'is own fault, and that that poker trick didn't oughter be done on
less than a 'ole roll once a d'y. We give 'im the tommy, and at first
'e tried to eat slow. But it wasn't no use. 'E just seemed to in'ale
them beef and taters an' a 'ousehold loaf and four cups o' coker.
Mrs. Barker ackcherally larfed as she cut the slices. Women is funny,
guv'nor. She seemed to fergit 'er own trouble. Wouldn't 'ear of 'im
goin' away that night, but mide 'im up a bed in the passidge.
"Before I come aw'y it was arranged wot we was to do. I was to call for
'im in the morning and bring a suit of corduroys. We wos to go dahn
togevver and apply for Foxie's job fer 'im.
"There wasn't no trouble over that. I got dahn early and give my mites
the tile, and though the foreman wagged 'is mahth a bit, 'e saw there
was trouble comin' unless 'e give in. 'E went a bit slow the fust d'y
or so; but arter that there wasn't a better 'and, and in three weeks'
time the foreman give 'im charge of a gang on a job up Finchley w'y."
"And you became great friends, I suppose."
"Well, guv'nor, I won't s'y that. 'E wasn't a bloke you could tike
lib'ties wiv. Not enough wot I calls give an' tike abaht 'im. One 'er
two tried calling 'im 'the lodger' and was sorry. But we went 'ome
togevver and dahn to 'orsepittle of a Sund'y, and after Mrs. Barker
gone to Queen Charlotte my missus useter look in reglar. But I give
you my word there wasn't much as she could do. 'Owever early she come
round, there was the floor swep' an' the kids dressed and barfed--great
on barfs, 'e was: fussy I calls it--and 'avin' their breakfast and 'im
sluicin' 'isself in the passidge. Wonderful 'ow 'e could cook too.
Useter mike soup outer milk and vegitables. Never seed sich a thing,
nor my missus neither."
"When did he tell you his name?"
"I'm a-comin' to that. Fust night I arst 'im and 'e said 's nime was
'Bruvverhood.' Well, it might be; 'cos I worked for a firm 'o that nime
at Deptford--engineers they was. But one night soon after Barker's
missus gone aw'y, I got a letter from 'im askin' me to call. Funny,
I thought it, 'cos we'd come home togevver that evening. 'Owever, I
cleaned up and went rahnd. There 'e was in what 'e called the buzzum
of 'is fam'ly. Pretty sight it was. Young Ern was gone to the cawfy
concert at Syviour's Schools. There was 'im smokin' 'is pipe an'
little Effel wiv 'er curls brushed out recitin' a pome 'baht the night
afore Christmas, and anuvver little gel on 'is knee, and Gertie on the
floor pl'yin' wiv piper chickens wot 'e'd cut out. Schools was shut on
accahnt o' scarlet fever, and 'e'd bin teachin' them their lessons.
"'E jumped up and called in Mrs. Conder to put the kids to bed.
''Ammertoe,' 'e ses, w'en we was in the street--that's my nime with
my mites--''Ammertoe, I got to trust some one, and it's goin' ter be
you.' 'E pulls a bit o' piper out of 'is wescutt pocket. 'This 'ere's
a cheque,' 'e ses, 'an' I want you to go down termorrer and cash it
at the bank.' Well, remembering 'ow I'd met 'im, you c'ud a knocked
me over wiv a canary's wing fevver. 'You ain't done bad, matey,' I
ses, 'out of two munfs' navvyin',' 'No, I 'aven't bin long putting a
nest-egg by,' 'e ses, quietly. 'That's a fact,' I ses, very serious.
'What's your gime?' 'E 'anded me the bit o' piper and I read the nime
at the bottom. 'Ullo,' I ses, 'you're the bloke they're advertisn'
for--spoilin' some one's 'appiness--in the _Sund'y 'Erald_.'
'Yus,' 'e ses.' 'And that's wot I'm trustin' you with. Not the
money--that's nothin'.' 'But wot abaht it?' I ses. 'Will they give
it me?' 'They may arst questions,' 'e ses. 'But you ain't to know
too much. Say you've give consideration, and a workin' man ain't to
be kep' out of 'is due. There's no one can give that talk better'n
you, 'Ammertoe', 'e ses, smilin'. 'And besides, I'll p'y you for your
trouble.' ''Ere, guv'nor,' I ses, 'old lard! You're a eddigicated
bloke, but don't think a artesian ain't got feelin's. You 'ave pide
me,' I ses. 'I'm pide by wot I jest see up in Barker's 'ome.'
"There wasn't no real trouble at the bank. 'E'd give me annuvver letter
to put into the envelope 'e'd sent me, signed wiv the same name as was
on the cheque. The cashier looked pretty 'ard at me, and two or three
clurks puts their 'eads togevver. 'Don't 'urry,' I ses. 'I'm pide be
the year, and it don't matter w'ere I spend me time.' Cahnted the five
quids free times, they did, to be sure two wasn't stuck togevver.
Non-prejoocers, that's wot I calls them.
"This 'appened so often that the clurks got to know me. One night, jest
before Foxie comes 'ome, I couldn't 'elp openin' my mahth a bit, jest
to 'im. 'Wotcher goin' to do wiv all the money I drawed to-d'y? Give
Barker a surprise be gettin' their stuff out o' pawn? Rare lot's bin
up the spaht,' I ses. 'No,' 'e ses. 'It ain't wuth while now.' 'W'y
not?' 'Cos they ain't 'ere for long. I'm a goin' to emmygrite them,
'Ammertoe.' I was 'avin a drink at the time, an' I nearly choked.
'Yus,' 'e goes on, afore I could speak, lookin' at the ceilin',
'they're a goin' to God's promust land. Them kids is a goin' to grow up
somew'eres they don't 'ave to be shut in a room for fear of wot they
may see and 'ear. It's full of tigers and wolves, that street is,' 'e
ses, pointin' aht the winder, w'ere Bill Shannon was a tryin' to git
'is missus 'ome wiv all her clothes on. 'They're a goin' to be woke
up on the trine some mornin' to see the blessed sun come up under the
prairie as big and red as the dome of Paul's. It ain't spoiled sence I
seed it fust, nigh on to twenty-five years ago. I've fallen from there
to 'ell,' 'e ses, 'and there ain't no return ticket the w'y I come. But
if I can't go back meself, I can show uvvers the w'y to escape.'
"'And ain't you a-goin' now'eres?' I ses, noticin' for the fust time
'ow w'ite and ill 'e was lookin'. 'Oh, yus,' 'e ses. 'I got my journey
to go too.' 'Crost the sea?' I arst 'im. 'Just a short w'y,' 'e ses.
'Crost the sea to a big white furrin town I knows of, w'ere there's a
tramcar w'itin', as'll tike me 'alf-w'y. Full of women in wi'te caps
it'll be, goin' 'ome from marketin' wiv baskets in their laps, and
maybe there'll be some like meself as found there wasn't no sale for
the wares wot they carried in. And w'ere it stops there's a road up a
'ill that turns through a field w'ere they're stackin' 'ay this minnit,
wiv steep clay banks on bofe sides, and a old farm w'ere ducks is a
swimmin' in a pond and pigeons a slippin' and slidin' dahn the roof.
And w'en I've reached that,' 'e ses, 'I'll rest a bit and look down
on a gray village and miles and miles of sand, wiv the sea a-crawlin'
and a-crinklin' beyond; 'cos I'll know,' 'e ses, 'as I've reached my
journey's end at last. Think of it,' 'e ses, grippin' my shoulder 'ard.
'Think of it,' 'e ses, 'man! Clean, soft, dry sand, warm from a 'ole
day's sun, and the grass a-wavin' and the sea w'isperin' and the gulls
mewin'. There's worse ends to a journey than that, and you and me's
seen 'em.' I looks at 'im very 'ard indeed. 'If you tike my advice,' I
ses, 'before you goes on any of them journeys you'll 'ave a rest and
some one to look arter you.' 'I shall 'ave some one,' 'e ses. 'She'll
be a w'itin' for me in that town I telled you of. She'll tike my 'and
and won't never let go until----Tell me, 'Ammertoe,' 'e ses, breakin'
off sudden, 'wotcher think of me? Man to man. Think I'm a good man,
dontcher?' 'Yus,' I ses. 'Bit balmy all the sime.' 'I ain't balmy,'
'e ses, 'and I ain't good. I'm a very crooil man, 'Ammertoe, and the
reason is I'm too sine; too clear in me ed. W'en a man's too clear in
'is mind, it's death and ruin for 'em as 'as to do wiv 'im.... And nah,
drink yer beer up. We're talkin' nonsense, and I must git back to my
bybies."
"Did you never talk to him again about this plan of his?" It was
curious how our voices had dropped. We had both risen, and were
standing opposite one another with a curious effect of being on
different sides of an open grave.
"Never, guv'nor. Flyin' Fox come 'ome nex' day, and wot with explainin'
everything to 'im, and wot with n'ighbors droppin' in, some s'yin',
'It's the best thing could 'a 'appened,' and uvvers, 'mark my words,
you'll rue the d'y.' There wasn't no chanst again not for private talk.
Foxie was dized in 'is manner. Mrs. Barker and the kids they 'ad it
all cut an' dried. It was too lite for 'im like to 'ave any s'y in the
matter. 'Let 'im alone,' Mr. Bruvver'ood says--still called 'im that
afore stringers, I did--'let 'im alone. 'E'll come to 'isself on the
steamer. With wot you got and wot a woman can earn cookin' and cleanin'
w'ere you're goin', 'e can 'ave the fust year to git well and strong.
It'll be a convalescent 'ome to 'm, Canada will.'
"I took a mornin' off to see 'em start. Wonderful sight it was! Near
four 'undred on the one trine, singin' 'Old Lang Syne' and 'Gawd Sive
the King,' and shykin' 'ands all rahnd, and the people left be'ind
s'yin': 'Leave us in your will.' The nippers was very smart, all in
new warm togs, and little Gladys wiv a Teddy bear wot my missus giv'
'er. Thought 'e was coming with 'em up to the end they did. Didn't
dare to tell'm no different. And at the end, as the guard was a-wavin'
'is flag, Mrs. Barker broke dahn and frows 'er arms round 'is neck and
kisses 'im like 'e was another woman or praps more, cryin' like 'er
'eart would break. 'Good job for you, Foxie,' my missus ses,'as you're
leavin' the lodger behind.' We all larft at that, and then the w'istle
blew and the trine went awf wiv 'ankerchiffs at all the winders. 'E
stood a long time lookin' after it. W'en it was gone,' e turns to me.
'Let's 'ave one more drink,' 'e ses. 'Wot ho,' I ses. 'But ain't you
comin' to work? 'Cos we was on a job togevver. 'Not to-d'y,' 'e ses.
'Tell the foreman I ain't up to the mark.' So we 'ad one drink and I
goes off, ignorant as a blessed byby wot was in 'is 'ead. And w'en I
got home in the evenin'----"
"Well----?"
"Gawn, guv'nor. Took all 'is fings--not as there was much--and left no
address. And I ain't set eyes on 'im from that day to this."
"Can you suggest anything?"
"Yus, I can. That's w'y I come here. I fink 'e's done something 'fore
you knowed 'im or I knowed 'im, and is a-goin' to give 'isself up. You
don't? Well, no matter. Wotever it is, I don't fink 'e'll likely tike
any steps before 'e 'ears a word from the parties as is in Canada to
know 'ow they gets on at fust. They 'ave 'is address, I'm sure o' that.
Wotcher think? Don't that 'elp us a bit?"
"Can you give me theirs?"
Mr. Palamount had come well provided with documentary evidence. He drew
a soiled and crumpled piece of print from another waistcoat pocket. It
was only the name of the Canadian Pacific agent in Alberta. The straw
was a very slender one.
"I'll cable them to-morrow, prepaid. And I'll see the lawyers first
thing in the morning. Don't be afraid," for I thought I detected a
slight look of anxiety on Mr. Palamount's battered face. "I'm after
something better even than two hundred pounds."
VI
GENEALOGICAL
The first thing I did the next morning, after a sleepless night
besieged by possibilities, was to send a prepaid cable to Alberta;
rather for the relief of my own feelings than because my promptitude
could effect any possible good. Indeed, as the telegraph clerk was
at pains to inform me, eight o'clock in England is three o'clock
in western Canada, and the very earliest of alarm clocks had not
yet delivered its nerve-racking message there. Also I was pacing up
and down the passage outside Pollexfen and Allport's offices fully
three quarters of an hour before their managing clerk ascended the
linoleum-covered stairs, rattling his keys and warbling a morning
carol, to open them for the day.
Mr. Pollexfen, the senior partner, was a spruce, well-preserved man,
with white hair and moustache, but as little of parchment in his manner
as in his florid, supple skin. He swung round in his chair and listened
to my story attentively, with the tips of his fingers joined, and
clicking his well-groomed nails as I talked.
"Well! well! well!" said he, with a commentary sigh, when I had ended.
"It's a strange case: the strangest, I verily believe, that I've had to
deal with in the whole course of my practice."
He pulled a drawer open and tossed something to me across the table.
"Do you know anything of this?"
"This" was a little book sumptuously bound in blue roan, and bearing
upon its cover, embossed and gilt, a coat-of-arms, and the following
legend in old English lettering.
"Pedigree of the Ingram or Ingraham family of Lilburn, Mass."
It was the very pamphlet over which, more than two years ago now, Paul
had joined me in rather shamefaced laughter.
"Oh, yes," I replied. "I saw it at his rooms. Look! there's his name at
the bottom."
"It seems so strange to us," the lawyer mused. "So contrary to all
preconceived notions of America. Here, in peer-governed, class-beridden
England, we take these things so much more as a matter of course.
Myself, as an instance. I believe we are a highly respectable landed
family, somewhere in the Eastern Counties, but I'd be bothered to say
what my great-grandmother's maiden name was, and, I assure you, except
for some tangible reason, I would regard time spent in finding out as
time sadly wasted. The very crest on my spoons and carriage is a matter
of tradition. It's never occurred to me to regard it with any degree
of complacency. But, indeed, I must own to a rather complete ignorance
of America, though we manage a good deal of business for clients over
there. My ignorance extended, until lately, to the very name of the
city where all this money was made. Oshkosh? You're a journalist, I
see. Can you truthfully say the name stirs any latent geographical
idea."
"Yes. I've heard Ingram mention it. It's a big grain-shipping place on
the Lakes."
"Grain?--grain? Yes. That's how the dollars were made, I remember.
Three quarters of a million of them. Over sixty thousand pounds. We had
no idea of it. The plainest, driest little man. Stayed at one of those
cheap Bloomsbury hotels, and lunched on an apple and a wheat biscuit."
"Do you mean to say all this money is left to my friend
unconditionally?"
"Absolutely, sir. Lester Ingraham--he'd even gone back to the old
spelling--seems to have spent the evening of his days in compiling the
little book you hold in your hand. That's how he came to be sent to
us by our New York correspondents. They are big people, and seemed to
think him very small fry indeed. It had become an absolute obsession
with him. Used to bore Allport to death talking of the senior and the
junior branches, and sometimes it was all I could do to keep a straight
face. His dream had been to buy the old homestead and die there, and he
told me the discovery it had been pulled down robbed him of ten years'
life. Then the idea occurred to him, since it had vanished and he had
no near relatives, to leave his money to the last Ingram born within
the old walls, the walls which, as he told me impressively, had had an
Indian arrow-head sticking in them for two hundred and fifty years. He
had seen that in the museum. Well, well--who says romance is dead?"
"Sixty thousand pounds!" All the time Mr. Pollexfen was speaking I kept
writing the sum on the Ingram pedigree with my finger nail, calculating
interest at, say, four per cent, and thinking of Paul as I had last
seen him.
"I've told you everything, Mr. Pollexfen. What do you think of our
chance of finding him again within the year that is stipulated?"
The lawyer shrugged his shoulders. "Very slight indeed, I fear, even
if the advertisement reaches his eye. You say he had over two hundred
pounds in a bank at his disposal, and chose to run after cabs. Now, to
me, that looks very like hallucination. No. If I was the reversionary
legatee, I'd feel pretty comfortable."
I said I had told him everything, but, as a matter of fact, I had not
told him what I had every reason to believe I knew, and that is, the
source whence the money came which Ingram had been loath to touch. I
wonder, if I had, whether he would have changed his estimate of my poor
quixotic friend. Codes of honor must seem shadowy things to a man who
has been instructing counsel for thirty years.
VII
THE WAITING-ROOM
And, after all, it happened so simply in the end. A brief note, lying
on my table, when I got back, with an address at the top that was
strange to me, asking me to call "when convenient, for a chat." Imagine
if I found it convenient. Is there in all the world a cleaner, purer
joy than to be the bearer of such tidings as mine?
The house proved to be one of some shabby mouldering little stucco
"gardens" near Chalk Farm. It suggested seediness rather than great
poverty, and, with my abominable journalist's _flair_ for the
dramatic, I was almost sorry the contrast was not to be a more
startling one. Perhaps I hardly realized how much misery a decorous
exterior can conceal in modern London, until an old woman, bent, deaf
and short-sighted almost to blindness, opened the door. The hall was
more than bare; it was naked. Not a picture on the walls, not a strip
of oilcloth on the boards. On the bottom stair a cheap glass lamp
without a shade had been set down and filled the passage with wavering,
smoky shadows. The air was penetrated with the raw smell of paraffin,
the "_triple bouquet_" of poverty.
If the nakedness had repelled in the hall, its persistence in the room
to which I was let find my way was shocking. No curtains nor blinds
at the window; a low truckle bed, rather felt than seen in the shadow
at one side; upon the uncarpeted floor a great, crooked parallelogram
of moonlight. As my eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, I made
out further a chair by the bedside, with a flat candlestick and a
paper-covered book turned face downward, and a big china wash-basin
close to the bedside. I don't know what made me look more curiously
at this than at anything else, and shudder when I saw how dark its
contents were. Next moment I had felt for his hand and grasped it in
mine, Thank God! it was not cold and heavy as I had half dreaded.
Life--feverish, parched, burning life, it is true, but still life, was
in its contact.
He must have been sleeping, and it is eloquent of his utter abandonment
that, before I uttered a word, he guessed who had awakened him.
"Clear away that candle and sit down," he said, in a drowsy, muffled
voice. "No! don't light it please."
I sat down obediently, and looked around me again. Gradually, as I
gazed, the full significance of the stripped room came home to me. It
was the bareness of the station waiting-room--the room in which one
chafes and frets, watching the hand crawl over the clock-face, with an
ear strained to catch the faint whistle of the train that is to bear us
away to where we would or should be. That was it. He had come here to
wait. The poor faint voice spoke again.
"I'd been lying here a long time," it said, "watching the moon, and
it must have sent me to sleep. Don't ride rough, old man," feeling
clumsily for the hand that was at my eyes. "It's easier for me than
it would be for almost any one else. I often wonder what it was gave
me such a conviction of the utter unreality of the world. I think it
was the years I spent, month after month, alone on the great wastes.
I used to come into the cities and see the people swarming under the
arc-lights round the hotels and theatres, and think that's what they'd
been doing all the while, night after night. One can't take a world
seriously that can mean two such different things to different men.
Hold that basin a minute, will you, Prentice? I've got to cough. I
can't put it off any longer. Thanks! Yes, it was that last winter in
London that broke the bowl and loosed the golden cord. I thought
I'd been through a lot and knew all life could do; but, by God! I
never imagined anything like that. Stop snivelling, man. I tell you
there's no pain at all now. Just something like a big yawn that gets
worse while I speak. And I had a lot to say. Do you know, what you
said rankled a bit: I mean about my not understanding the ethics of
friendship. Why, old man, I've often said to myself that there'd have
to be a God if only to thank Him for a friend like you. Now I'm going
to discharge the debt. Where shall I begin?"
I told him what I knew already. I forget exactly what words I used.
Poor broken ones, no doubt. I told him he was a hero, a saint: that
just to have lived a life like his to the end was to have won the bays
and gained the victory. He stopped me halfway.
"Nonsense, you sentimental old penny-a-liner! Any one would have done
the same. You'd have done it yourself, and you'd have done it far
better, because you'd have loved while you worked. That's where I break
down. Try to see me as I am, Prentice. I like to have you sorry for me;
but don't let illusion mingle with the regret. I hated them! yes, yes,
I did. Hated them as a man like me hates anything warm and human that
encumbers him and tangles his feet upon his own ruinous tragic course.
Even while those angels sat on my knee and ate their bread and jam and
asked for more fairy stories I was straining for escape--thinking out
ways by which I could rid myself of them, once and for all. You know
the way I took. I had to sell my honor for it--handle money that you'd
have died before you touched. For I'd given my word to them, fool that
I was. I'd eaten their bread, and there's only the one law among white
men. Fumble round, Prentice--there's a tumbler full of water somewhere
near your feet."
He drank and went on, at first in a calmer voice:
"It began by my going to the theatre where she was dancing. I'd gone
to the door again and again, taken my place in the queue and come
away at the last moment. And one night I went on and sat up in the
gallery, jammed tight, waiting for her. People were talking. I won't
say what I heard. It may be true. They didn't know that what they were
heaping up was only more damnation for the shabby, shame-faced brute
that sat among them, biting his tongue, and keeping his fists deep in
his pockets for fear he should curse them suddenly and strike them over
their unclean mouths. And then--she came on the stage, Prentice, and
kissed her hands, and the whole house got up and roared and cheered.
But I hung my head. I didn't dare look at her for a long, long time.
At last, when I knew the dance was over, I found the courage. She was
curtseying and smiling up at us, and it happened my first glance went
straight into her eyes."
He gripped my wrist.
"There's the shadow there, Prentice, what I told you of the night we
walked home: the look I was afraid of when I sent you to meet her. None
of you see it, because you didn't know her before. God! how it shocked
me. I couldn't stand it. I jumped up and climbed out. Some of the men
hit out at me. There's some sort of a chapel on the other side of the
Circus. The door was open, and there were about twenty people listening
to a man gabbling in a language that's like nothing in heaven or earth.
I knelt down on a bench at the bottom of the church and prayed, the
first time since I swore off--oh! twenty years ago. 'Don't let it touch
her!' I kept on saying. 'It's up to my neck, it's over my mouth and
down my loathing throat, but don't let it touch the hem of her dress! I
give in, God! You have me beaten, eternal Father, all in, down and out.
But oh, Jehovah, Jahveh! Shining One! don't hurt a slip of a girl.' A
man touched me on the shoulder. Said I'd better go out and come back on
an evidence night.
"So you see, Prentice, for all my cleverness, I've had to come to it
at last. I've had to whine for mercy to the God that made the tiger
and the cancer microbe. I am only an old Puritan, after all. One
lifetime's too short to get two centuries and a half of Massachusetts
out of your blood. The only time a real codfish Yankee's out of
mischief is when he's making the dollars. A hundred years ago I should
have been a great preacher of the word, Prentice. One of the sort
that the sight of a man rejoicing in his strength or a woman in her
beauty goads to cruel madness. And wherever I'd have gone I'd have left
bowed heads and chilled hearts and minds half-crazed with the fear of
judgment to come. What joy I'd have taken in it! I'd have been so busy
seeing death got its due, it never would have occurred to me life had
any rights. But it's a hundred years too late for that. The world's
grown wiser. It never will let that sort of deviltry get the upper hand
again. They saw it in my work, Prentice. That's why they've kept me
bottled up and let me kill myself inch by inch with my own poison. But
if a man can't do ill broadcast, there's always a quiet place where
mischief can be done. You can always take your revenge for the world's
common sense on some trustful soul that's laid itself bare in your
hands...."
Then I think he ceased to talk coherently.
"----and so I said to myself: I'll go down to the sea, where I had my
darling all my own, pure and loving, before the stain of the world
reached her or evil tongues made busy with her name. She's there
still, I know. She's haunting those lonely sands, crying and wringing
her hands and kissing the old letters because I won't write her any
new. But she must forgive me when I ask her pardon and show her my
punishment, and when it's all told, we'll sit hand in hand and knee to
knee and watch the sun foundering out at sea and when the last little
red streak has gone----"
He broke off suddenly, and sat up in bed.
"Where are my clothes? Haven't they sent them yet? I _can't_--I
can't be found like this, you know! It's a wretched little piece of
vanity, but I can't. And now I'm getting so weak, I can't go into town
again. Perhaps I didn't tell them where to--send--the right number."...
His voice died away in his throat, and he lay back, quite exhausted.
It was nearly two hours afterward before I left the house for the last
time. A doctor had seen him, and a nurse was settling in an arm-chair
to watch him for the night. We'd done what we could to that awful room.
That wasn't much, but the train was nearly due now, so it didn't really
matter. There was a lot of work before me on the morrow.
And it wasn't until I was halfway home that I remembered the sixty
thousand pounds!
VIII
'TWIXT SHINE AND SHADE
To be young, to be beautiful, to be free; to radiate a charm which it
is felt not ungracious alone but ridiculous to pretend to withstand,
and to be paid for its exercise in the tangible form that renders
all else possible; to wake one morning and discover that pleasure,
change of scene, and gracious surroundings have become the anxious
concern of good genii whose motives are too evident to make any demands
upon gratitude: to find each day a fairy vista wherein, by a happy
perversion of the gray old rule, fulfilment waits upon desire: in one
word, to be "the vogue." Has life ever offered more than this? and is
it not a mere question of time how long any memory of old defeat, any
regret for a lost Eden, can resist an assault by happiness made from so
many quarters?
I think, if the whole truth could be known, Fenella's state of mind
during her two years of furore would be a curious psychological
study. I have just been looking through a pile of _Sceptres_ and
_Prattlers_, the issue of those enchanted years. It is hardly
an exaggeration to say her photograph appeared in one or the other
every week.--Fenella at Ascot--"The Secret of Success. One favorite
whispers it to another."--"Look pleasant, please! A recent snapshot
of Lord Lulford's popular niece." (I forget who invented this phrase.
It was rather done to death.) Here are more: "Commons idol among the
'backwoodsmen' at the Burbery point-to-point. Names from left to
right: Miss Barbour, Sir Bryan Lumsden, et cetera, et cetera." "Will
'No. 8' go up to-night? After a strenuous day with the North Herts,
Miss Barbour has to hustle to catch the London train." I say, take
out all the palpable poses, all the profitable winsomeness of poster
or postcard--there must be one or two where she was taken off her
guard--and then try to trace the shadow poor Paul fancied he saw. I
can only say I have failed. Complete absorption in the business of the
moment--that is all I ever found.
Of course I know that people in the world do not wear their hearts upon
their sleeves, and that there are all sorts of dodges whereby if not
happiness, at any rate the peace of mind necessary for due enjoyment
of life, can be secured. The sad thought can be kept moving on a day
ahead, an hour ahead; always in sight, as it were, but always out of
one's mental reach. Even so, the question remains whether such a shifty
process can be continued indefinitely, and if a day does not come when
the harassed ghost, weary, like poor Joe, of incessant moving on, takes
wing, once and for all, for the land of oblivion.
I was years making up my mind about Fenella. I sometimes fancied the
dear lady knew it, and that that was the reason my brooding glances
were never surprised. It would have been so easy to look up and catch
them. "A penny for your thoughts, Mr. Prentice." And then--remember
I'm a journalist, and used to seeing truth sold at the price--"I was
wondering whether I wasn't only just in time, after all."
She did catch me at last. It was on that night, I fancy, that I passed
once and for all from the sober status of "my husband's great friend"
to the more vertiginous one of "my own." Paul was out at some committee
meeting or another--he leaves her a good deal alone--and would not be
in till late. I had been sitting silent a long while, watching the busy
slender fingers and the sweet puckered brow. Knitting is rather a rite
with Fenella, but I pity the naked she clothes if they had to wait on
the work of her own hands. She had dropped a stitch. "One--two--three,"
she was counting under her breath--"_one_ and _two_ and
_three_!" and then----Oh, I protest, madam! it was an unfair
advantage that you took. I forget what answer I stammered out. She
stuck her needles into the wool, glanced at the clock and told me
everything.
* * * * *
A long electric launch, whose stern was covered by a white awning lined
with green, skimmed its way through the lines of moored yachts, and
across the blue Solent, its prow held high like the breast of a diving
sea-bird. Over the bows, from which two sheets of water spurted away,
clear and convex as blown glass, a seaman sat, dressed in ducks, and
holding a long boat-hook in his hand. Round the ribbon of his glazed
hat, in letters of gold, the legend ran--
S.Y. _Castadiva_, R.Y.C.
Amidships a tall, broad-shouldered man in blue serge, very sunburnt,
and wearing a peaked cap, sat, or rather sprawled, in conversation,
probably technical, with the driver of the dynamo, whose head and
shoulders only appeared above the half-deck. Under the awning a girl
was sitting alone. Her furled parasol made a vivid splash of scarlet
against her snowy dress.
Near the jetty of the yacht club the engine ceased to flutter, and the
sailor, putting out his boat-hook, drew the launch to shore. The man in
blue jumped out and, extending a long arm, helped the girl to land.
"Moor her where you can to-night, Mr. Weeks," he said to the head and
shoulders. "I'll see the commodore to-morrow and find out why we're not
given our usual berth."
"Ay, ay, sir."
"And, Weeks, have the launch sent back at three sharp, with the baggage
on board. Becket needn't come. I'm going to Beverbrook immediately
after lunch, and shall sleep there. Good-day, Weeks."
"Good day, Sir Bryan."
Meantime, the girl, unfurling her parasol and balancing it daintily
on her shoulder, walked toward the land, looking about her with a
bright interest at the blue bay, the white sails of the yachts, and the
smartly dressed crowd loitering outside the yacht club enclosure. She
wore a white linen princesse robe, its costly simplicity adorned only
by a wide band of embroidery that ran from throat to hem, and a big
gray straw hat trimmed with a wreath of what roses would look like if
nature had had the good taste to make them the color of pansies--the
roses that bloom in the Rue de la Paix.
Slowly as she walked, she had reached the hedge of the enclosure
before her companion overtook her. Inside the lawn was not crowded.
The big regatta had taken place the day before, and it was lunch
hour. Such groups as were strolling up and down or sitting in little
encampments of canopied arm-chairs stopped flirting or talking to
stare and whisper. On some of the women's faces appeared the dubious
admiration that is kept for social audacity in their sex. The girl
seemed unconscious of the effect she was creating and looked about her
indifferently. Espying some friends in a far corner, she signalled
vigorously with her open parasol.
"Bryan, there's Lady Carphilly and Mrs. Rolf d'Oyley. I must go and
talk to them. Will you come too, or wait?"
"I'll wait," the man answered shortly. "I've sent in for my letters and
I'll open them here. We ought to have lunch soon. Don't be long, Flash."
A club waiter who had been standing in the offing with a pile of
letters on a salver and an initialled leather dispatch case, approached
and disposed them on a table near the chair into which the baronet
had flung himself. Lumsden bestowed a casual glance upon the pile and
looked toward the man's free hand.
"What have you got there?"
"A telegram for Miss Barbour, Sir Bryan."
"Give it to me."
The man handed it over without demur. Bryan ripped it open and read the
message through. He looked thoughtful.
"How long has this been here?"
"Two days, Sir Bryan."
"Didn't they try to get it through by wireless?"
"I can't say, Sir Bryan. I'll ask if you wish."
"No: it doesn't matter. Bring me a 'John Henry'."
He slipped the opened telegram into his coat pocket and, lighting a
cigar, proceeded to read his mail through, systematically, but with a
pre-occupied brow.
The past twelve months had dealt hardly with Bryan. There is probably
in the life of most of us some day, or preferably some night, when fate
chooses to pay us the arrears of years, in which the hours as they pass
over our heads grizzle them, and our tears, if tears we can shed, are
a corrosive acid that bite their record upon our cheeks for all time.
No one honestly mistook Lumsden for a young man after his little son's
death.
It may have been something in one of the letters he had just read--may
be, who knows, something even in the telegram, that made him, after he
had swept his correspondence, with various pencil scribblings on the
margins, into the dispatch case, recall that night with rather more
deliberation than he usually permitted himself, and stare gloomily at
the group into which, with much embracing and chatter, pitched in a key
of congratulatory envy, Fenella had been drawn.
How she had changed! How she had changed since then! To-day, as for
many a day past, it was in nothing more precise than this loose mental
phrase that his ill-defined dissatisfaction could find vent. Beyond
it he seemed unable to go, and was even forced to admit a certain
flimsiness in a charge out of which no better indictment could be
framed. Because, whatever strain upon his finer perceptions had made
the year of probation the torture it had undoubtedly been, he could
not deny that she had remained true as steel to the bargain made
with him in the house of death--a bargain so vague that scarcely any
pretext would have been too tawdry to discharge her from it had she
wished. She had sacrificed her good repute to him forthwith; had even
seemed eager for circumstances that, as far as the world was concerned,
should put the sacrifice past doubt, and if, of late, it had been
coming back to her, as most women's is conveyed from them, in whispers,
the rehabilitation was not of her own devising, but rather part of
the observed tendency of murder and other violations of established
usage to "out." Strangely enough, her fame fared better at women's
hands than at men's, and worse among those who were convinced of her
technical integrity (the phrase was even invented for her) than with
those who inclined to give the ominous face of appearances its full
value. I don't know why this should have been so. Perhaps vice has
its own hypocrisies and canting code of law, and her resistance to
the spirit after the letter had been so admirably fulfilled was held
an outrage. At least she gave him no anxiety, although he knew that
temptation had reached her, once from a quarter so exalted that it is
not usually taken into account--even suspected one wooing as honorable
as perfunctory, and although all his money and all his good will could
not make him as young as the hot blood that besieged her. Her house
was always open to him, at hours which his own forbearance was trusted
to keep within the limits set by decorum; she kept whisky and cigars
for him in her sideboard, with even the little sprig of vanilla in
the cigar cabinet that she must have seen and taken note of in his
own rooms. She never denied him her company nor discovered affinities
among his friends; she even seemed to have a tender conscience in this
regard, and looked round anxiously for him whenever the ripple of
her little triumphs carried her temporarily out of hail. Whence then
his secret dissatisfaction? Oh, this termless war of attainment with
desire, old in human story as the history of David's unruly sons!
Was Bryan the first to set a snare and grudge the fair plumage he had
coveted for the marks of his own springe upon it?
She was a great success, socially. She entered the smart world, it
is true, under his auspices, and because he was sulky if she was not
asked to the same houses, and because it was important to a good many
people that Bryan Lumsden, to say nothing of Calvert & Co., should be
kept in good humor. But, once in, her own talents were quite competent
to keep her in the place he had made for her. She had even reached a
point now where her successes were her own, and no longer were held to
throw reflected lustre upon her sponsor. She fitted quickly and easily
into what, after all, was her own class. In a year she rode hard and
straight and had developed a heady but hitherto successful system of
tactics at bridge. Bryan no longer got the credit of her clothes, but
it was generally understood she was frightfully in debt and would marry
him when her creditors delivered their ultimatum. She had an infantile
wit and a faculty for what the French term _choses inouïes_. One
of her riddles became proverbial.
"What did the fishes say to Noah when he asked them into the ark?" "No
tanks."
I subjoin a few more specimens, not with any hope that their charm will
subsist in print, but just to show with what things, on pretty lips,
the weary old world is prepared to be amused.
Once she was trying to collect money for some charity and no one had
change. This happens sometimes even in smart society. "Oh, dear,"
sighed Fenella, "everybody has the hand-to-mouth disease."
She was slightly angered at a restraining clause in one of her
contracts, discovered when too late.
"You're a bad man," she told the flustered manager, "and you deserve to
come to a nasty sticky end."
To Rock, of ill odor in the Park, after his senile advances had been
rebuffed by a snobby little Pekinese: "Don't whine, _dee-ar_!
I don't believe that kind of dog knows whether it's a dog or a
poll-parrot or an insect."
"Bryan's caught cold, I think," she said one morning. "He keeps calling
for 'Letitia'."
If these are fair samples of the parts she put at the disposal of her
new friends, her reputation is not the surprise it might be to a man
who knows that the dear lady to this day conducts her conversation upon
an economical little vocabulary of about three hundred words.
Maybe the conscience we have spoken of had been pricking her, for when
Lumsden raised his head from his reverie the world had gone red, and he
was looking at the sun through her parasol.
"You look glum, old man," said Fenella. "What's the matter? Do you want
your lunch?"
Lumsden got up and stretched. He had been pulling at his moustache,
and one hair--a white one--was on the shoulder of his blue reefer. She
picked it off, held it up to the light, looked unfathomably at him and
blew it daintily into the air.
"Perhaps we'd best have lunch now," she said. "I want to get to
Beverbrook soon and see what arrangements they've made. Do you remember
Edmaston, Bryan, where they put that dreadful polish down--Takko or
Stikko or something--and when my foot stuck I buzzed and every one
laughed?"
"Don't you feel nervous, Flash?"
"Just a teeny. When do _They_ come?"
"Oh, to dinner; but you won't be introduced till you've danced. And
remember, Flash, you must only speak when you're spoken to by Them.
Just answer questions."
"I'll try not to disgrace you," she said airily, and led the way to the
pavilion.
IX
BEATEN AT THE POST
She was very gay and flippant during lunch, and while crossing the
bay, and in the motor on the way to the great ducal house, where she
was going, if not to sing for her supper, at least to dance for her
dinner. She was very serious and a little dictatorial on the stage,
but immediately after tea took the owner of the Chaste Goddess and so
much else by the arm, and proceeded to drag him on a prolonged tour of
inspection, through the stables, round the noble Italian gardens--at
whose lichened fawns and satyrs she made faces, expressive of the
utmost scorn and defiance, but which only succeeded in being charming,
and the English garden--where the leaden shepherdesses were pronounced
"ducks"; into the aviary to drive four macaws to frenzy with a long
straw, and back by orchid houses and hothouses to the terrace again.
She picked a good many flowers and ate a quantity of fruit.
It was while she was picking grapes in the vine house that Lumsden took
heart and disburthened himself of a little of his recent chagrin.
"Flash! I'm going to scold you!"
"Oh, Bryan! what for? For culling all these grapes? I like 'cull,'
it sounds less greedy than 'pick.' I cull, thou culleth--no,
_cullest_--she culls."
"Flash! out of all the world what made you pick on those two Jezebels
to speak to on the lawn?"
"What's the matter with them besides 'jezziness'?"
"You know well enough. They're not nice women."
"Really nice women don't have much to say to me? Have you noticed it,
skipper?"
"They would if----Oh! stop eating all those grapes. You'll make
yourself sick."
"If what, please?"
"If you'd only do the straight thing?"
"What do you mean? Go into a refuge?"
"A _refuge_! What abominable twaddle you can talk when you like."
She laid a sticky finger over his mouth. "Tut-tut-tut! Come outside if
you're going to scold. It's too fuzzy in here. You'll get a rush of
brains to the head."
Outside, the garden was deserted. The centre of interest seemed to have
shifted to the upper terrace. A large horny beetle was pursuing his
homeward or outward way over the pounded shell of the walk. Fenella
assisted him with the point of her parasol, and did not relax her good
offices until he was in dazed safety upon the border. Then she looked
up.
"Flash! why don't you marry me and have done with it?"
She punched six holes in the path before replying.
"What do you want to 'have done with?' Why can't we go on as we are a
little longer?"
"Because it's--unnatural. There are other reasons, but that's enough."
"It isn't, if you don't let it worry you--Oh! what am I saying? Bryan,
do you think we'd care as much for one another if--if I did as you say."
"Of course we should--more every day."
"Why didn't you keep getting fonder and fonder of those others, then?"
"I think that question most unseemly. You don't seem to realize I'm
asking you to be my wife."
"M-m! It is hard to."
"Oh, don't be clever. Every one's clever. What are you waiting for?"
No answer.
"Shall I tell you?"
"If you think you know, dear."
"You're waiting until there's not one little bit left of the girl I
fell in love with, the girl who tried to hide her bare arms under
Perse's ruffle in the hall at Lulford, and who cried by the cot where
my poor little urchin was dying. You've never forgiven me that cursed
night in Mount Street."
"Dear! I've never mentioned it from that day to this."
"Well, it's behind everything you say. It's behind your eyes when they
look at me. Can't you understand I wasn't myself."
"You were a little--eh? Weren't you, dear? Not much; just a gentlemanly
glow."
"And it's your way of taking revenge for it. And a d----d cruel woman's
way it is."
She laid her hand on his arm. "Bryan, don't worry me now. I've got a
lot to go through to-night. It's harder than anybody thinks. There's
some sense in what you say. But we can talk about it some other
time.... Oh! look up there! What's happening?"
A big browny-red closed motor-car rolled along the upper terrace and
stopped at the great doorway. In a moment servants--visitors seemed
to run together, to range themselves in two lines, one on each side
of the wide curved steps. Framed in the dark gothic arch, the Lord of
Beverbrook appeared, noble, white of hair and moustache, with a serene
and lofty humility in his bent head that was strangely impressive. The
rest is Apotheosis. Before it we veil our dazzled eyes.
* * * * *
He had not gone to bed at two o'clock the next morning. He sat,
completely dressed, smoking and looking out his bedroom window over the
silvering terraces and park. The great gay house was abed: the night
very still. Only to his left, above the low quadrangle of some stables
or outhouses, could be seen a dim shaft of light. A murmur of voices,
the sound of water running and splashing about a hose-pipe, seemed to
come from that direction.
His thoughts were busy, but not directly with the girl whose interests
and his own were by now tacitly associated. The night had been a
new triumph for her--in a way the crown upon all the rest--but such
triumphs by now were discounted in advance, felt almost to be in the
order of nature. No. It was the telegram he was thinking of, the
telegram that he had intercepted on the lawn at Cowes. He had not so
much forgotten it till now as mentally pigeon-holed it for future
consideration. This habit, acquired in business, he unconsciously
followed in all the concerns of life.
Who was making himself this beggar's advocate in London. Who was
"Prentice." Curse him! whoever he was. Few though the words had been,
they contained a hint of some previous understanding or rendezvous.
Who were the conspirators that wanted to drag a girl away from the
light and laughter that was her due, (influences so desirable from
every point of view) into the chill shadow of a hospital death-bed. He
had long ceased to be jealous of Ingram, as of a man whom the world
that was his friend had taken in hand and beaten handsomely, but there
is no hatred so merciless and lawless as that with which contempt is
mingled. The suppression of the telegram never struck him as dishonor,
although he was not a cruel or a treacherous man. He counted it a
fair counter-stroke to what he esteemed a blow in the dark, a stab
from behind. Letter by letter and word for word the hateful thing was
printed on his brain, but who does not know the instinct of return
to a message in which substance and significance are so inversely
proportioned? To have read nine times is no reason for not reading a
tenth. The screed has not changed, but the mood may have; and, with the
new mood, who knows what fresh meaning may not leap at us.
He got up, opened the wardrobe, and felt in the pockets of his blue
coat. It was not in either of them. He considered awhile. Had he
packed it, with the letters, into his dispatch case? If so, it had
gone aboard to his secretary, which didn't matter much. But--no. He
distinctly remembered feeling it in his pocket during the crossing to
the mainland. Plainly gone, then. But where?
He took the coat off the rack and looked at it as though he would
read its history since dinner. His own man was not with him, but he
had stopped at Beverbrook before and knew the valeting was a little
overdone. R---- was so natty himself. He had flung it on the bed when
he dressed. Whoever did the room had taken it to be brushed or pressed,
and the telegram had fallen out of the pocket. How could he be sure?
Oh! he knew. There had been a tiny smear of white paint under the left
cuff. If the coat had been taken away----He took it to the light. The
white smudge was gone.
He was not pleased at the accident, but decided to dismiss the matter
for the night. The faculty to do so, and to fall asleep on some
pleasant thought, was part of his life's sound régime. He began to
think of her again. How prettily she had carried off her success. He
recalled the little bob-curtsey in the Presence, so in character after
the hoydenish dance--the gleam of sub-audacity that accompanied it,
which every charming woman knows she can permit herself in company,
however august, where her charm is likely to be felt. But who would
have done it so gracefully? He had stood aloof (it seemed more decent
to), but he remembered how long she had been kept in the circle, and
how every one had laughed from time to time. Her competence, her
amazing competence--that was what he was never done marvelling at.
Nothing seemed to scare her, nothing to dazzle her. What a genius there
can be in school nicknames! And then, that chin and jaw of turned
ivory, and the hair, dark and fragrant as a West India night, and the
diamond twinkling in the little fleshy ear.
Suddenly he stood quite still, with his hair-brushes in his hand,
listening intently. Some one was scratching stealthily on the upper
panel of his bedroom door. Remember the hour--the stillness--the man's
old experience, and of what his imagination was full. His heart seemed
to miss two or three beats, and to resume its function thickly and
heavily in his throat. The last traces of anger and dissatisfaction
died away. Women had called Bryan Lumsden's face beautiful before. They
might have called it so now again.
He walked to the door and opened it softly. It was she; but dressed,
with her hat and veil, and with the telegram in her hand.
"Bryan!--Bryan!" she said under her breath, and then stopped. Her
agitation was so great that she could not go on. He drew her gently
into his room and closed the door.
"You must be careful, Flash," he said gravely. "This isn't an ordinary
visit like Lulford, you know. It won't do to have any scandal here."
"Bryan, can I speak to you a minute?"
"Go on."
"You know what you asked me this afternoon?"
"Yes."
"I will, I will, I _will_; any time you like."
He looked at the telegram and his face hardened.
"If----?"
"Yes. If you get me to London to-night."
"Flash! it's absurd. Think of the hour! Can't you wait till morning?"
"No. I shall go mad."
"But even if the station is open, it will take hours to get a special."
"You have your car."
"Yes; but every one's in bed, and the garage probably locked up. Be
reasonable."
"Oh, no they're not," she said eagerly. "I can hear them from my
window. They have lamps and they're washing the cars with a hose."
"What has happened?"
She handed him the telegram quite simply. "I found this on my table.
It's been opened. I don't understand----"
He read it through again and folded it quite small and evenly.
"Where's your room? You can't wait here."
"At the other end of the corridor--Oh, Bryan! God bless you!"
"_S-sh!_ How will I know it? It won't do to make a mistake."
"Can't I hang a stocking over the knob?"
He looked at her askance a moment, then put on his jacket and walked
away into the darkness. After what must have seemed more, and was
probably less, than half an hour, he tapped softly at her door. He was
wearing the big coat she knew so well. He had wrapped her in it more
than once.
"I've arranged it," he said, in a low voice, strangely gentle. "Follow
me, and walk quietly."
X
A YEAR AND A DAY
We got Paul out of that dreadful lodging and into a private ward at
St. Faith's. I'll never forget the way Smeaton helped. We had the very
best advice, but all the doctors shook their heads over him. Some old
adhesion of the lung, they said, that, under normal conditions, he
might have lived till eighty and never suspected, but which privation,
or a chill, or a blow, or perhaps all three, had fretted to malignity.
There'd have to be an operation. It wasn't what is called a desperate
one, was well within the competence of modern surgery in an ordinary
case, but everything was against poor Ingram. Webber, who was watching
the general condition, took no responsibility for the operation, and
Tuckey, who was to do the cutting, took no responsibility for the
result. As a division of responsibility, it was the neatest piece of
work, I think, I have ever seen.
"It's not really strength he lacks," said Webber, after his last visit
before the critical morning. "It's the _vivida vis_, the desire
of life, that isn't there. Two grains of hope would be worth all the
oxygen and beef-juice and brandy we could pump into him in a month."
I didn't confide to Webber that I'd already told Paul sixty thousand
pounds was waiting till he was well enough to claim it, without seeing
one shade of pleasurable emotion come into the tired, drooping eyes.
As for Fenella, her name was never mentioned between us. I don't think
he had any idea how much he had told me in that dark room at Chalk
Farm, and I did not remind him. I had reason, soon enough, to bless
my forbearance, for day followed day, and no answer to my telegram
reached me. At Park Row I had found a sullen reluctance to give any
information at all. She was travelling--she was on the sea--had left no
instructions for forwarding. But a journalist is not to be thrown off
the scent by a sulky and probably venal little slavey. Two telephone
calls put me into possession of Lumsden's probable movements, and I
knew I had not gone very far astray in sending the telegram to his care
at Cowes. I never doubted for an instant that it had reached her hands.
No; she had sought advice where advice, perhaps, was already backed by
natural authority, and had decided that, under the circumstances----You
see what I mean? It is true she might have written or wired asking for
news. But trying to repair life's errors is a thankless task. Through
the breach we are patching up the whole salt, dark ocean of destiny
comes pouring and thundering about our stunned ears.
I slept little on the night before Paul's operation, and was up and
moving restlessly about my rooms before the sun had risen. Who is it
says, "Help cometh with the morning?" The Bible, probably. Anyway, I
know I was heartened by seeing the rosy glow on the curtained windows
opposite. It is a strange thing that I, who was to have no share in
the day's great business, was probably up the first. Paul, I hope, was
asleep, and I am sure Tuckey and Webber were. How far easier is work
than waiting! The one has its seasons--a life may be wasted in the
other.
I was looking out my sitting-room window, thinking this and many a
deep solemn thought besides, when a big car, covered so thickly with
mud and dust that its color could not be distinguished, and with the
unmistakable appearance of having been driven far and furiously,
swung--one might almost say dropped--into the crescent. I knew it was
she. Oh, how I loathed myself for my doubt! I had the door open before
she could put her foot on the steps.
She flashed into my face one mute, awful question in which I could tell
the anguish of hours was concentrated, and I gave her the mute reply
which says, "Not yet."
"Oh, thank God! thank God!" she said, and clasped her hands across her
breast. The man in the car, stooped above the steering-wheel, did not
move once nor look round.
"Can I see him now? Will he know me?"
"You won't be let see him till nine. The operation is at eleven, and
there's hope. He was conscious last night but very weak. I can tell you
no more."
If I sound harsh or cold, lay it to the charge of the man at the wheel.
I went on. "Shall I arrange for you to see him at nine?"
"Is it far?"
"Just across the river."
"I'll call back at quarter to nine, and you must take me."
She climbed into the car without looking at me again, and next moment
was gone. Across the road I counted six blinds drawn to one side.
Lumsden never asked whether the man he had brought her a hundred and
thirty miles to see was dead or alive. His face was set like a stone.
In the main road he turned it to her, a mere dusty mask.
"Where do you want to go now?"
"Go to my house. I'll get you a drink and some breakfast. You must be
half dead."
He headed the car for Knightsbridge without a word, and while Frances,
sleep struggling with surprise in her bemused brain, was fulfilling
her humble rôle in the romance by poaching two eggs over the electric
stove, they sat in the dining-room on opposite sides of the table. She
had filled a long, thin glass with the beverage his heart loved, but
he only sipped it, which was not like Bryan, and turned the tumbler
thoughtfully round and round. He avoided her eyes. He had seemed to
avoid them all the way up.
"Will you come with me to--to the hospital?" she asked, when the
silence had begun to weigh upon her.
"No. I don't want to see him."
"Bryan, since we're to be married, I think I'd best tell you what I
wouldn't tell that night at Mount Street. Do you remember?"
"Yes. Well?"
"Dear, there's no reason, when you see him, you should feel anything
but just a great, deep pity for all his unhappiness. I don't know why I
didn't tell you this before. I think it was your doubting him drove me
mad. And you're quite right in saying I've changed myself on purpose.
It was because, after I learned the world a bit, I saw what a fraud I
really was. All those little girl's ways you liked so much--they're
very pretty, I dare say, but they're shams for me, anywhere off the
stage. I had no right to them. I'm only what the world calls a 'good
girl'--I'm only a girl at all, because he was merciful and--spared me.
He must have been a very good man."
"Or a very cold one? Which?"
"Well. I'm not going to try to answer that, Bryan. It's what you call
yourself an 'unseemly question'."
"You're a strange creature."
"Oh no, I'm not, Bryan. Not a bit different really to heaps and heaps
of other women. I used to think I was once, at Sharland, because I
didn't seem to have the other girls' ways or their curiosity. But I
know better now. Do you remember Lord--the old lawyer beast that we
went to the White City with? He took me on the launches, and when we
were alone, he leaned over and told me--oh, something I can't even tell
you, Bryan--now. He said it in French first and then, in case I didn't
know what it was in French, he translated it into English. Those are
the things that make us _loathe_ you, Bryan--deep, deep, deep,
down in the little bit of us you never reach. But I only giggled, as
any other girl would have done, any other girl who felt the same as
me. And now he'll always remember me as--the woman who laughed."
"You're all a mystery."
"Not half as much as is pretended, Bryan. The mystery comes about
because we don't tell the truth. Married women don't tell it, even,
to one another, and it's thought shocking to tell a girl things that
the first man she meets will tell her if she lets him. I hear more
than most, 'cos I'm not one thing nor the other, and every one thinks
I'll tell them things back, and then they'll find out what's puzzling
them about us two. And we never tell you. How dare we? We find a set
of rules ready made for us--by you. You take the men we really want
from us because you're stronger than they are, or richer, or even
braver than they are, and since it's the way you settle things among
yourselves, and since you're satisfied with what you get by it, we
pretend we're satisfied too. But it's one thing to conquer them, Bryan,
and it's another thing to conquer us. I'll tell you a little woman's
secret: No nice girl ever gives herself up quite to a man unless
there's a little of _her mother_ in him. There was an awful lot in
Paul. I found it out."
"A bit of an old woman, in fact?"
"Oh! I see I can't teach you. It doesn't matter. So you see, dear," in
a different voice and raising her head, "there's not much left for you.
But what there is I'd rather you had than any one else. I _like_
you, Bryan--I like you _so_."
"And you think I ought to be satisfied with that?"
"Well, you know what you said a year ago."
"Yes--a year ago, but not now. Yesterday perhaps, but not this morning.
It's the old Scots law limit--a year and a day. Often the wisdom that
doesn't come in the year comes in a night. You're too deadly wise,
Flash; too utterly disillusioned. I never could stand it. There'd be
nothing to teach you; nothing to break down. You believe you've taken
my measure, and every time I tried to lift our lives out of the mud,
I'd feel you were laughing at me--down in that little bit you've just
told me of. It may be as you say, all a make-believe, but, by G--d! it
doesn't do to have both know it. What do you want most, really? Your
liberty?"
She did not answer or raise her head.
"Well, you can have it." He got up and took his cap off the table.
"Good-bye."
She didn't speak until he had his hand on the handle of the door. And
then--
"Bryan, I've never let you kiss me. You can now if you like."
He spun round on his heel, as though some one had given him a blow
between the shoulders. For a moment she thought he was going to strike
her, or humble her pride to death. A foul name seemed to be actually
forming itself on his lips. But he came across the room, and took her
in his arms, and held her a long while.
"Take care, please," she said, breathlessly, "you're hurting me--a
little."
Then he let her go.
"Oh, Flash!" he said hoarsely. "Doesn't that mean anything to you?
Doesn't that tell you something?"
She was looking in the mirror at a little red mark where he had pressed
the earring into her neck.
"Good-bye," he said again, and she heard the hall door slam. And then
the throb of the motor began to rattle the windows in their frames.
She fell upon her knees and buried her face in her hands.
XI
TWO GRAINS OF HOPE
If that early morning call at half-past five had been my only meeting
with Fenella, I don't think I should have known her when she came back
at nine. All the weariness had gone out of her face. Under her light
cloak she was freshly and beautifully dressed. Her eyes seemed to brim
with a sort of wistful happiness. I hated the task; but knowing what
she was about to see, I _had_ to try and prepare her. But I soon
saw I was having my trouble for nothing. I think she hardly heard me.
Her heart, it was plain, was full of that brave, sane hope that, even
when it is brought to nothing, I think bears sorrow best. Webber had
just paid his morning visit, but she did not wait for his report. I
fancy from the look he gave me that he took in the situation at a
glance. I smiled back at him a little nervously. He had prescribed two
grains of hope, and I was conscious of bringing an overdose.
In the private ward my impulsive companion took no notice of doctors
or nurses, but went straight over to the bed on whose snowy pillow the
poor wasted face lay like a gray shadow. She gave a little moan at the
first sight of it: that was all. His eyes were closed. She knelt down,
and passing her arm ever so gently underneath his neck, threw back her
cloak, and laid the shadowy face upon the warmth, and the fragrance,
and the softness beneath.
"Paul," she said at his ear, low, but so distinctly that we all heard.
"Don't you know me, dear? It's Nelly, come back to take care of you,
and look after you and love you all the rest of your life. You're
going to get well, aren't you, dear, for her sake? 'Cos you mustn't
break her heart a second time, you know. And, dear, she doesn't want
you to talk; but won't you just open your poor tired eyes once, a teeny
second, to show you know whose arm is round you? Because she's been
waiting, waiting--oh, such a weary time! just waiting, dear, till you
sent for her."
There was silence for a few seconds, broken only by the unrestrained
sobbing of the little day nurse at the foot of the bed.
Then Ingram opened his eyes.
* * * * *
"I don't know whether he's going to die or get well," I said, some
hours later. I was trying to swallow _chateaubriand_ and
champagne and unmanly emotion all at the same time, which doesn't help
lucidity. But I'd been supporting an anxious day on a tin and a half
of cigarettes, and the champagne was old Smeaton's fault, so perhaps
I shall be forgiven. "I don't know whether he's going to get well or
die. I can't feel it matters much, to-night. You'd know what I meant
if you'd seen his face. Oh! it was wonderful. I think I know now how a
man looks when he wakes in heaven and knows he very nearly missed it.
And the Barbour woman, crooning and cooing over him, and the nurses
snivelling, and all those doctors trying to pull the poor devil back to
life! Yes, you can laugh if you like, Smeaton. But I say it's a damned
fine old world, and I'm glad to have a place where I can sit and watch
it--even if it is only a second-floor front and back in Pimlico."
* * * * *
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS GARDEN CITY, NEW YORK
[Transcriber's Note: Inconsistent hyphenation left as printed.]