on something else. You--you--neither of you have told me yet," she
stammered, "but I am such an old friend of both that I will not be
kept out of the secret." At these words Marion's air of triumphant
gayety vanished; she regarded Helen's troubled eyes closely and
kindly.
"What secret, Helen?" she asked.
"I came to the door of Philip's room the other day when you did not
know I was there," Helen answered, "and I could not help seeing how
matters were. And I do congratulate you both--and wish you--oh, such
happiness!" Without a word Marion dragged her back down the passage to
her dressing-room, and closed the door.
"Now tell me what you mean," she said.
"I am sorry if I discovered anything you didn't want known yet," said
Helen, "but the door was open. Mr. Wimpole had just left you and had
not shut it, and I could not help seeing."
Marion interrupted her with an eager exclamation of enlightenment.
"Oh, you were there, then," she cried. "And you?" she asked,
eagerly--"you thought Phil cared for me--that we are engaged, and it
hurt you; you are sorry? Tell me," she demanded, "are you sorry?"
Helen drew back and stretched out her hand toward the door.
"How can you!" she exclaimed, indignantly. "You have no right."
Marion stood between her and the door.
"I have every right," she said, "to help my friends, and I want to
help you and Philip. And, indeed, I do hope you _are_ sorry. I
hope you are miserable. And I'm glad you saw me kiss him. That was the
first and the last time, and I did it because I was happy and glad for
him; and because I love him, too, but not in the least in the way he
loves you. No one ever loved any one as he loves you. And it's time
you found it out. And if I have helped to make you find it out, I'm
glad, and I don't care how much I hurt you."
"Marion!" exclaimed Helen, "what does it mean? Do you mean that you
are not engaged; that--"
"Certainly not," Marion answered. "I am going to marry Reggie. It is
you that Philip loves, and I am very sorry for you that you don't love
him."
Helen clasped Marion's hands in both of hers.
"But, Marion!" she cried, "I do, oh, I do!"
* * * * *
There was a thick yellow fog the next morning, and with it rain and a
sticky, depressing dampness which crept through the window-panes, and
which neither a fire nor blazing gas-jets could overcome.
Philip stood in front of the fireplace with the morning papers piled
high on the centre-table and scattered over the room about him.
He had read them all, and he knew now what it was to wake up famous,
but he could not taste it. Now that it had come it meant nothing, and
that it was so complete a triumph only made it the harder. In his most
optimistic dreams he had never imagined success so satisfying as the
reality had proved to be; but in his dreams Helen had always held the
chief part, and without her, success seemed only to mock him.
He wanted to lay it all before her, to say, "If you are pleased, I am
happy. If you are satisfied, then I am content. It was done for you,
and I am wholly yours, and all that I do is yours." And, as though in
answer to his thoughts, there was an instant knock at the door, and
Helen entered the room and stood smiling at him across the table.
Her eyes were lit with excitement, and spoke with many emotions, and
her cheeks were brilliant with color. He had never seen her look more
beautiful.
"Why, Helen!" he exclaimed, "how good of you to come. Is there
anything wrong? Is anything the matter?"
She tried to speak, but faltered, and smiled at him appealingly.
"What is it?" he asked in great concern.
Helen drew in her breath quickly, and at the same moment motioned him
away--and he stepped back and stood watching her in much perplexity.
With her eyes fixed on his she raised her hands to her head, and her
fingers fumbled with the knot of her veil. She pulled it loose, and
then, with a sudden courage, lifted her hat proudly, as though it were
a coronet, and placed it between them on his table.
"Philip," she stammered, with the tears in her voice and eyes, "if you
will let me--I have come to stay."
The table was no longer between them. He caught her in his arms and
kissed her face and her uncovered head again and again. From outside
the rain beat drearily and the fog rolled through the street, but
inside before the fire the two young people sat close together, asking
eager questions or sitting in silence, staring at the flames with
wondering, happy eyes.
The Lion and the Unicorn saw them only once again. It was a month
later when they stopped in front of the shop in a four-wheeler, with
their baggage mixed on top of it, and steamer-labels pasted over every
trunk.
"And, oh, Prentiss!" Carroll called from the cab-window. "I came near
forgetting. I promised to gild the Lion and the Unicorn if I won out
in London. So have it done, please, and send the bill to me. For I've
won out all right." And then he shut the door of the cab, and they
drove away forever.
"Nice gal, that," growled the Lion. "I always liked her. I am glad
they've settled it at last."
The Unicorn sighed sentimentally. "The other one's worth two of her,"
he said.
THE LAST RIDE TOGETHER
A SKETCH CONTAINING THREE POINTS OF VIEW
_What the Poet Laureate wrote._
"There are girls in the Gold Reef City,
There are mothers and children too!
And they cry 'Hurry up for pity!'
So what can a brave man do?
"I suppose we were wrong, were mad men,
Still I think at the Judgment Day,
When God sifts the good from the bad men,
There'll be something more to say."
_What more the Lord Chief Justice found to say._
"In this case we know the immediate consequence of your crime. It has
been the loss of human life, it has been the disturbance of public
peace, it has been the creation of a certain sense of distrust of
public professions and of public faith.... The sentence of this Court
therefore is that, as to you, Leander Starr Jameson, you be confined
for a period of fifteen months without hard labor; that you, Sir John
Willoughby, have ten months' imprisonment; and that you, etc., etc."
_London Times, July 29th._
_What the Hon. "Reggie" Blake thought about it._
"H.M. HOLLOWAY PRISON,
July 28th.
"I am going to keep a diary while I am in prison, that is, if they
will let me. I never kept one before because I hadn't the time; when I
was home on leave there was too much going on to bother about it, and
when I was up country I always came back after a day's riding so tired
that I was too sleepy to write anything. And now that I have the time,
I won't have anything to write about. I fancy that more things
happened to me to-day than are likely to happen again for the next
eight months, so I will make this day take up as much room in the
diary as it can. I am writing this on the back of the paper the Warder
uses for his official reports, while he is hunting up cells to put us
in. We came down on him rather unexpectedly and he is nervous.
"Of course, I had prepared myself for this after a fashion, but now I
see that somehow I never really did think I would be in here, and all
my friends outside, and everything going on just the same as though I
wasn't alive somewhere. It's like telling yourself that your horse
can't possibly pull off a race, so that you won't mind so much if he
doesn't, but you always feel just as bad when he comes in a loser. A
man can't fool himself into thinking one way when he is hoping the
other.
"But I am glad it is over, and settled. It was a great bore not
knowing your luck and having the thing hanging over your head every
morning when you woke up. Indeed it it was quite a relief when the
counsel got all through arguing over those proclamations, and the
Chief Justice summed up, but I nearly went to sleep when I found he
was going all over it again to the jury. I didn't understand about
those proclamations myself and I'll lay a fiver the jury didn't
either. The Colonel said he didn't. I couldn't keep my mind on what
Russell was explaining about, and I got to thinking how much old
Justice Hawkins looked like the counsel in 'Alice in Wonderland' when
they tried the knave of spades for stealing the tarts. He has just the
same sort of a beak and the same sort of a wig, and I wondered why he
had his wig powdered and the others didn't. Pollock's wig had a hole
in the top; you could see it when he bent over to take notes. He was
always taking notes. I don't believe he understood about those
proclamations either; he never seemed to listen, anyway.
"The Chief Justice certainly didn't love us very much, that's sure;
and he wasn't going to let anybody else love us either. I felt quite
the Christian Martyr when Sir Edward was speaking in defense. He made
it sound as though we were all a lot of Adelphi heroes and ought to be
promoted and have medals, but when Lord Russell started in to read the
Riot Act at us I began to believe that hanging was too good for me.
I'm sure I never knew I was disturbing the peace of nations; it seems
like such a large order for a subaltern.
"But the worst was when they made us stand up before all those people
to be sentenced. I must say I felt shaky about the knees then, not
because I was afraid of what was coming, but because it was the first
time I had ever been pointed out before people, and made to feel
ashamed. And having those girls there, too, looking at one. That
wasn't just fair to us. It made me feel about ten years old, and I
remembered how the Head Master used to call me to his desk and say,
'Blake Senior, two pages of Horace and keep in bounds for a week.' And
then I heard our names and the months, and my name and 'eight months'
imprisonment,' and there was a bustle and murmur and the tipstaves
cried, 'Order in the Court,' and the Judges stood up and shook out
their big red skirts as though they were shaking off the contamination
of our presence and rustled away, and I sat down, wondering how long
eight months was, and wishing they'd given me as much as they gave
Jameson.
"They put us in a room together then, and our counsel said how sorry
they were, and shook hands, and went off to dinner and left us. I
thought they might have waited with us and been a little late for
dinner just that once; but no one waited except a lot of costers
outside whom we did not know. It was eight o'clock and still quite
light when we came out, and there was a line of four-wheelers and a
hansom ready for us. I'd been hoping they would take us out by the
Strand entrance, just because I'd liked to have seen it again, but
they marched us instead through the main quadrangle--a beastly, gloomy
courtyard that echoed, and out, into Carey Street--such a dirty,
gloomy street. The costers and clerks set up a sort of a cheer when we
came out, and one of them cried, 'God bless you, sir,' to the doctor,
but I was sorry they cheered. It seemed like kicking against the
umpire's decision. The Colonel and I got into a hansom together and we
trotted off into Chancery Lane and turned into Holborn. Most of the
shops were closed, and the streets looked empty, but there was a
lighted clock-face over Mooney's public house, and the hands stood at
a quarter past eight. I didn't know where Holloway was, and was hoping
they would have to take us through some decent streets to reach it;
but we didn't see a part of the city that meant anything to me, or
that I would choose to travel through again.
"Neither of us talked, and I imagined that the people in the streets
knew we were going to prison, and I kept my eyes on the enamel card on
the back of the apron. I suppose I read, 'Two-wheeled hackney
carriage: if hired and discharged within the four-mile limit, 1_s_.'
at least a hundred times. I got more sensible after a bit, and when we
had turned into Gray's Inn Road I looked up and saw a tram in front of
us with 'Holloway Road and King's X,' painted on the steps, and the
Colonel saw it about the same time I fancy, for we each looked at the
other, and the Colonel raised his eyebrows. It showed us that at least
the cabman knew where we were going.
"'They might have taken us for a turn through the West End first, I
think,' the Colonel said. 'I'd like to have had a look around,
wouldn't you? This isn't a cheerful neighborhood, is it?'
"There were a lot of children playing in St. Andrew's Gardens, and a
crowd of them ran out just as we passed, shrieking and laughing over
nothing, the way kiddies do, and that was about the only pleasant
sight in the ride. I had quite a turn when we came to the New Hospital
just beyond, for I thought it was Holloway, and it came over me what
eight months in such a place meant. I believe if I hadn't pulled
myself up sharp, I'd have jumped out into the street and run away. It
didn't last more than a few seconds, but I don't want any more like
them. I was afraid, afraid--there's no use pretending it was anything
else. I was in a dumb, silly funk, and I turned sick inside and shook,
as I have seen a horse shake when he shies at nothing and sweats and
trembles down his sides.
"During those few seconds it seemed to be more than I could stand; I
felt sure that I couldn't do it--that I'd go mad if they tried to
force me. The idea was so terrible--of not being master over your own
legs and arms, to have your flesh and blood and what brains God gave
you buried alive in stone walls as though they were in a safe with a
time-lock on the door set for eight months ahead. There's nothing to
be afraid of in a stone wall really, but it's the idea of the
thing--of not being free to move about, especially to a chap that has
always lived in the open as I have, and has had men under him. It was
no wonder I was in a funk for a minute. I'll bet a fiver the others
were, too, if they'll only own up to it. I don't mean for long, but
just when the idea first laid hold of them. Anyway, it was a good
lesson to me, and if I catch myself thinking of it again I'll whistle,
or talk to myself out loud and think of something cheerful. And I
don't mean to be one of those chaps who spends his time in jail
counting the stones in his cell, or training spiders, or measuring how
many of his steps make a mile, for madness lies that way. I mean to
sit tight and think of all the good times I've had, and go over them
in my mind very slowly, so as to make them last longer and remember
who was there and what we said, and the jokes and all that; I'll go
over house-parties I have been on, and the times I've had in the
Riviera, and scouting-parties Dr. Jim led up country when we were
taking Matabele Land.
"They say that if you're good here they give you things to read after
a month or two, and then I can read up all those instructive books
that a fellow never does read until he's laid up in bed.
"But that's crowding ahead a bit; I must keep to what happened to-day.
We struck York Road at the back of the Great Western Terminus, and I
half hoped we might see some chap we knew coming or going away: I
would like to have waved my hand to him. It would have been fun to
have seen his surprise the next morning when he read in the paper that
he had been bowing to jail-birds, and then I would like to have
cheated the tipstaves out of just one more friendly good-by. I wanted
to say good-by to somebody, but I really couldn't feel sorry to see
the last of any one of those we passed in the streets--they were such
a dirty, unhappy-looking lot, and the railroad wall ran on forever
apparently, and we might have been in a foreign country for all we
knew of it. There were just sooty gray brick tenements and gas-works
on one side, and the railroad cutting on the other, and semaphores and
telegraph wires overhead, and smoke and grime everywhere, it looked
exactly like the sort of street that should lead to a prison, and it
seemed a pity to take a smart hansom and a good cob into it.
"It was just a bit different from our last ride together--when we rode
through the night from Krugers-Dorp with hundreds of horses' hoofs
pounding on the soft veldt behind us, and the carbines clanking
against the stirrups as they swung on the sling belts. We were being
hunted then, harassed on either side, scurrying for our lives like the
Derby Dog in a race-track when every one hoots him and no man steps
out to help--we were sick for sleep, sick for food, lashed by the
rain, and we knew that we were beaten; but we were free still, and
under open skies with the derricks of the Rand rising like gallows on
our left, and Johannesburg only fifteen miles away."
MISS DELAMAR'S UNDERSTUDY
A young man runs two chances of marrying the wrong woman. He marries
her because she is beautiful, and because he persuades himself that
every other lovable attribute must be associated with such beauty, or
because she is in love with him. If this latter is the case, she gives
certain values to what he thinks and to what he says which no other
woman gives, and so he observes to himself, "This is the woman who
best understands _me_."
You can reverse this and say that young women run the same risks, but
as men are seldom beautiful, the first danger is eliminated. Women
still marry men, however, because they are loved by them, and in time
the woman grows to depend upon this love and to need it, and is not
content without it, and so she consents to marry the man for no other
reason than because he cares for her. For if a dog, even, runs up to
you wagging his tail and acting as though he were glad to see you, you
pat him on the head and say, "What a nice dog." You like him because
he likes you, and not because he belongs to a fine breed of animal and
could take blue ribbons at bench shows.
This is the story of a young man who was in love with a beautiful
woman, and who allowed her beauty to compensate him for many other
things. When she failed to understand what he said to her he smiled
and looked at her and forgave her at once, and when she began to grow
uninteresting, he would take up his hat and go away, and so he never
knew how very uninteresting she might possibly be if she were given
time enough in which to demonstrate the fact. He never considered
that, were he married to her, he could not take up his hat and go away
when she became uninteresting, and that her remarks, which were not
brilliant, could not be smiled away either. They would rise up and
greet him every morning, and would be the last thing he would hear at
night.
Miss Delamar's beauty was so conspicuous that to pretend not to notice
it was more foolish than well-bred. You got along more easily and
simply by accepting it at once, and referring to it, and enjoying its
effect upon other people. To go out of one's way to talk of other
things when every one, even Miss Delamar herself, knew what must be
uppermost in your mind, always seemed as absurd as to strain a point
in politeness, and to pretend not to notice that a guest had upset his
claret, or any other embarrassing fact. For Miss Delamar's beauty was
so distinctly embarrassing that this was the only way to meet it--to
smile and pass it over and to try, if possible, to get on to something
else. It was on account of this extraordinary quality in her
appearance that every one considered her beauty as something which
transcended her private ownership, and which belonged by right to the
polite world at large, to any one who could appreciate it properly,
just as though it were a sunset or a great work of art or of nature.
And so, when she gave away her photographs no one thought it meant
anything more serious than a recognition on her part of the fact that
it would have been unkind and selfish in her not to have shared the
enjoyment of so much loveliness with others.
Consequently, when she sent one of her largest and most aggravatingly
beautiful photographs to young Stuart, it was no sign that she cared
especially for him.
How much young Stuart cared for Miss Delamar, however, was an open
question and a condition yet to be discovered. That he cared for some
one, and cared so much that his imagination had begun to picture the
awful joys and responsibilities of marriage, was only too well known
to himself, and was a state of mind already suspected by his friends.
Stuart was a member of the New York bar, and the distinguished law
firm to which he belonged was very proud of its junior member, and
treated him with indulgence and affection, which was not unmixed with
amusement. For Stuart's legal knowledge had been gathered in many odd
corners of the globe, and was various and peculiar. It had been his
pleasure to study the laws by which men ruled other men in every
condition of life, and under every sun. The regulations of a new
mining camp were fraught with as great interest to him as the
accumulated precedents of the English Constitution, and he had
investigated the rulings of the mixed courts of Egypt and of the
government of the little Dutch republic near the Cape with as keen an
effort to comprehend as he had shown in studying the laws of the
American colonies and of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
But he was not always serious, and it sometimes happened that after he
had arrived at some queer little island where the native prince and
the English governor sat in judgment together, his interest in the
intricacies of their laws would give way to the more absorbing
occupation of chasing wild boar or shooting at tigers from the top of
an elephant. And so he was not only regarded as an authority on many
forms of government and of law, into which no one else had ever taken
the trouble to look, but his books on big game were eagerly read and
his articles in the magazines were earnestly discussed, whether they
told of the divorce laws of Dakota, and the legal rights of widows in
Cambodia, or the habits of the Mexican lion.
Stuart loved his work better than he knew, but how well he loved Miss
Delamar neither he nor his friends could tell. She was the most
beautiful and lovely creature that he had ever seen, and of that only
was he certain.
Stuart was sitting in the club one day when the conversation turned to
matrimony. He was among his own particular friends, the men before
whom he could speak seriously or foolishly without fear of being
misunderstood or of having what he said retold and spoiled in the
telling. There was Seldon, the actor, and Rives, who painted pictures,
and young Sloane, who travelled for pleasure and adventure, and
Weimer, who stayed at home and wrote for the reviews. They were all
bachelors, and very good friends, and jealously guarded their little
circle from the intrusion of either men or women.
"Of course the chief objection to marriage," Stuart said--it was the
very day in which the picture had been sent to his rooms--"is the old
one that you can't tell anything about it until you are committed to
it forever. It is a very silly thing to discuss even, because there is
no way of bringing it about, but there really should be some sort of a
preliminary trial. As the man says in the play, 'You wouldn't buy a
watch without testing it first.' You don't buy a hat even without
putting it on, and finding out whether it is becoming or not, or
whether your peculiar style of ugliness can stand it. And yet men go
gayly off and get married, and make the most awful promises, and alter
their whole order of life, and risk the happiness of some lovely
creature on trust, as it were, knowing absolutely nothing of the new
conditions and responsibilities of the life before them. Even a
river-pilot has to serve an apprenticeship before he gets a license,
and yet we are allowed to take just as great risks, and only because
we _want_ to take them. It's awful, and it's all wrong."
"Well, I don't see what one is going to do about it," commented young
Sloane, lightly, "except to get divorced. That road is always open."
Sloane was starting the next morning for the Somali Country, in
Abyssinia, to shoot rhinoceros, and his interest in matrimony was in
consequence somewhat slight.
"It isn't the fear of the responsibilities that keeps Stuart, nor any
one of us back," said Weimer, contemptuously. "It's because we're
selfish. That's the whole truth of the matter. We love our work, or
our pleasure, or to knock about the world, better than we do any
particular woman. When one of us comes to love the woman best, his
conscience won't trouble him long about the responsibilities of
marrying her."
"Not at all," said Stuart. "I am quite sincere; I maintain that there
should be a preliminary stage. Of course there can't be, and it's
absurd to think of it, but it would save a lot of unhappiness."
"Well," said Seldon, dryly, "when you've invented a way to prevent
marriage from being a lottery, let me know, will you?" He stood up and
smiled nervously. "Any of you coming to see us to-night?" he asked.