AN INTERLUDE
I
As Mary made her way from Bridport House across the Park, in the
direction of Broad Place and luncheon, it came suddenly upon her
that she was in a state of the most abject misery she had ever been
in. It was a gorgeous midday of July, but the world had ceased to be
habitable. She had come up against a blank wall. At that moment there
was nothing in life to make it worth while.
In the ordeal she had just passed through a fierce pride had forbade
her to show one glimpse of her real feelings. She had carried off the
whole scene with almost an air of comedy, for she was determined that
“those people” should not realize what wounds it was in their power to
deal. But Dame Nature, now that she had the high-mettled creature to
herself, was having something to say to her on the matter. A price was
being exacted for these heroics and for this stoicism.
The Duke had left an impression of fine chivalry on a perceptive mind,
but in spite of that, now they were no longer face to face, her deepest
feeling was an angry resentment. Life was not playing fair. In the
course of a strenuous three and twenty years she had rubbed shoulders
with all sorts of men and women, but in spite of an honest catholicity
of outlook, she had come to the conclusion already that there was only
one kind for which she had any real use. It was not a question of
loaves and fishes, or a puerile snobbishness; it was simply that one
of the deepest instincts she had, the sense of the artist, demanded a
setting.
Walking along, blind to everything but the misery of this reaction,
she was suddenly brought up short, thrown as it were against the
world in its concrete reality, by the knowledge that a pair of eyes
was devouring her. Cutting across her path at an acute angle as he
converged upon her from the direction of Kensington Gardens was a man
wholly absorbed in the occupation of looking at her. With a start she
awoke to the force of his gaze; her subconscious perception of it was
so strong that it even aroused a tacit hostility.
Who was this large, lean, top-hatted creature striding towards her in a
pair of aggressively checked trousers? Where had she seen that freckled
face, those bold eyes, those prognathous jaws? As he came on he caught
her gaze and fixed it; but she dropped her eyes at once, adroitly
giving him only the line of her cheek to look at. Whoever he was, he
was not a gentleman!
In the next moment, however, she had begun to realize that he was
outside and beyond any trite symbol of that kind. He was less a man
than a natural force; moreover, as soon as he had passed her, he
stopped abruptly and turned round to follow her with his eyes. She did
not need to turn round herself to verify her sense of the act, even had
personal dignity not intervened to prevent her.
She felt annoyed. Again she asked herself who he could be. When and
where had she seen him? And then a light broke. It may have been the
checked trousers, it may have been the prognathous jaws, but her mind
was suddenly flung back upon that recent visit to Beaconsfield Villas,
and a certain unforgettable scene. This slightly fantastic figure was
no less a person than Lady Muriel’s fiancé, the new Home Secretary.
II
Crossing to Broad Place she could not check a laugh. Wounded, angry,
humiliated by the pressure of a recent event, there still lurked in her
a true appreciation of the human comedy. What a pill for Bridport House
to have to swallow! It was poetic justice that the pride which strained
at a gnat so harmless as herself should have to gulp a real live camel
in the person of the Right Honorable Gentleman.
But the laugh, after all, was hollow. Tears of vexation leaped to her
eyes. And they owed more to the perception of her own inadequacy in
this smarting hour than to the act of Fate. “Wretch that I am!” She was
ready to chasten herself with scorpions as she crossed the familiar
path into Albert Gate.
Within a very few yards were the loyal, warm-hearted friends of her
own orbit. And there, alas! was the rub. Her own orbit could not
satisfy her now. She craved something that all their kindness, their
cheerfulness, their frank affection could not give. “Just common or
garden snobbishness, my dear, that’s the nature of your complaint,”
whispered a monitor within. “You are no better than anyone else when
you are invited to call on a duke in Mount Street.”
That might be true, or it might not, but sore and rebellious as she
was, she was strongly inclined to dispute the verdict. After all, her
feeling went infinitely deeper. It was futile, however, to analyze it
now. This was not the place nor was there present opportunity. She
glanced at the watch on her wrist. It was one o’clock.
The watch on her wrist was as hostile as everything else in her
little world just now. Even one o’clock had a sharp sting of its own.
“Don’t be late for lunch,” had been Milly’s parting words. “Charley
Cheesewright is coming. And he’s dying to meet you.”
She managed to navigate the vortex of Knightsbridge without knowing
that she did so; and then, all at once, she realized that she was
within twenty yards of Victoria Mansions, and that a rather overdressed
young man was a few yards ahead.
With a feeling akin to nausea she pulled up in time to watch this
short, squat figure disappear within the precincts of Number Five. For
a reason she couldn’t explain she was quite sure that this was none
other than Mr. Charles Cheesewright. She didn’t know him; if a back
view meant anything she had no wish to know him; certainly she had no
desire to make his acquaintance going up in the lift.
She hung back a discreet three minutes on the pavement of Broad Place
before daring to enter the vestibule of Number Five, Victoria Mansions.
By then the coast was clear; Mr. Charles Cheesewright, apparently, had
gone up in the Otis elevator. And she stood on the mat, drawn and
tense, a figure of tragedy, waiting for the Otis elevator to come down
again.
III
At last the Otis elevator came down and she went up in it. And then
confronted by the door of the flat, she peered through the glass panel
to make sure that Mr. Charles Cheesewright was not standing the other
side of it; then she opened it with a furtive key, slipped in, and
stole past the half-open door of the tiny drawing-room through which
came the penetrating accents of Mrs. Wren attuned to the reception of
“company.”
Once in her own room her first act was to look in the glass with a
lurking sense of horror; the second was to decide, which she instantly
did, that it would be quite impossible to meet Mr. Cheesewright, and
that she didn’t need any luncheon.
By the time she had taken off her hat and made herself a little more
presentable, both these decisions had grown immutable. She could not
meet Mr. Cheesewright, she did _not_ want any luncheon. All she needed
was complete solitude, and perhaps a cigarette. But all too soon was
she ravished of even these modest requirements. Milly burst suddenly
into the room.
“Twenty past one!” she cried reproachfully. “I didn’t hear you come in.
We are waiting for you.”
Mary saw that her plan must be given up. If she really meant to forgo a
meal and the honor of Mr. Cheesewright’s acquaintance there would have
to be a satisfactory explanation. But what explanation could she make?
Certainly none that would conceal the truth. And at that moment she
wished almost savagely for it to be concealed. Confronted by a choice
of evils she made a dash at the less.
“I’m so sorry. I’ll be with you in one minute.”
Sheer pride forced her tone to a superhuman lightness, verging on
gayety. But there was a formidable member of her sex to deal with. In
spite of that heroic note, Milly was not to be taken in; she looked
at the dissembler with eyes that saw a great deal too much. “I expect
you’ve taken a pretty bad toss, my fine lady,” they seemed to say.
“I’ll be with you in one minute,” repeated Mary, with burning cheeks
and a beating heart. But Milly continued to stare. Suddenly she laid
impulsive hands on her shoulders and gave her a kiss.
Mary didn’t like kissing. Her friend’s proneness to the habit always
irritated her secretly; this present indulgence in it brought Mary as
near to active dislike as it would have been possible for her to get.
Milly went back to the drawing-room seething with an excited curiosity.
Before she could make up her mind to follow Mary stood a long moment in
black despair; and then “biting on the bullet,” as the soldiers say,
she went to join the others.
“Naughty girl!” was the arch reception of Mrs. Wren. “I’m very cross.
Didn’t you promise not to be late? But if you must call before lunch
on dukes in Park Lane I suppose people like us will have to take the
consequences.”
Mary would gladly have given a year’s salary for the head of Mrs. Wren
on a charger, but Milly intervened neatly with the presentation of Mr.
Cheesewright, in itself a little masterpiece of quiet humor.
Princess Bedalia’s reception of Mr. Charles Cheesewright was perhaps
the severest test to which her sterling goodness had been exposed.
Every nerve was on edge. She wanted to slay Mr. Cheesewright, braided
coat, turquoise tie-pin, diamond sleeve links, immaculate coiffure and
all. But for the sake of Milly she dragooned her feelings to the pitch
of bowing quite charmingly.
Luncheon, after all, was not so bad. Mrs. Wren was frankly at her worst
and most tactless; her one idea was to impress the guest, to let him
see that money was not everything, and that judged by her standards
he was a most ordinary young man. For such a democrat her table talk
was surprisingly full of Debrett. It was all very lacerating, but Mary
continued to play up as well as she knew how. And by the time the meal
was half over the reward of pure unselfishness came to her in the shape
of a quite unexpected liking for Mr. Charles Cheesewright.
By all the rules of the game, that is, if mere outward appearance went
for anything, Mr. Cheesewright should have been insufferable. But at
close quarters, with curried prawns and chablis before him, and a very
fine girl opposite, he was nothing of the kind. Mrs. Wren had confided
to Mary a week ago, “that she was afraid from what she had heard, that
he was not out of the top drawer.” The statement had been provoked by
an odious comparison with Wrexham, “who,” declared Milly in her most
aboriginal manner, “had, as far as mother was concerned, simply queered
the pitch for everybody.”
Perhaps in the eyes of Mary it was Mr. Cheesewright’s supreme merit
that, in spite of his clothes, he was modestly content to be his
humble self. In every way he was a very middling young man. But he
knew that he was and, in Mary’s opinion, that somehow saved him from
being something worse. Mrs. Wren was far from agreeing. His face and
form were plebeian, but there was no reason why he should take them
lying down. He was Eton and Cambridge certainly--or was it Harrow and
Oxford?--anyhow an adequate expression of a sound convention; and it
was for that reason no doubt that all through a particularly trying
meal he kept up his end bravely. In fact, he did so well that he earned
the gratitude of the young woman opposite, although he was far from
suspecting that he had done anything of the kind.
She had begun by counting the minutes and in looking ahead to the
time when she could retire with her wounds. But there was a peculiar
virtue in the meal; at any rate it agreed so well with the natural
constitution of Mr. Charles Cheesewright that he was able to relieve
the tension of the little dining-room without knowing it. He wasn’t
brilliant, certainly, but he talked plainly, sanely, modestly about the
things that mattered; the Brodotsky Venus at the Portman Gallery, the
miserable performance of Harrow, the new play at the Imperial, the sure
defeat of America’s Big Four, Mr. Jarvey’s new novel, the prospect of
the Kaiser lifting the pot at Cowes, and other matters of international
importance, so that by the time coffee and crême-de-menthe had rounded
up the meal, Mary was inclined to feel sorry that it was at an end.
When a few minutes before three Mr. Cheesewright went his way--to have
a net at Lord’s Cricket Ground--the famous Princess Bedalia felt a pang
of regret. He had played a pretty good innings already, even if he
didn’t seem to know it. And the honest shake of her hand did its best
to tell him so.
IV
As soon as Mr. Cheesewright had gone, Mary prepared to go too. But
before she could retire Milly and her mother were at her. Both had
a pretty shrewd suspicion that she had been making a sorry mess of
things at Bridport House. These ladies, however, were so cunning, that
they did not show their hands at once. To begin with, they exchanged
a glance full of meaning, and then as Mary got up and made for the
door, Mrs. Wren commanded her to sit down again and tell them what she
thought of Charley. That was guile. She didn’t in the least want to
know what anyone thought of Charley; besides, it would have been quite
possible for Mary to deliver her verdict even as she stood with the
knob of the door in her hand.
“I like him--_immensely_!” she said, returning to the sofa in deference
to Mrs. Wren.
Mother and daughter looked at her searchingly, with eyes that
questioned.
“I like him--immensely!” she repeated.
“He’s not the kind of man,” said Mrs. Wren with an air of vexation, “I
should have written home about when I was a girl.”
“What’s wrong with him?” said Milly, bridling. “Why do you always crab
him, mother?”
“I--crab him!” Mrs. Wren’s air was the perfection of injured innocence.
“Nothing of the kind. It isn’t his fault he’s not a blue blood--and
if my lord of Wrexham’s form is anything to go by, he may be none the
worse for that.”
“Yes, of course, as far as you are concerned Wrexham’s the fly in the
ointment,” said Milly with a sudden flutter of anger.
Mary would have given much to escape, but to have fled with thunder and
forked lightning in the air would have been an act of cowardice, not to
say treachery.
The truth was Mrs. Wren still had other views for Milly, but up till
now Wrexham had disappointed her. Moreover, both these clear-headed and
extremely practical ladies were inclined to think he would continue to
do so. For one thing he was under the thumb of his family, who were as
hostile as they could be; again Wrexham was a bit of a weakling who
didn’t quite know his own mind. Certainly he had a regard for Milly,
but whether it would enable him to wear a martyr’s crown was very
doubtful. Milly, at any rate, had allowed a second Richmond to enter
the field of her affections, in the shape of Mr. Charles Cheesewright,
the sole inheritor of Cheesewright’s Mixture, a young man of obscure
antecedents but of considerable wealth. So far Mr. Cheesewright had
received small encouragement from Mrs. Wren, and Milly herself had been
very guarded in her attitude; yet it was as plain as could be that
one of the more expensive of the public schools and one of the older
universities had made a little gentleman of Mr. Cheesewright. “But,”
as Milly said, “the truth was Wrexham had simply queered the pitch for
everybody.”
Mary, as the friend of all parties, including Mr. Cheesewright, who had
unexpectedly found favor in her sight, felt it to be her duty to stay
in the room, so that, if possible, oil might be poured on the troubled
waters. She had sense of acute discomfort, it was true; and it was
not made less by the sure knowledge that the heavy weapons mother and
daughter were using for the benefit of each other would soon be turned
against herself.
There was not long to wait for this prophecy to be fulfilled. As soon
as the ladies had cut off her retreat, they dropped the academic
subject of Mr. Cheesewright and bluntly demanded to know what was the
matter. It was vain for Mary to try to parry this expected attack.
Her friends, when their feelings were deeply stirred, indulged in a
sledge-hammer style of warfare, against which any ordinary kind of
defense was powerless.
“Don’t tell me,” said Mrs. Wren, “that you have let them bully you into
giving him up!”
This was what Milly was wont to call her mother’s “old Sadler’s Wells
touch” with a vengeance. The victim bit her lip sharply, but she
could not prevent the color from rushing to her cheeks and giving her
completely away.
“Why, of course she has!” cried Milly, looking at her pitilessly. “I
knew she would. I told you, my dear, she was set on doing something
fantastic. And here have I been telling Charley that one day she would
be a duchess.”
“I call it soppy,” said Mrs. Wren.
“Downright mental flabbiness,” cried Milly. “It’s the sort of thing a
girl would do in the _Family Herald_.”
Mary quailed before these taunts. Even if her friends had an
unconventional way of expressing themselves, it did not blind her
to the poignant nature of their emotions. In the tone of mother and
daughter was a note which showed how deeply they were wounded by her
moral weakness--they could consider it nothing else. And the bitterness
of the attack was the measure of their devotion. Mrs. Wren could hardly
restrain her tongue, Milly was at the verge of tears. Such a girl as
Mary Lawrence had no right to wreck two lives for a mere whim.
“You are nothing but a fool,” said Mrs. Wren. “You’ll never get such a
chance again. I’d like to shake you.”
Mary had no fight left in her. She sat on the sofa a picture of dismay.
For the first time she saw mother and daughter as they really were, in
all their native crudeness; yet when the worst was said of them they
had a generosity of soul which made them suffer on her account; and
that fact alone seemed to leave her at their mercy.
“You’ve no right to let them ruin your life and his,” said Milly
pitilessly.
“One simply can’t go where one isn’t wanted,” said Mary at last with a
face of ashes.
Mrs. Wren took up the phrase, the first the girl had been able to
utter in her own defense, and flung it back. “Not wanted forsooth!
Who are they that they should pick and choose! A dead charge on the
community--neither more nor less.”
“No one can’t,” said Mary, tormentedly. “How could one!”
“Rubbish!” said Mrs. Wren. “You can’t afford to be so proud. From the
way you talk you might be the Queen of England.”
The girl shook her head. “And it isn’t quite fair that they should have
to put up with me.”
Those unfortunate words were made to recoil upon her heavily. Both her
assailants were frankly amazed that she should want to look at the
matter from the enemy point of view. To such a mind as Mrs. Wren’s
it could only mean that Bridport House had hypnotized her with the
semblance of place and power.
“I could shake you,” re-affirmed the good lady. “A girl as first-rate
as you are has no right to be a snob.”
Somehow that barb was horrible. Nothing wounds like the truth.
Strong in the conviction that “she had got her” Mrs. Wren proceeded.
“You set as high a value on these people as they set on themselves.
It’s noodles like you who keep them up. What use are they anyway,
except to play the fool with honest folk?”
“Yes, that’s right,” said Milly with flashing eyes, as she took up the
parable. “Wrexham’s one of the same push. His lot simply won’t look at
me, yet I consider myself the equal of anyone. And I should make a very
good countess.”
Mary could only gasp. She was rather overcome by this naïveté.
“So you would, my dear,” said Mrs. Wren. “And one of these days you
will be a countess--if you don’t throw yourself away on Tom, Dick, and
Harry in the meantime.”
Mary was hard set not to break out in a hysterical laugh. She was in
the depths if ever soul was, yet the sense of humor is immortal and
survives every torment.
Fate, however, had not yet given the last turn to the screw.
V
At this moment the neat parlormaid came into the room.
“Mr. Dinneford!” she announced.
Jack stood a moment on the threshold to gaze at the three occupants. He
was rather like a sailor who fears foul weather and has not the courage
to read the sky.
“I’m glad you’ve come, young man,” said Mrs. Wren, getting up to
receive him. And she added almost at once, for it was never her way to
beat about the bush, “We are giving her the finest talking to she has
ever had in her life.”
Jack nearly groaned. The look of the three of them had told him already
that she must have made a fearful hash of things.
By now the Tenderfoot had risen very high in Mrs. Wren’s favor.
To begin with he would one day be the indubitable sixth Duke of
Bridport--a handicap, no doubt, in the sight of some types of democrat,
but apparently not, in the eyes of Mrs. Wren, an insuperable barrier.
Again, she was a pretty shrewd judge of a man, and this one had passed
all his examinations so far with flying colors. He was absolutely
straightforward, absolutely honorable; moreover, he knew his own
mind--whereby he had a signal advantage over his stable companion, who,
in spite of great merits, was lacking in character.
“Yes, we are setting her to rights,” said Milly, wrinkling a nose
of charming pugnacity. The face of the culprit was tense and rather
piteous, but Jack’s glance at it was perfectly remorseless.
“I knew she would,” he groaned.
“Knew she would what?” demanded Mrs. Wren.
“Let Uncle Albert down her,” was the prompt rejoinder.
“That didn’t want much guessing,” said Milly bitterly.
“Bridport-House-itis! That’s her trouble,” said Mrs. Wren. “And she
seems to have quite a bad form of the disease. I can’t understand
such a girl, I can’t really. To me she’s unnatural. If I found people
‘coming the heavy’ over me, I should just set my back to the wall and
say, ‘Very well, my fine friends, I’m now going to let you see that
Jane Wren is every bit as good as you are.’”
“So would any other reasonable being.” And that unpremeditated speech
of the Tenderfoot’s would have made Mrs. Wren his friend for life, had
she not become so already.
“That’s what I call sensible,” said she. “And there’s only one thing
for you to do now, young man, and that is to take her straight away and
marry her.”
At this point Mary got up from her sofa. But Mrs. Wren held one great
advantage; she had her back to the door. “You don’t leave this room, my
fine lady”--again “the old Sadler’s Wells touch,” and Jack and Milly
could not deny that it was rather superb--“until you realize that we
all think alike in this matter.”
“Quite so,” said the Tenderfoot, immensely stimulated by this powerful
backing. “Let us try to see the thing as it is. This isn’t a case for
high falutin’ sentiment. Bridport House is steeped in crass idiocy;
all the more reason, I say, that we give it no encouragement.”
“Quite so,” chimed Mrs. Wren.
“Quite so,” chimed Milly, who was irresistibly reminded of a recent
command performance of “Money.”
Mrs. Wren shook a histrionic finger at the luckless Mary, whose eyes
were seeking rather wildly a means of escape. “Don’t speak! Don’t
venture to say a word!” The victim had not shown the least disposition
to do so. “You simply haven’t a leg to stand on, you know.”
It was a shameful piece of bullying but the victim bore it stoically.
And it did not go on for long. Neither Mrs. Wren nor Milly was exactly
a fool. As soon as they saw that main force was not likely to help
them, and that more harm than good might be done by it, they decided to
leave the whole matter to Jack. They had expressed their own point of
view very fully, they knew that he could be trusted to make the most of
his case; besides, when all was said, he was the person best able to
deal with an entirely vexatious affair.
Of a sudden, the astute Milly flung a swift glance at her mother and
got up from her chair. And without another word on the subject, this
pair of conspirators dramatically withdrew.
VI
Such an exit from the scene was far more eloquent than words. And its
immediate effect was to plunge Jack and Mary with a haste that was
hardly decent, into what both felt was perilously like a final crisis.
Its very nature was of a sort that a finer diplomacy would have been
careful to avoid. But Jack, baffled and angry, was not in a mood to
temporize; besides, that was never his way.
The fine shades of emotion were not for him, but he had the perception
to feel that if he remained five minutes longer in that little room
the game might be lost irretrievably. In fact, it seemed to be lost
already. The specter of defeat was hovering round him; nay, it was
embodied in the very atmosphere he breathed.
Knowing the moment to be full of peril, he determined to force himself
to the greatest delicacy of which he was capable, for this might prove
the final throw. The look in her eyes seemed to tell him that all was
lost, but he would set the thought aside and act as if he were not
aware of it.
A long and very trying pause lent weight to this decision, and then
at last he said in a tone altogether different from the one he had
recently used, “Tell me, why are you so determined to keep a hardshell
like Uncle Albert on his pedestal?”
The form of the question provoked a wry little smile. “We poor females
are by nature conservative.”
“You are that,” he said. “Take you and me. We’ve both seen the world.
And the world has changed me altogether, but I should say it hasn’t
changed you at all.”
“No; I don’t think it has,” she admitted ruefully, “in the things that
are really important.”
“Six years ago, before I went West, I saw Bridport House at pretty
much the same angle you see it now. But I suppose if you get lumbering
timber, or living by your wits, or looking for gold in the Yukon, it
mighty soon comes home to you that it is only realities that count.
And the cold truth is that Bridport House simply isn’t a reality at
all.”
“There I can’t agree with you,” she said with a simple valor he was
bound to admire. “I haven’t seen the Yukon, but I’ve seen Bridport
House and it’s intensely real to me. Somehow the place is quite
wonderful. It works upon one like a charm.”
“I was a fool to let you go there.”
“But it only confirms my guesses.”
“Why, you are as bad as your Aunt Sanderson,” he burst out. “And you
haven’t her excuse. One can understand her point of view, although it’s
very extreme, and absurdly overdone, but yours, if you’ll let me say
so, is merely fanciful. Why you should be absolutely the last person in
the world to be hypnotized by mere rank and pride of place.”
“It isn’t that at all.”
“What is it, then?”
“It’s something I can’t explain, a kind of instinct, I suppose. Please
don’t think I’m overawed by vain shows. But there is such a thing as
tradition, at least there is to me, and every stick and stone of that
house simply glows with it.”
“Mere sentiment!”
“Oh, yes--I know--but sentiment’s the thing that rules the world.”
“Plain, practical common sense rules the world.”
“I mean the only world worth living in.”
He could do nothing with her, and the fact was now hurting him
horribly. A man used to his own way, of clear vision, and strong
will, he could not bear the thought of being sidetracked or thwarted.
Besides, her reasoning was demonstrably false. He was growing bitterly
annoyed but, after all, such a solicitude for others only added to her
value. Moreover, here was a nature almost fantastically fine, and for
decency’s sake he must constrain his egotism to respect her scruples.
But the sense of defeat was hard to bear. Since that morning’s fatal
visit to the Mecca of tradition her will had crystallized. There seemed
little hope of shaking it now.
“Let me ask one question,” he said tensely. “Do you still care for me?”
Before she could answer the question her breath came quickly, her color
mounted. And then she said in a low voice, “I do--I always shall.”
It was no use telling her she was a fool. She was grotesquely in the
wrong, even if she was sublimely in the right. He would like to have
shaken her--and yet how dare he sully her with a point of view which
was purely personal?
“I expect that old barbarian is laughing finely in his sleeve,” he said
with a sudden descent to another plane.
“You don’t read him right.” A warm throb of feeling was in her voice.
“He’s quite deep and true--and kind, so kind you would hardly believe.
When I went there this morning I felt I was going to hate him, and yet
I find I can’t.”
“You are an idealist,” he said. “And you’ve tuned up that old cracked
file to the pitch of your own sackbut and psaltery. He’s not fine in
any way if you see him as I do--but I’m an earthworm, of course. He’s
just a hardshell and an unbeliever, who runs tradition for all it’s
worth, because that means loaves and fishes for him and his.”
She countered this speech staunchly; it was not worthy of him. And
yet the tone of reproof was so gentle that it gave him new courage.
Besides, he was a born fighter and the mere thought of losing such a
prize was more than he could bear.
“You can’t go back on your word,” he burst out with sudden defiance.
“You made a promise that you’re bound to keep.”
The look in her eyes asked for pity. “Oh! I could never go there,” she
shivered, “among all those hostile women.”
“We will keep a thousand miles away from them.”
“They have told me I’m not good enough.”
“Like their damned impertinence!” He flushed with anger.
“But I promised this morning that I wouldn’t.”
“You first promised me that you would.”
Again he had her cornered. It was almost the act of a cad to drive her
so hard, but he was an elemental who had simply to obey the laws of his
being. It seemed madness and damnation to let her go. And yet there
were tears in her eyes which he dare not look at. If he saw them he was
done.
With a kind of savage joy he felt her weaken a little at the impact of
his will. It was a piece of cruelty for which there was no help, a form
of bullying he could not avoid.
“The best thing we can do,” he said suddenly, “is to get married
at once and then clear off to Canada. Then we shall be beyond the
jurisdiction of Bridport House.”
“That old man would never forgive me,” was the simple reply. “It would
make the whole thing quite hopeless for everybody.”
He checked the words at the tip of his tongue. She had no right to play
for the other side, but there was something in her bearing which shamed
him to silence. For the first time he was torn; this immolation of self
might be a deeper wisdom; at least he felt thin and shallow in its
presence.
“Won’t you help me?” She laid a hand on his. Tears were now running
down her cheeks.
He caught his breath sharply at the unexpected appeal; it was like the
fixing of a knife. There was no alternative; he saw at once with fatal
clearness that these four little words cut the ground from under his
feet.
“Of course I will,” he said miserably, “if that is how you really feel
about it.”
She bowed her head in the moment’s intensity. “Thank you,” she said
softly.
He could only gasp. Here was the end.
“We must forget each other,” she said stoically.
“Or ask the sun and moon to stand still,” he said. “I shall never marry
anyone else.”
She gave him the honest hand of the good comrade and he took it to his
lips.
“I shall go back to Canada.”
“Won’t you stay and help them?”
“No,” he said, “these stupid people have got on my nerves. Besides,
this city is not big enough to hold us both just now.”
“I intend to go to Paris and study for the opera.”
“No,” he said decisively. “This time next week I shall be on my way
back to Vancouver, unless----”
“Unless----?”
“Unless Bridport House can be made to forget the Parish Pump in the
meantime. And there’s hardly a chance of that.”