NUMBER THREE
It was the middle of November when I was shown once more into the old
room at the old number in Elm Park Gardens. There was a fire, the
windows were shut, and the electric light was a distinct improvement
when the maid put it on; otherwise all was exactly as I had left it in
August, and so often pictured it since. There was "Hope," presiding over
the shelf of poets, and here "Paolo and Francesca," reminiscent as ever
of Melbury Road, upon a wet Sunday, years and years ago. The day's
_Times_ and the week's _Spectator_ were not less prominent than the last
new problem novel; all three lay precisely where their predecessors had
always lain; and my own dead self stood in its own old place upon the
piano which had been in St. Helena with Napoleon. It is vanity's deserts
to come across these unnecessary memorials of a decently buried
boyhood; there is always something stultifying about them, and I longed
to confiscate this one of me.
But there was a photograph on the chimney-piece that interested me
keenly; it was evidently the very latest of Bob Evers, and I studied it
with a painful curiosity. Was the boy really altered, or did I only
imagine it from my secret knowledge of his affairs? To me he seemed
graver, more sedate, less angelically trustful in expression, and yet
something finer and manlier withal: to confirm the idea one had only to
compare this new one with the racket photograph now relegated to a rear
rank. The round-eyed look was gone. Had I here yet another memorial of
yet another buried boyhood? If so, I felt I was the sexton, and I might
be ashamed, and I was.
"Looking at Bob? Isn't it a dear one of him? You see--he is none the
worse!"
And Catherine Evers stood smiling as warmly, as gratefully, as she
grasped my hand; but with her warmth there was a certain nervousness of
manner, which had the odd effect of putting me perversely at my ease;
and I found myself looking critically at Catherine, really critically,
for I suppose the first time in my life.
"He is playing foot-ball," she continued, full as ever of her boy. "I
had a letter from him only this morning. He had his colours at Eton, you
know (he had them for everything there), but he never dreamt of getting
them at Cambridge, yet now he really thinks he has a chance! They tried
him the other day, and he kicked a goal. Dear old Bob! If he does get
them he will be a Blue and a half, he says. He writes so happily,
Duncan! I have so much to be thankful for--to thank you for!"
Yes, Catherine was good to look at; there was no doubt of it; and this
time she was not wearing any hat. Discoursing of the lad, she was
animated, eager, for once as exclamatory as her pen, with light and life
in every look of the thin intellectual face, in every glance of the
large, intellectual eyes, and in every intonation of the keen dry voice.
A sweet woman; a young woman; a woman with a full heart of love and
sympathy and tenderness--for Bob! Yet, when she thanked me at the end,
either upon an impulse, or because she thought she must, her eyes fell,
and again I detected that slight embarrassment which was none the less a
revelation, to me, in Catherine Evers, of all women in the world.
"We won't speak of that," I said, "if you don't mind. I am not proud of
it."
Catherine scanned me more narrowly. I knew her better with that look.
"Then tell me about yourself, and do sit down," she said, drawing a
chair near the fire, but sitting on the other side of it herself. "I
needn't ask you how you are. I never saw you looking so well. That comes
of going right away and not hurrying back. I think you were so wise!
But, Duncan, I am sorry to see both sticks still! Have you seen your man
since you came back?"
"I have."
"Well?"
"I'm afraid there's no more soldiering for me."
Catherine seemed more than sorry and disappointed; she looked quite
indignant with the eminent specialist who had finally pronounced this
opinion. Was I sure he was the very best man for that kind of thing? She
would have a second opinion, if she were me. Very well, then, a third
and fourth! If there was one man she pitied from the bottom of her
heart, it was the man without a profession or an occupation of some
kind. Catherine looked, however, as though her pity were almost akin to
horror.
"I have a trifle, luckily," I said. "I must try something else."
Catherine stared into the fire, as though thinking of something else for
me to try. She seemed full of apprehension on my account.
"Don't you worry about me," I went on. "I came here to talk about
somebody else, of course."
Catherine almost started.
"I've told you about Bob," she said, with a suspicious upward glance
from the fire.
"I don't mean Bob," said I, "or anything you may think I did for him or
you. I said just now that I didn't want to speak of it and no more I do.
Yet, as a matter of fact, I do want to speak to you about the lady in
that case."
Catherine's face betrayed the mixed emotions of relief and fresh alarm.
"You don't mean to say the creature--? But it's impossible. I heard from
Bob only this morning. He wrote so happily!"
I could not help smiling at the nature and quality of the alarm.
"They have seen nothing more of each other, if that's what you fear,"
said I. "But what I do want to speak about is this creature, as you call
her, and no one else. She has done nothing to deserve quite so much
contempt. I want you to be just to her, Catherine."
I was serious. I may have been ridiculous. Catherine evidently found me
so, for, after gauging me with that wry but humourous look which I knew
so well of old, for which I had been waiting this afternoon, she went
off into the decorous little fit of laughter in which it had invariably
ended.
"Forgive me, Duncan dear! But you do look so serious, and you _are_ so
dreadfully broad! I never was. I hope you remember that? Broad minds and
easy principles--the combination is inevitable. But, really though,
Duncan, is there anything to be said for her? Was she a possible
person, in any sense of the word?"
"Quite a probable person," I assured Catherine.
"But I have heard all sorts of things about her!"
"From Bob?"
"No, he never mentioned her."
"Nor me, perhaps?"
"Nor you, Duncan. I am afraid there may be just a drop of bad blood
there! You see, he looked upon you as a successful rival. You wrote and
told me so, if you remember, from some place on your way down from the
mountains. Your letter and Bob arrived the same night."
I nodded.
"It was so clever of you!" pursued Catherine. "Quite brilliant; but I
don't quite know what to say to your letting my baby climb that awful
Matterhorn; in a fog, too!"
And there was real though momentary reproach in the firelit face.
"I couldn't very well stop him, you know. Besides," I added, "it was
such a chance."
"Of what?"
"Of getting rid of Mrs. Lascelles. I thought you would think it worth
the risk."
"I do," declared Catherine, on due consultation with the fire. "I really
do! Bob is all I have--all I want--in this world, Duncan; and it may
seem a dreadful thing to say, and you mayn't believe it when I've said
it, but--yes!--I'd rather he had never come home at all than come home
married, at his age, and to an Indian widow, whose first husband had
divorced her! I mean it, Duncan; I do indeed!"
"I am sure you do," said I. "It was just what I said to myself."
"To think of my Bob being Number Three!" murmured Catherine, with that
plaintive drollery of hers which I had found irresistible in the days of
old.
I was able to resist it now. "So those were the things you heard?" I
remarked.
"Yes," said Catherine; "haven't you heard them?"
"I didn't need. I knew her in India years ago."
Catherine's eyes opened.
"_You_ knew this Mrs. Lascelles?"
"Before that was her name. I have also met her original husband. If you
had known him, you would be less hard on her."
Catherine's eyes were still wide open. They were rather hard eyes, after
all. "Why did you not tell me you had known her, when you wrote?" she
asked.
"It wouldn't have done any good. I did what you wanted done, you know. I
thought that was enough."
"It was enough," echoed Catherine, with a quick return of grace. She
looked into the fire. "I don't want to be hard upon the poor thing,
Duncan! I know you think we women always are, upon each other. But to
have come back married--at his age--to even the nicest woman in the
world! It would have been madness ... ruination ... Duncan, T'm going to
say something else that may shock you."
"Say away," said I.
Her voice had fallen. She was looking at me very narrowly, as if to
measure the effect of her unspoken words.
"I am not so very sure about marriage," she went on, "at any age! Don't
misunderstand me ... I was very happy ... but I for one could never
marry again ... and I am not sure that I ever want to see Bob...."
Catherine had spoken very gently, looking once more in the fire; when
she ceased there was a space of utter silence in the little room. Then
her eyes came back furtively to mine; and presently they were twinkling
with their old staid merriment.
"But to be Number Three!" she said again. "My poor old Bob!"
And she smiled upon me, tenderly, from the depths of her alter-egoism.
"Well," I said, "he never will be."
"God forbid!" cried Catherine.
"He has forbidden. It will never happen."
"Is she dead?" asked Catherine, but not too quickly for common decency.
She was not one to pass such bounds.
"Not that I know of."
It was hard to repress a sneer.
"Then what makes you so sure--that he never could?"
"Well, he never will in my time!"
"You are good to me," said Catherine, gratefully.
"Not a bit good," said I, "or--only to myself ... I have been good to no
one else in this whole matter. That's what it all amounts to, and that's
what I really came to tell you. Catherine ... I am married to her
myself!"
THE END