruel, and put
her in the way of divorcing him, as a gentleman should.
"But all that, of course, happened much later. My life touched theirs,
or hers in particular, if you like, only in the first year of their
marriage, when I used to see a great deal of them during the season
at their house in South Audley Street; and more week-ends than not I
spent with them at Carew's place in Wiltshire.... He was a very queer
sort of fellow, full of odd enthusiasms and intolerances, un-English
in his incessant contempt for the regularities and pretences of life,
though English enough in his hearty manner of showing that contempt.
He was strange, too arrogantly made to care much whether he was found
acceptable or unacceptable by others, and therefore a man without
friends, because, poor fool, 'he preferred his own and Consuelo's
company'; and even so he didn't love his young wife half as much as he
would have done if he weren't certain that she worshipped him--though
that childish contempt for happiness, as it can be called, was well
punished in those wretched years later on, when his six foot odd of
manhood must have made begging grotesques on the floor while she,
perhaps pitying him, was as cruel as only a surfeited woman can be
cruel--and, my God, how cruel!... The man's nature, being what it was,
then, you can well understand that, quite literally, he had no friends,
and that I was about the only man he could rub along with, the only man
that he liked, in fact; while, as for myself, although in the ordinary
way I couldn't have borne his particular sort of arrogance too long,
I would have suffered all the one-eyed giants in the nether-world for
the sake of being near that chit of a girl, as she was then; and as,
indeed, she always was, except to the men who bored her with too much
love.
"Besides, if one has set out to be a cad for once in a way, one may as
well do the thing properly--so I had to get on with Tristram, or else
no Consuelo! Of course there's nothing in the world to be said for my
behaviour, it was rotten-bad. Instead of running away, I hung on, and
did all I could to make my friend's wife love me one tenth as much as
I loved her. And you will notice that there was no limit to my utter
rottenness--I not only tried all I could to snatch the man's wife, but
accepted his hospitality as a means to that end. If I ever heard of any
son of mine doing the like of that by a friend, I'd send him to the
deuce without a penny--and, anyway, the young cub wouldn't have such an
excuse, such a marvellous excuse as Consuelo!
"There's a lot of stuff talked about 'unrequited love,' and how men
can go on loving a woman even though they get kicked downstairs by the
butler every time they mention it; you know what I mean. Most men I
suppose, are like you and I, we couldn't go on and on loving a woman
who made simply no return for it, who 'repulsed our advances,' as it
were. For one is human, after all, and, love or no love, I can't think
that any woman ever repulsed a man's advances for long without, in the
end, also repulsing him back to his club and his cocktails. All this,
of course, is my way of telling you that Consuelo liked me well enough
in her way, else I wouldn't have loved her so unwisely. Of course she
liked me! What young woman won't like a young man who, without being
too repulsive to look at, and with a certain reputation for polo and
scholarship (as I had then), pesters her insistently with besotted
but cynical attentions, in which there is no pretence of that platonic
limitation which is all that any good woman should expect from her
husband's best friend?
"'You more than like me,' I suggested to her once, (with that conceit
peculiar to gentlemen when they're alone with women who they know
won't tell on them to other gentlemen) and she answered that I amused
and flattered her, and that she liked my particular way of being in
love--though God knows there was nothing 'particular' in it except my
contemptible behaviour to Tristram. But that was said later on, for as
I told you she stayed in love with her husband for a whole six months,
and even then she didn't react violently, but gently--just enough to
keep him in his place, and to allow her to sit up and take notice again
of other young men. And as I happened to be the only other young man on
the spot, in whose eyes, only too obviously to her, lurked more than
the pure light of friendship, I--well, damn it, that's prologue enough,
isn't it?
"There wasn't the smallest jemmy missing from my burglar's outfit, you
see; I had been waiting and watching, and with more cunning than you
could believe possible in a common-or-garden Englishman; until one
afternoon, when I was having tea with her in South Audley Street, I
grabbed her up and kissed her....
"My cynicism, if it was cynicism, was born of my knowledge of Consuelo,
for being in love without idealising, I really knew Consuelo. I knew
her very well, what sort of a woman she was and what sort of a man she
liked, and under what conditions. I had all her moods and preferences
and tendencies tabulated in my mind, together with footnotes,
extensions and derivations--but not possible results! Poor, poor
Consuelo!
"I knew, you see, exactly what sort of a man Consuelo found dull
and dismal--that is, when she was bored at home and had begun to
cast her eyes abroad for her amusement; and if there is one man more
than another whom a certain sort of woman finds bitterly dull, that
is the friend of the husband who loves but dare not love the wife,
because he is a friend of the husband--a good and sufficient reason
for the likes of you and I, but not for our young woman, who finds
the 'beef-and-beer' type of man quite too devastating. Of course
only a very few, deplorable, charming women are like that; and we
friendship-respecting men wouldn't take much notice of 'em, if they
didn't, cussedly enough, happen to be the most attractive of their
sex. Most women, thank the Lord, have a very real respect for men's
friendships--but we are not talking of 'most women,' we are talking
of Consuelo, who was neither a witch nor a whore, but whose fault and
misfortune simply lay in her having no anchor in any sort of code of
respectability.
"To get back to the actual point (which is always the most boring
part of any story, don't you think?), one somehow didn't get much
'forrarder' with the affair. She just didn't seem to love me that way,
and was too much of an artist in life to deceive herself with a forced
passion when she had already tasted with Tristram, and might perhaps
again taste, the real, the consummate thing. We fenced with foils,
then, and she had the thrills without the wounds. But it was a very
special game, with very queer rules and restrictions, which I learnt
from her gradually as we went along; and so played the game as well as
I could, for all my deadly seriousness. But it was an unfair one, there
was nothing in its rules to provide for certain contingencies which
might leave one of the players helpless and beaten before the game even
began; it was unfair, because, like death, it was played with loaded
dice--she simply didn't love me enough!
"Then again, after those first simple six months of domesticity,
something developed in Consuelo and she began to change every day; she
began to grow into what she later became in the eyes of an interested
public, a 'leading beauty' of the day. Leading beauties are quite
common these days, one has only to sit any day in the Ritz _foyer_
at lunchtime to see a crowd of the slim, oval faced things; though
God knows whom they 'lead' nowadays, unless it's photographers and
publicans. But thirty or forty years ago, as you know, they were quite
rare and wondrous; just three or four of 'em, and by Royal Appointment
as it were, and people used to stand upon the chairs along Rotten Row
to have a better view of them as they rode or walked by. Well, Consuelo
began to grow up like that, and as she only too perfectly looked the
part there were only a few disgruntled 'old friends' like myself who
complained of the change in her, and how she was being taken from us by
a crowd of deplorable women and vapid young men who ought never to have
been allowed to leave school. And already, at her ridiculous age, she
had a mild reputation for breaking hearts in a casual sort of way....
Tristram, of course, wasn't at all of her way of thinking, and tried to
hold her back, but she just smiled at him and told him not to be silly;
she had not then begun to dislike him, she felt very tenderly about
him, as a woman sometimes does feel about a _ci-devant_ lover, even if
he also happens to be her husband.
"So, in that time of sudden development into 'the beautiful Mrs.
Carew,' it wasn't unnatural that our affair remained, well, indefinite,
and that from being 'the only other person' I became one of a crowd of
crawling young men--and not all so very young either! I may have been
a little more favoured than any one else, in fact now that I look back
on it I see that I was, but at the time I didn't notice it, and I was
bitter.
"Thus and thus, we drifted on for about three months--until I lost my
temper. At that time I had rather a good thing in the way of tempers;
it didn't explode suddenly and pass away into the lumber room of
past follies, but it simmered and waned and waxed and seethed for
a dangerous two weeks or more--and when it died, many other things
somehow died with it. My extravagant love for Consuelo Carew died with
my first and last fit of brooding temper at her indecision. Indecision
indeed! Poor fool that I was, I didn't see that she was undecided
because she didn't love enough, and that, being the absolute slave of
her emotions, her decision would be born the very same moment as her
love--poor, happy devil, whoever he might be, might have been!
"'You can't run a team,' I had said to her bitterly at the opening
performance, as it were, of my dangerous state. And, mind you, I
thought I had some right to my bad temper, because all this time she
had been saying that she loved me--but, but, but the memory of her
love for Tristram was so recent, and remembering how utterly she had
loved him made her cautious of trusting too blindly to this repetition
of that same emotion; 'for it seems quite the same, so I suppose that
I must love you,' she said so sweetly that I can't blame Jupiter for
withholding his thunderbolt. If I would only wait.... But I had, and
wouldn't any more.
"Those two sour weeks contained the last phase of the game. I was
fixing her down to that eternal 'something definite,' and I took a
real, cruel pleasure in frightening her--for she was fond enough of
me to be frightened at my strange lapse from the door-mat, ox-eyed
amiability to which I had so far treated her. That was the only time I
was ever near to being top-dog in the affair, those two weeks when I
had her in a corner and made her gradually realise that it must be 'one
thing or the other'; and that, best weapon of all for such a woman, I
was past the stage when I would mind very much if it was 'the other.'
She knew that I had the bit in my teeth and was going to run away, even
if I had to live as a celibate ever after--which, believe me, is what I
seriously told her I must become!
"I say that she was frightened at my sudden twist, but I am not at all
sure if it was fright; it may have been just a pretty pretence of it,
for she was too polished, too 'right,' to let an old friend go without
showing him that she would miss him--'so marvellously much, you dear!'
"But, fright or pretence, no regrets at losing me could influence her
in the least to yield to what, when the time came with some luckier
wretch, she would yield with such whole-hearted abandon that I can
quite understand how she sincerely thought, and sometimes said, that
each new lover was her last and ultimate fate....
"The strange incident to which I referred at the beginning of my long
and tiresome tale happened on the last night of those two weeks, which
was also the last night on which I ever mentioned the word 'love' to
Consuelo Carew; in fact, I did not see her again until ten or eleven
years later.... Tristram, Consuelo, myself, and a crowd of others
were staying down at the Portairleys' for a long week-end. During the
last ten days in which I had so far retained my loss of temper I had
thrown caution to the winds, I had got absolutely reckless in the way
I badgered Consuelo--and Tristram for the first time began to suspect
that there was more than friendliness in my feelings for his wife. She
begged me to take care, for Tristram let loose meant hell for some
one, and that some one would not be Tristram, for he was a good head
taller than any bad-tempered man has a right to be. He had no more than
a faint suspicion, but that faintness was fierce enough to be fanned
into manslaughter at the smallest provocation. I'm not a coward, but
it really is unwise to play the fool with unreasonable people like
Tristram, and so on the Friday and Saturday at the Portairleys' I
stepped warily and curbed my dash a good deal. And everything was all
right until Sunday night after dinner....
"I don't remember who the others of the party were, except, of course,
just the man of the incident; and I'm not even quite certain if the
man I have in my mind was that one in particular, because I had no
means of knowing exactly, as I will explain. Anyway, the one I mean was
just a vague young man like myself, whom I had never happened to meet
before, and would have scarcely noticed then if I hadn't felt that he
was in love with Consuelo; not so hopelessly or helplessly, either, as
becomes a discreet gentleman.
"I don't know if you know the Portairley's place? The summer house is
about two hundred yards west of the house, at the end of a narrow,
twisting gravel path which suddenly turns to its very door; and it
is almost entirely shut in by shrubbery of sorts, and, at that time
in full bloom, caressing its walls and roof were the sprays of lilac
trees--how well I remember the scent of 'em that wretched evening!
"On Sunday I woke up in a state of chronic irritation against the young
man; and as the day wore on became gradually more reckless again,
until, at about ten o'clock at night, I somehow managed to inveigle
Consuelo out on to the pretty, pretty lawn--and from there to the
summer house wasn't a long way for an immaturely bitter man to drag an
unwilling but careless young woman!
"We sat there, and between puffs of my cigar, and quite thoughtfully,
I told her exactly what I thought of her; all the pent-up emotions of
nine damnable months loosed themselves from my mind, and overriding my
every decent instinct, found a brutal expression on my lips. Are you
too 'sophisticated,' I wonder, to let me suggest that sinful thoughts
have their own special punishment? that they react too articulately,
they force themselves out in the end in a bitter wash of words--perhaps
cleansing? That was my punishment, anyway, to _have_ to say those
things that night, while she listened and looked horribly sorry. And,
you know, she _was_ sorry.... I had it all my own way, and, in my vile
state, I must have said all the bitter and beastly things that a man
can say to a woman; but she only listened, maddeningly! I can't now
imagine why she didn't rise and leave me; and then I may have crawled
after her, or I may not--I don't know.
"Then, in the sudden reaction quite common, I believe, in such scenes,
I began to take all I could of the worthless, surface things a woman,
if she sets her teeth, can give a man; but she didn't even trouble to
'set her teeth,' she seemed more unattainable, more mocking, the more
my lips touched her. She somehow made a doll of herself, and let me
maul her about as I liked--but so uselessly, for though I ruffled her
and myself I simply couldn't ruffle that smile! It was there right
through, symbolic of my helplessness, a very sweet and tender smile,
but sad, for she was pitying me. And at last she said very quietly: "If
ever I had loved you, dear, and perhaps I may have, I wouldn't now be
loving you any more. Because, don't you see, you have been doing all
you can, you've emptied out all your box of tricks into my unworthy
little lap, you've been working away ever so hard at making me love
you--and even though the moon is shining through that window, and the
scent of the lilac is sweetening this musty little place, I simply
can't, my dear, feel romantic enough with you to dream that your kisses
are the fairy-tales they should be. They are just kisses, and perhaps
very nice in their way, but they don't mean anything. They don't mean
rare things. Kisses which aren't fairy-tales never do.... I'm so, so
sorry, you know (that cheek is getting worn away, but do try the other
one, I'm told it's just as good) because I realise what I'm missing,
for you would make a perfect lover, bless you. But, as it is, when your
silly heart is mended again, some luckier woman will be grateful to me
for having taught you to love properly, and for having brought out in
you that particular mixture of brutality and delicacy which would be so
thrilling if only it thrilled me! And after all the nasty things you've
been saying to me it's pleasant to imagine some one sometime thinking
quite nice thoughts about me....'
"What can one do with that sort of woman! More than twenty years have
passed since then, and I suppose I've collected an odd bit of sense
here and there, as one does--but in such a circumstance I should be as
helpless now as I was then. It would have been easy enough to give up
the chase if she had shown a real distaste, physical, mental, any way,
for me, but she didn't--there she was, quiescent in my arms, and I, for
the first and last time in my life, was as unrestrained as a Dago....
And it was just at that moment, worst moment of all, that we heard
steps on the gravel path by which we had come. We heard the steady,
crunching sound, and pulled quickly apart, staring at each other. They
were coming nearer, there could only be one goal for them, the end of
the path--at the open door! Only a few seconds divided those steady
steps from us, there was nothing to be done. Consuelo was feverishly
trying to tidy her hair. It was impossible to do the one obvious thing,
to get up and close the door and hope that the intruder would turn
at the end of the path--impossible because the door was unhinged and
useless, and because, we knew, the intruder could only be Tristram
Carew, for whom a closed door would mean certain proof....
"We waited breathlessly. For the first time, I noticed my crumpled,
burnt out cigar, and I was going to throw it on the floor when I
remembered just in time that the sight of its ruffled, unsmoked state
would give the show away. Just beside me was a little window, its glass
long since smashed out. The steps were perhaps five yards away now, and
I blessed the winding path which hid us from him until he was actually
at the very door....
"Consuelo suddenly whispered fiercely, 'We must talk, you fool,' and
began talking about something as loudly and as casually as she could.
And then, and then, as I lifted my arm to throw my cigar out of the
window into the shrubbery, a hand came in from outside, from below,
just a hand, and very, very carefully, for between the fingers of that
hand was a cigar with a long ash. I didn't think, I hadn't time to be
surprised at the amazing fact of it; threw my cigar away and gently
took the cigar from the fingers. I knew what it meant--that long
undisturbed ash! My God, how gentle I was with it, my whole soul went
out into the care with which I brought it towards me! I didn't even see
the mysterious hand disappear, I hadn't time to think of it....
"Consuelo hadn't stopped talking during that second or so, for the
incident was only a matter of that. We were about two feet apart on the
bench. I held my cigar as prominently as I could, just above my knee,
and prayed that the ash wouldn't drop for just another fraction of a
second--and I passed a box of matches to Consuelo, whispering her to
strike one. Tristram was just at the last turn of the path to the door,
in one more step he would be facing us.
"'Hallo!' I interrupted Consuelo's flow of gibberish. 'I wonder who
that is!'
"And as I said it Consuelo struck a match--and the giant of a man
filled the doorway! Striking the match was an obvious thing to do, for
any one in the doorway had his back to the moonlight and was therefore
indistinguishable to us--and besides the light of the match would help
the moonlight to show him my excellent cigar-ash! But I was damned
frightened--Tristram's face, in that sudden dim light, wasn't angry,
his eyes weren't wild, but heavy, sullen. Oh, one can't express these
things in words. He wasn't melodramatic, he was cold, too cold. His
eyes were on me, not on her.
"'Hallo, Tristram!' I just managed to say. And then, with a flash of
absolute genius, Consuelo backed up with, 'But don't please ask him to
join our happy party, for he looks so bad-tempered that he might spoil
your cigar-ash just out of spite.'
"And that _was_ genius at that crucial moment. It cut the ground from
under Tristram's feet, he looked surprised--and he saw my cigar! The
moment was passing. A long cigar-ash and even the shortest love-affair
can't go together, even to the most suspicious mind--and Tristram,
thank Heavens, had his moments of extraordinary simplicity. I raised my
cigar.
"'Oh, damn!' I said. The ash had at last revolted.
"'There you are, I told you he'd spoil it!' Consuelo said quickly.
"'I haven't even touched the thing!' Tristram protested--and we both
really breathed for the first time since, two or three minutes before,
we had heard the steps on the path....
"Well, that's all there is of it, the incident, and you must forgive
me if I've taken a tiresome long time to get to it. Tristram, she, and
I sat on in the summer house for an half-hour or so, talking rather
constrainedly, but, anyway, peacefully. He showed that he had lost
his trust in me, that he at last realised our friendship was over;
his suspicions weren't more than allayed. But for the time being he
simply hadn't anything to work on, for it wasn't so very unnatural
that Consuelo, old friend as she was of mine, should sit by me in the
summerhouse while I smoked my after-dinner cigar; and I wasn't going
to give him another chance, because in that half-hour during which we
sat on there I realised that Consuelo really wasn't for me, and that I
was only making a fool of myself without advantage to anybody--and I
decided with the last bit of strength I had left in me to do what I did
the next morning, to run away. And, as I said, I didn't see her again
for about ten years, and then very casually....
"As we sat on there for half an hour or so I couldn't of course lay my
hands on the young man who had been eavesdropping outside the window
and had stood me in such amazingly good stead. But it really was a
strange and wonderful thing to do--to have even thought of doing that
particular thing! And still more wonderful for such a little cad to
have done it, for of course he was a cad to have been there at all.
I knew that it simply couldn't have been any one else but the young
man whom I've mentioned as being in love with Consuelo. He must have
seen Consuelo and I steal away into the garden, and followed us down
to the summer-house, and sat there in the shrubbery under the window,
listening to every word we said and calmly smoking his cigar--that
priceless cigar! And then, when he heard the steps on the gravel path
he had the wit to know that the climatic conditions in the summer-house
were about to become unsettled--and, on a noble impulse, did what he
did, and then faded away. I didn't see him in the morning, as I left
by the earliest train. What could one say, anyway? He was a cad, and a
gentleman, that's all."
We had turned into Clarges Street, and were almost at my door. As he
finished I took his arm.
"You are wrong about his being a cad," I said, "because he didn't
follow you two out to the summer-house at all. He was there a good five
minutes before you--not in the summer-house but just behind it, for,
poor fool, he was trying to choose the most perfect lilac bloom for the
most beautiful and imperfect lady in the world. And when she suddenly
turned up with the horrible young man who had been drifting round
her all day--well, he just sat down on the ground under the window,
cursed life and cursed women, and smoked his cigar. I didn't stay to
listen, I was too angry to move, that's all. You see, she had given
me an appointment to meet her in the summer-house at ten o'clock that
night...."
We were at my door. He smiled, a little self-consciously, through the
short silence.
"You will please forgive me," he said, almost nervously. "And for more
than accusing you falsely, or for boring you with the yarn at all. For
I certainly wouldn't have told it to you so, well, intimately, if,
up in the Hallidays' drawing-room I hadn't half recognised you. Very
dimly, of course.... One's memory plays one queer tricks sometimes,
doesn't it? To retain, however dimly, and vaguely, a face seen twenty
years ago! And so I followed you out.... So Consuelo had told you to
meet her at the summer-house that night!
"I can almost understand now," he said slowly, "how she died as she
did. Life on those lines must have got too complicated.
"Good-night--my friend!" he said.