EXPLOIT THE FOURTH.
HE BURIES AN OLD LOVE.
I.
THE LONELY LADY.
That class distinctions are invidious, that one man is as good as
another, are theorems which find no place in O’Hagan’s philosophy. His
whole life is a protest against such propositions. He complains that
there is no badge peculiar to the gentleman; that the latest
morning-coat from Savile Row is colourably imitated, and within a week,
by Rye Lane, Peckham. Hence, I take it, his broad, black ribbon with the
dependent monocle, his purple-lined cloak.
These things are not imitated, and for a simple reason. O’Hagan’s cloak
makes no appeal to Peckham, and leaves even Hampstead cold.
O’Hagan holds that to tolerate scurrility from the lower classes is to
encourage rebellion, and maintains that the French Revolution was
brought about, not by the vices of the nobility, but by its weakness.
“Spare the axe and spoil the people,” he says.
Upon the necessity for a sort of patrician purple, distinctive of the
gentleman, he is insistent, and the episode illustrative of this which
he is fond of citing is that of the lonely lady of the Strand.
Captain O’Hagan, then, one evening, was swinging westward along that
thoroughfare, hatless, as usual, in evening dress, with his purple-lined
cloak flying. Idle curiosity induced him to stroll down that narrow,
sloping way which terminates in dungeonesque darkness and arches, but
which leads one to the stage-door of the Novelty Theatre. At the end of
the passage upon which the stage-door opens there may sometimes be found
sundry loafers. The inexperienced might assume these to be connected
with the Novelty establishment, but would err in so doing. They are
connected with a much older establishment; the ancient order of
Mouchers.
As O’Hagan came abreast of this place, the sole representative of the
ancient order on duty that evening, with a headshake, an upward and a
downward glance, and an evil smile, dismissed the inquiry of a young
lady who, timidly, had addressed him, and hastened to meet a party of
three American comedians as they descended from their car.
The lady, who was quite young, and simply dressed in a dark walking
habit, flushed with mortification, and then became very pale as she
turned away.
O’Hagan’s blood boiled within his veins. It is such a simple, everyday
incident as this which renders him really terrible. He hastened after
the lady, who was walking slowly in the direction of Charing Cross, and
touched her gently upon the arm.
“Madame—your pardon!”
She turned, startled.
“That fellow at the stage-door was rude to you. I beg, as a favour, that
you will grant me permission to reprimand him.”
The lady, unmistakably, was displeased. She was dark, and, as O’Hagan
observed with aesthetic appreciation, of a delicately aristocratic
beauty.
“You are mistaken. Pray do not trouble.”
(“How,” O’Hagan will ask, “could she be expected to know that a stranger
addressing her in the Strand was one in whose discretion she might
safely confide? To permit any boor to endue a dress suit is to kill
chivalry.”)
“Madame, I beg that you will not misjudge me. I am not mistaken, neither
in my surmise nor as to my plain duty. I do not know your name, nor seek
to learn it. Mine is Captain O’Hagan. And had you been a flower-seller I
should as staunchly have disputed my right to protect you from insult as
I do knowing you to be of my own rank.”
She was bewildered. My friend is essentially bewildering. He is not a
person whom any man or any woman can hope to snub—to overlook. He comes
into one’s life, a tangible proposition, which cannot be ignored; which,
unavoidably, must be _dealt with_.
“I do not know you, sir. I really cannot stand here conversing with a
perfect stranger.” Then, with a little, half-doubting glance up to the
fine eyes: “Are you one of the O’Hagans of Dunnamore?”
O’Hagan bowed as no other man, though you search the courts of Europe,
can bow.
“Then, Captain O’Hagan, since you are a gentleman, please forget about
the door-porter. Believe me, I have troubles enough without seeking new
ones.”
There was pathos in the words, in her low, quivering voice.
“I cannot doubt it. And, since you know my family, you may know that its
name stands stainless for seven generations. You should not be here, at
this hour, alone. In the absence of a father, of a brother, accept my
escort. It is in no way encumbent upon you to accept my friendship,
though it would be devoted and disinterested.”
She was biting her lip now, in pathetic perplexity; but there was a new
confidence in the glance which she gave him. It was the glance of a
woman who sorely lacked a friend, and into whose heart the conviction
was stealing that heaven had sent her one.
“You are more than kind, Captain O’Hagan.” Now she met his eyes frankly.
Her decision was made. “I am—Lady Brian Dillon.”
(“You see, Raymond,” he has since explained to me, “there was more than
mere chance in my unaccountable decision to explore that passage. Fate,
my boy—fate!”)
He took the gloved hand which she offered with a pretty embarrassment,
and bent over it in his unique, courtier fashion.
“I have never met your husband, Lady Dillon. But his late father, Sir
John, was one of my dearest friends. I regard you, now, as that dear
friend’s daughter, and since Fate has brought us both here to-night, I
regard your interests as a sacred charge. You are in trouble. How can I
serve you?”
—————
II.
AT THE STAGE DOOR.
I doubt if London could furnish another man—a father confessor
excepted—who, in so brief a time, could have learnt from the young Lady
Dillon so much of her history as did O’Hagan. Side by side, they paced
up and down a comparatively quiet street dipping riverward, and the girl
(for she was no more) confided in this man, whom, twenty minutes
earlier, she had not known.
Does not that argue eloquently for my friend? Does it not make amends
for much that seems harsh in his nature? For although, alas! women often
are deceived in men, a woman’s instincts can never err in such case as
this; a true woman, as this one, never pours out the trouble with which
her heart is bursting, to a knave—to a blackguard. I defy you to
confute me. Be it remembered that, by a trick of Fate—or shall we say
Providence?—these two had friends in common. Nor be it forgot that, for
fifty miles north, south, east and west of Dunnamore, “the honour of an
O’Hagan” is a form of oath. But, nevertheless, I maintain that there is
something grandly and expansively human—something splendid and true—in
the nature of a man whom at such brief acquaintance a good woman _knows_
to be worthy of her confidence. Don’t you agree with me?
“Of course I remember your wedding!” said O’Hagan. “Bless my soul! you
were a Miss Sheila Cavanagh! As a child you must have been at Dunnamore
many a time! Why! we are quite old friends! You are not married three
months, yet?”
“Ten weeks,” replied Lady Dillon, pathetically.
“And simply because your husband, Sir Brian, saw you walking in St.
James’s Park with a gentleman——”
“He has not spoken to me—for four days!”—brokenly.
“And now he is waiting on the stage of the Novelty for a Miss Betty
Chatterton, late of the Folly Theatre, whom formerly he admired——”
“—He used to go about with her a lot, I know!”
“And this gentleman with whom you were walking?”
Lady Dillon looked away.
“Ah,” said O’Hagan sadly, “you have been indiscreet. He was an old
admirer?” (nod). “Persistent, unscrupulous?” (nod)—“and you were
sending this fellow about his business?”
She looked up to him as, of old, looked Menippus Lycius to Apollonius of
Tyana; as to one omniscient—yet, crowning wonder, as to a favourite
brother. Such is the timbre of my friend’s exquisite sympathy. Is it not
a divine gift?
“How can you possibly know that?”
“My dear Lady Dillon—you have told me! Does your husband know this
person?”
“He knows _of_ him. But he has never even asked me his name. I thought
he understood that I did not care and never had cared for the man. Oh!
why did I see him? Why did I see him? But I feared that, unless I
definitely dismissed him, he would compromise me!”
“My poor child!” He patted her arm, soothingly. There are phases of his
patronage which are healing. One absorbs his condescension gratefully,
as a penitent receiving absolution from a holy cardinal. “You see, your
marriage was a family arrangement, and your husband is uncertain of your
affections. This regrettable incident has convinced him—wrongly—that
from your point of view it is merely a _mariage de convenance_. His
flirtation is a harmless one. He is, I dare swear, eating his heart out!
But the pride of the Dillons has him by the throat. My dear little
lady—leave him to me!”
She looked up to him wonderingly again; but, with something of the
touching confidence of a child, permitted him to conduct her Strandward.
“Captain O’Hagan! I could never, never explain to him! That is why I
dare not speak! He would _never_ forgive me for seeing him again—would
never understand——”
“Leave it entirely in my hands! _I_ will do the explaining! Simply
accept my explanation, and decline in any way to enlarge upon it. You
shall not be compromised, because I know you do not deserve it. Neither
shall that hare-brained husband of yours compromise another girl out of
mere _pique_.”
She said nothing to that. In the Strand, opposite the Novelty:
“That is your car yonder?” asked O’Hagan.
“Oh! don’t let Priestman see me!” cried Lady Dillon. “I was afraid he
would see me when I spoke to that wretch at the door!”
“You are perfectly certain that your husband is in the theatre?”
“Yes! yes! I don’t know why I asked that man! But, indeed, I don’t know
what possessed me at all! Oh! Captain O’Hagan, I am so miserable!”
“Boy!” said O’Hagan to a passing urchin—“tell the chauffeur of the
Rolls Royce yonder, to pull around here!”
Off ran the boy.
“But——” began Lady Dillon.
O’Hagan patted her arm. The chauffeur, having received the boy’s
message, could be seen looking in their direction. Presently he walked
across to where they stood. Recognising Lady Dillon, he stared; then
touched his cap.
“I ordered you to bring the car over,” said O’Hagan, icily.
“Sir Brian”——began the man.
“Did you understand my words?”
The chauffeur ran back, and in a few moments the big car was drawn up to
the kerb. O’Hagan placed Lady Dillon comfortably in a cushioned corner.
“Good-night, dear Lady Dillon,” he said. “I will bring Brian home to you
very shortly!”
Her wondering, tearful eyes never left his face. To the now deferential
though badly embarrassed man:
“Home!” said O’Hagan.
Off moved the smoothly-running car. Whilst she could see him where he
stood, Lady Dillon never took her eyes from the tall, cloaked figure of
this old friend of old friends and one so newly found, of this
astonishing Samaritan who had promised to restore to her the gladness of
life. With picturesque head bowed he waited until the Rolls Royce was
lost from view, one gloved hand resting upon the heavy ebony cane, the
other, ungloved, dangling from two long fingers the monocle dependent on
its black silk ribbon.
It is a never-ending source of regret to me that we have no Velasquez
to-day. Captain the Hon. Bernard O’Hagan would inspire such an one to a
great masterpiece.
My friend returned to the narrow alley-way, descended it, and stood
before the unofficial deputy for the baggage-man, whose treatment of
Lady Dillon had occasioned his just resentment. In his dealings with
such as this, O’Hagan can be terrible. To him he addressed no word.
Dropping his monocle, he seized the fellow by the ear (with his gloved
hand) and dragged the agonised face closely to his own haughty
countenance. The feat was seemingly performed effortless—such is the
outstanding wonder of that Judo, or Higher Jiu-jitsu, whereof Shashu
Myuku of Nagasaki is the Grand Master. There are not six Europeans,
O’Hagan will tell you, who have been initiated into the occultry of the
Japanese super-force.
“You recently insulted a lady who inquired if Sir Brian Dillon had
entered the stage-door. Down on your knees, you sot—and beg for
pardon!”
Obedient to a power which, seemingly entering at the ear, proceeded
thence through every tortured nerve of his person, rendering him
helpless, inert, down dropped the big, hulking figure. It chanced that
none was there to see. Yet the exhibition was an odd one.
“Repeat, after me, ‘I humbly beg, sir——’”
“Police!” gasped the man, and strove to get at O’Hagan with his hands.
Abruptly he dropped them; his big face grew livid. The Captain, holding
the ear in that vice-grip, had merely turned it slightly backward. The
man groaned; beads of perspiration started on his brow.
“Repeat, after me, ‘I humbly beg, sir, for the lady’s pardon.’”
Faintly:
“I humbly . . . beg, sir . . . for . . . my Gawd! . . . the lidy’s
pardon!”
“And abjectly entreat you to forgive me!”
“And . . . abjec . . . abjec’y entreat . . . you to forgive . . . me!”
“Get up!”
The victim struggled erect. He met the quelling gaze.
“Any repetition of the offence means that my man will wait upon you—and
bring a horse-whip!”
The fellow scrambled aside, and raised a quivering hand to his forehead.
Captain O’Hagan, swinging his monocle, strode to the stage-door.
—————
III.
IN THE DRESSING-ROOM.
To the stage door-keeper said O’Hagan:
“Has Miss Chatterton appeared yet?”
“She has, sir.”
“Is she in her dressing-room?”
“I believe so, sir.”
“Has she a private dressing-room?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Is she dressed, yet?”
“She must be, sir. She finished over half-an-hour ago, and a gentleman
went up some time since.”
“What number is her room?”
“It’s Number Six, sir, but——”
Captain O’Hagan placed half-a-crown upon the window-ledge and stepped
along the passage.
“Excuse me, sir!” The man came running from his box.
O’Hagan turned, glass raised.
“You wished to speak to me?”
“Thank you very much, sir, but I must take your card through first,
or——”
“My name is Captain O’Hagan. I have business with Miss Chatterton.” He
proceeded, unruffled.
“You’ll get me into trouble, sir——”
O’Hagan, over his shoulder:
“I esteem your regard for duty, my man. Rely upon me.”
He was gone. The door-keeper scratched his head.
Ascending a flight of stone steps, the Captain came to a landing, a door
opening upon it. The door was ajar and bore no number, but voices might
be heard proceeding from the room beyond. O’Hagan rapped, and opened the
door.
Several gentlemen, in several stages of undress, all looked up from
their several toilettes.
“I fear I intrude,” said O’Hagan, holding his monocle before his right
eye and examining the occupants of the apartment with a kind of genial
curiosity. “I wish to find room number six.”
“Next floor, second door,” volunteered a young man in underwear.
“I am indebted.”
O’Hagan withdrew and proceeded upstairs. Room six showed a closed door.
O’Hagan knocked.
“Who’s there?” inquired a masculine voice.
O’Hagan entered.
A golden-headed lady, who was arranging a rare exotic in hats upon her
elaborate coiffure, fixed wondering eyes upon the intruder. A maid
glanced up from where she knelt beside a large basket; and a
dark-haired, perfectly groomed young man, of military bearing, rose
hurriedly from his seat upon a second and even larger basket.
Captain O’Hagan bowed.
“Miss Chatterton, your pardon. Sir Brian Dillon, I presume? Might I ask
you, my good girl”—to the staring maid—“to withdraw.”
He held the door open.
“Here, I say!” burst out Miss Chatterton. “Who are you? What’s it all
about——”
“I am Captain O’Hagan. I have a family matter to discuss with Sir Brian;
and I wish you, Miss Chatterton, to be present.”
He waved his monocle towards the maid, and then in the direction of the
open door. The girl stood up, looked at her mistress, but saw her to be
as helpless as herself; looked at the forceful new arrival, and slowly
went out. O’Hagan closed the door. Two pairs of wondering eyes followed
his every movement. My friend has a singular quality of personality. I
believe he could so enter the House of Lords as to visit consternation
upon every peer present, and to set the bishops reviewing their pasts
with grave misgivings. Bernard O’Hagan is a mannerist of genius.
Sir Brian Dillon cleared his throat.
“If I might venture on a remark,” he said, with an angry gleam in his
grey eyes, “what do you want, and who the devil _are_ you?”
O’Hagan wound the black ribbon about his right forefinger.
“I am the gentleman,” he replied, with frigid distinctness, “whom you
saw walking with Lady Dillon in St. James’s Park some days ago, and I am
here to _demand_ an explanation!”
Have you sometimes, at a proper and sombre social function, dreamed of
what would happen if some bold spirit rose up and sang one of Mr. George
Robey’s sprightliest songs? Have you even contemplated, in what I may
term horrified delight, the effect of a loudly uttered swear-word upon a
gathering of elders? This remark of O’Hagan’s produced that sort of
effect.
Betty Chatterton slowly sank down into an armchair, never removing her
gaze from the last speaker. Sir Brian’s eyes opened wider and yet wider.
He bit his lower lip—and took a step forward. He halted.
“_You_,” he began—and his tone was different from that of his normal
speech—“_you_ are here, to demand an explanation of _me_! You admit
that you are——”
“I beg,” O’Hagan interrupted him, “that you will not refer to my
statement as an admission. I am proud of my name, and proud of my
friendship with your wife. You have wronged her, and you wrong Miss
Chatterton. Particularly, you have wronged _me_. It is for this—for
your gross insult to myself—that I am here to call you to account!”
Dillon nearly choked; and his fingers twitched convulsively. He
believed, and with a large and generous trust had sought no word from
his wife in aye or nay, that it had been another than himself who first
had won her love. Later, he believed that his trust had been misplaced,
had been betrayed; that the unknown who had played some part, great or
small, in her life before he, Brian, came into it, was indeed lord of
the kingdom that he madly had thought his own.
Now the usurper stood before him, his attitude neither apologetic nor
explanatory—not that of the offender but of the offended! “—To call me
to account!” echoed Dillon, in a voice sunken almost to a whisper.
That form of words was the crowning affront of all. It summoned into
being the primeval savage which dwells somewhere within every man of
Celtic stock. It was this primitive being, whose tribal pride had
stifled relenting—denied the woman fair speech and trial—and not the
cultured modern man, with whom O’Hagan was come to deal.
“Betty”—Dillon’s speech was thick as that of a drunkard—“would you
mind postponing the supper?” He swallowed, dryly. “I will see you—to
the car. Forgive me, but to-night——”
“_I_ will see Miss Chatterton to a cab,” interrupted O’Hagan’s icy
voice. “I have sent Lady Dillon home in the car. _You_ will await me
here——”
Dillon clenched his fists: his nostrils dilated. In that instant my
friend came more nearly to an unseemly embroilment than ever in his
surprising career.
“Brian!”
Betty Chatterton sprang to Dillon, clutching his arm.
“Miss Chatterton,” continued O’Hagan, “I beg you to accept my escort. It
will be better if we go at once.”
She looked from man to man, and grew pale to the lips. Sir Brian
glassily stared directly at O’Hagan and ignored the hand that clung to
his rigid arm. The girl released her clasp and turned imploring blue
eyes upon the Captain.
“Oh, Captain O’Hagan,” she said, “there is some dreadful mistake! If you
think—ah! how can I say what I mean? _Will_ you believe me”—she
frankly met his gaze—“if I tell you that Sir Brian and I are just
chums?” Her eyes were flooded with tears. “He is awfully—dreadfully
unhappy about . . .” She laid her hand hesitatingly upon O’Hagan’s arm.
“I know you have done him no wrong. Won’t you believe _me_, too? Can’t
we be friends?”
(“I had anticipated something altogether more vulgar, Raymond,” O’Hagan
recently informed me. “I will confess that I was surprised and
delighted. Miss Chatterton had the instincts of a lady and the
generosity of a gentleman! A really lovable nature, my boy. That
infernal ass deserved nothing so fine as her friendship!”)
The Captain raised her hand to his lips, bending over it with stately
courtesy. Again their eyes met—and these two understood one another.
“Betty,” began Dillon, advancing.
She turned to him.
“Stay where you are, Brian,” she said, with a sudden note of command.
“You must see that I don’t want to be mixed up in your quarrels.
And—Captain O’Hagan is right. We cannot expect the world to understand
us. You shouldn’t have come here to-night. No, I’m not angry with you,
silly boy—but it wasn’t fair to me. I can see that, now. You had nearly
made a big mistake, Brian. Good-bye.”
She held out her hand, firmly. Dillon turned away.
“All right,” she said, and shrugged her shoulders. “You’ll know I was a
real pal one day.”
She leant lightly upon O’Hagan’s arm; and the two left the room. She
smiled bravely as they passed the stage door-keeper and bade him
cheerily good-night.
(“Gad, Raymond!” says O’Hagan, “that girl was a brick; for she was every
bit as much in love with Dillon as Dillon was in love with his wife!”)
—————
IV.
THE SNOWS OF THE YUKON.
O’Hagan, with some research, recently established the fact, in the case
of Betty Chatterton, that “there was good blood on the mother’s side.” I
fancy he slept better after that. As a child of the people (I use my
friend’s phraseology) Miss Chatterton was a disturbing element in the
Captain’s philosophy.
He turned to the dressing-room. Let us accompany him.
On the landing stood the maid.
“Please, sir,” said she, timidly, “may I go in and finish packing the
basket?”
“Presently, my good girl,” replied the Captain, “presently.”
Sir Brian Dillon was seated where O’Hagan first had found him. He was
smoking a cigarette. His face was somewhat pale.
He rose, as the Captain entered, and very deliberately threw the
cigarette into the tiny hearth. To any but a student of indications, he
must have appeared quite composed. O’Hagan knew it to be otherwise. Yet
he was unprepared for Dillon’s action. Dillon, silently, leapt at him
across the room!
I say he was unprepared. In a certain sense he was. But, on the other
hand, a pupil of Myuku is never unprepared. O’Hagan dropped his cane,
instinctively (the Higher Jiu-jitsu is essentially instinctive). He
grasped the fist which whizzed within half an inch of his right ear,
performing one of those lightning movements unachievable by any other
man of my acquaintance. He thrust it up. He twisted it to the
right—down—and doubled the arm behind Dillon’s back. Daintily, he
clasped the other wrist and held the left arm inert, outstretched at an
angle of forty-five from his opponent’s side.
This, you may know, is a simple trick, which can be performed, with
luck, by several members, individually, of the Metropolitan and City
Police forces.
Dillon made one attempt to break away—and then stood still, looking
back across his shoulder at O’Hagan.
“By God, I’ll kill you!”
There was something shocking in the murderous intent which beaconed from
his eyes.
“Later, you shall be afforded every opportunity. But, first, you must
hear me. Shall I release you?”
No humiliation can equal that which it is in the power of the expert
Jiu-Jitsuist to inflict. An enraged man, though he be outclassed,
overweighted, may fight to the last and keep his pride. But this supreme
inertia, this being petrified, posed as for a ballroom scene in a
“living-picture,” with frenzied anger boiling in the veins and no muscle
responding to the mind’s urgent commands, is something that must be
experienced fully to be appreciated.
Dillon panted.
“If I release you,” added O’Hagan icily, “it will be upon parole; upon
the understanding that you conserve your resentment for a more fitting
time.”
“Release me!”
“Upon that understanding?”
“Curse you! . . . _yes!_”
O’Hagan dropped his hands, stepped back to the little mantelpiece and
leaned upon it, raising his monocle before his right eye.
“Sir Brian Dillon,” he said deliberately, “you may have heard my name;
for I knew your father well.”
The other’s fingers twitched. He glared directly at O’Hagan, and thrust
his hands deeply in his pockets.
“Your father would have known the gross nature of your insult to me.
Strong man as you are, he would have forced you to apologise, or have
knocked you down. Do your memories bear me out?”
Dillon swallowed, emotionally.
“You add insult to the most awful injury one man can inflict upon
another——”
“Stop!” O’Hagan’s big eyes blazed. He took a step forward. “Stop! By
God, sir, if you presume to cast such an innuendo in my face I will
break your neck, though I hang for it!”
There was a species of subdued ferocity in his manner that had forced
conviction upon anyone. No man born of woman could have doubted him.
“You slander me. It is no excuse that you do so, thinking I am he who
died on the Yukon border last March.”
A puzzled expression mingled and conflicted with the others which
flitted across Dillon’s face.
“Since Sheila Cavanagh and I met at Dunnamore Castle—a childish meeting
which your wife had forgotten—we never had set eyes upon each other
until that day in St. James’s Park. Despite the passage of years, I knew
her again. How dare you—I repeat, sir, how dare you presume to deny me
the privilege of your wife’s friendship!”
Dillon’s expression changed again—to one of bewilderment.
“Then,” he gasped, “you are not——”
O’Hagan raised his head.
“Let him rest in peace,” he said sternly. “He was an honourable man,
unfortunate in love. You wrong him villainously. If she had cared for
him he would be alive to-day. It was something very like suicide—and
therefore I charge you, Brian Dillon, never to breathe a word of his
unhappy end, never to speak his name to your wife.”
“I don’t know his name. How do you——”
“I buried him in the snow!” said Captain O’Hagan with impressive
finality.
Dillon dropped limply on to the big property-basket.
“Then Sheila never cared for him! And he is dead! And it was you, an old
friend, and a friend of my father’s, whom——”
“You have been a villain to her!—a villain to Miss Chatterton—doubly a
villain to me!——”
Sir Brian sprang up, his face boyish, bright with a glad contrition.
“Captain O’Hagan!” he cried, “will you take my hand? A hundred thousand
times I apologise! _Can_ you forgive me! Do you think Sheila can?”
* * * * *
“At such times,” my mendacious friend has informed me, “to lie becomes a
virtue. Dillon distrusted his wife’s old admirer—whose name he had
quixotically, though fortunately, avoided learning. Therefore,
preparatory to peace, the anonymous gentleman had to be whitewashed. His
whitewashing accomplished, next, in order to insure Dillon’s silence
respecting his history, he had to be buried for ever.
“I buried him in the eternal snows, Raymond. What more appropriate tomb
for the rejected lover?”