III

Charles Augustus Everard Barthrop, third son of the baronet and his

wife, was the assistant manager of some financial company in London,

of which his father was a director. I fancy the young man himself was

also a director, but am not sure as to that. In any case he had the

reputation of being one who was likely to achieve big things in the

world of finance and company promotion, a world of which I was as

profoundly ignorant as though a dweller in the planet Mars. In another

field, too, this young man had won early distinction. He was a mighty

footballer, and a rather notable boxer. He was very blonde, very

handsome, very large, and, I gathered, of a very merry and kindly

disposition. He looked it. His sunny face and bright blue eyes

contained no more evidence of care or anxiety than one sees in the

face of a healthy boy of twelve.

'Here is a man,' I thought, 'peculiarly rich in everything that I

lack; and all his life long he has been equally rich in his possession

of everything I have lacked. And now he is going to marry Cynthia

Lane. The rest seems natural enough, but not this.'

As yet I had little enough of evidence on which to base conclusions.

But, as I saw it, Charles Barthrop was a handsome and materially

well-endowed young animal, whose work was company-promoting, and whose

diversions hardly took him beyond football and the Gaiety Theatre. I

dare say it was partly because he was so refulgently well-dressed that

I assumed him devoid of intellect. As a fact, my assumption was not

very wide of the mark.

'And Cynthia,' I thought, 'has a mind and a soul. She _is_ mind and

soul encased, as it happens, in a beautiful body. She is no more a

mate for him than a great poet would be mate for a handsome fishwife;

an Elizabeth Barrett Browning for a champion pugilist.'

It was natural that, during that Saturday evening and the following

day, conversation between Lane and myself should turn more than once

towards his sister Cynthia and her forthcoming marriage, which, I

understood, was to take place within a few weeks at St. Margaret's,

Westminster. We had become fairly intimate of late, Lane and myself,

and the introduction to various members of his family seemed to have

made us much more intimate.

'You have made no end of an impression on Miss Cynthia,' he said

pleasantly on the Saturday evening. 'She was always the literary and

artistic member of the sisterhood. She gave me special instructions to

bring you along in time for some tea to-morrow, and she means to force

you out of your hermitage while she is at Deene Place, so I warn you.

Seriously, I think, it may be good for you. You will be sure to meet

some decent people there, who will be worth knowing, not only just

now, but when Cynthia is married and set up in Sloane Street. Barthrop

has taken a house there, you know.'

With a duplicity not very creditable to me, I pretended thoughtful

agreement. A brother can tell one a good deal without putting his

information into plain words. I gathered from our talk then, and on

the following day, that the Lane family occupied the difficult

position of people who have, as it were, been born to greater riches

than they possess. Of them more had always been expected, socially,

than their straitened means permitted. The pinch had been a very real

one of late years, towards the end of the grand struggle which their

parents had passed through in educating and launching a family of two

sons and five daughters. It was easy to gather that good marriages

were very necessary for those five daughters, of whom Cynthia was the

first-born. I even gathered that, a year or two earlier, there had

been scenes and grave anxiety over a preference which Cynthia had

shown for a painter, poor as a church mouse, who, very considerately,

had proceeded to die of a fever in Southern Italy. Mrs. Lane had, to a

large extent, arranged the forthcoming marriage with Charles Barthrop,

I think. In the interests of the whole family Cynthia had been

'sensible'; she had been brought to see reason.

'And, mind you,' said Lane, 'I do think Barthrop is an excellent chap,

you know. Oh, yes; he's quite a cut above your average city man. And a

kinder-hearted chap you never met. The pater swears by him.'

I gathered that 'the pater' had been given the most useful information

and guidance in financial matters by this Apollo of Throgmorton

Street.

'He's modest, too,' continued Lane, 'which is unusual in his type, I

think. He told me his favourite reading was detective stories, outside

the sporting and financial news, of course; but he has the greatest

respect for Cynthia's literary tastes-- You know she has published

some verse? Yes. Not in book form, but in some of the better

magazines. Oh, yes, Barthrop's a good chap: simple-minded, a shade

gross, too, perhaps, in some ways. These chaps in the city do

themselves too well, I think. But quite a good chap, and sure to make

an excellent husband. I fancy his kind do, you know--no tension, no

fret, no introspection.'

Again I made signs of agreement which were not strictly honest.

On Sunday afternoon we both drank our tea under the copper beeches at

Deene Place. I deliberately monopolised Cynthia's attention as long as

I possibly could, and then devoted myself to the cold-blooded study of

the man she was to marry. I found him very good-natured, gifted with

abundant high spirits, agreeably modest, and, as it seemed to me,

intellectually about on a par with a race-horse or a handsome St.

Bernard dog.

'Cynthia tells me we are to bully you into coming out of your

hermitage,' he said to me with a sunny smile. 'A good idea, too, you

know. After all, being a recluse can't be good for one's health; and I

suppose if a man isn't fit, it tells--er--even in literary work,

doesn't it?'

I felt towards him as one feels towards some bright, handsome

schoolboy. And yet, in many ways, I doubt not he had more of wisdom

than I had. I had spoken to Cynthia of Leith Hill, and she had said

that, when staying at Deene Place, she walked almost every day either

on the hill or the common. Upon that I had relinquished her attention

with a fair grace.

Of course, I was entirely unused to the amenities of society. I used

no subterfuges, and made no attempt to disguise my interest in

Cynthia, or to pretend to other interests. I dare say my directness

was smiled upon, as part of the eccentricity of these literary people;

one of Ernest's friends, quite a recluse, and so forth. I gathered as

much a little later on.

Looking back upon it I must suppose that my conduct during the next

week or so would be condemned by most right-thinking people as

ungentlemanly and even dishonourable. I have no inclination to defend

it; and I could not affirm that, at the time, I loved honour more than

Cynthia Lane. To speak the naked truth, I believe I would have

committed forgery, if by doing so I could have won Cynthia for my

wife. The one and only way in which I showed any discretion (and that,

not from any moral scruple, but purely as a matter of tactics) was in

withholding any open declaration to Cynthia herself.

My feeling was that my chance of a life's happiness was confined to

the cruelly short period of a week or two. There was no time for

taking risks. There must be no refusals. I must use my time, every day

of it, I thought, in the effort to win her heart; and trust to the

very end to win her consent. I availed myself fully of my advantage in

living in Dorking while my rival spent his days in London. The

obstacles in my path were such as to justify me in grasping every

possible advantage within reach, I told myself. Every day we met.

Every day I walked and talked with Cynthia. Every day love possessed

me more utterly. And, I believe I may say it, every day Cynthia drew

nearer to me. No word did I breathe of marriage; that which was

arranged, or that which I desired. It seemed to me that every

available moment must be given to the moulding of her heart, to

preparation for the last crucial test, when I should ask her to

sacrifice everything, and cross the Channel and the Rubicon with me.

There is no need for me to burke the words. Cynthia did love me when

she left Dorking for her parents' house in London; not, perhaps, with

the absorbing passion she had inspired in me; yet well enough, as I

was assured, to face social disaster and a break with her family, in

order that she might entrust her life to me.

'Cynthia,' I said, at the end of that last walk, 'London is not to rob

me of you? Promise me!'

'If you call me, I will come,' she said, looking at me through tears,

and well I knew that perfect truth shone in those dear eyes.

Regarding this as the most serious undertaking of my life, I had

endeavoured to overlook nothing. I had obtained a marriage licence. A

London registrar's office was to serve our purpose. I had previously

secured a temporary lodging in London, and now went there with my

luggage. Love did not blind me to practical considerations. While

Cynthia was still in Dorking I had no time to spare. Now that she was

entangled in her own home among last preparations for the wedding that

was not to be, I turned my attention to matters affecting her future

life with me.

Three afternoon appointments I kept with Arncliffe in the _Advocate_

office. When I left him after our third talk, I was definitely re-engaged

as a member of his staff, at a salary of six hundred pounds

per annum, having promised to take up my duties with him in one month

from that date. Every nerve in my body had been keyed to the

attainment of this result, and I was grateful, and not a little

flattered by its achievement. I was still a poor man; but this salary,

with the few hundred pounds I might hope to add to it in a year, by

means of independent literary work, would at all events mean that

Cynthia need not face actual discomfort in her life with me. Further,

I sincerely believed (and may very well have been correct in this)

that her influence upon me would enlarge the scope and appeal of my

literary work. I realised clearly that my beautiful lady-love had very

much to give me. My life till then had not entirely lacked culture or

intellectuality. But it emphatically had lacked that grace, that

element of gentle fineness and delicacy which Cynthia would give it.

Cynthia, who in giving me herself would give all that I desired which

my life had lacked, should come to me empty-handed, I thought. I did

not want her to borrow from out the life which for my sake she was

relinquishing. On the day before that fixed upon for the wedding at

St. Margaret's, she should come to me in the park, near her home.

There would be quite another sort of wedding, and by the evening train

we would leave for the Continent. Every detail was arranged for. We

met on the afternoon of the preceding day. I put my whole fate to the

test, and Cynthia never wavered. We arranged to meet at two o'clock

next day.

On the morning itself, just before noon, I hurried out from my lodging

upon a final errand, intending to change my clothes and lock my bags,

upon my return, within half an hour. My papers were in the pockets of

the clothes I intended to wear, and a supply of money was left locked

in my handbag. The most important moment of my life was at hand, and,

as I walked down the crowded Strand into Fleet Street, I was conscious

of such a measure of exaltation as I had never known before that day.

And then, for the second time in my life, brute force intervened, and

made utter havoc of all my plans and prospects. Crossing Fleet Street,

close to Chancery Lane, the pole of an omnibus struck my shoulder and

flung me several yards along the road. The driver of a hansom cab

shouted aloud as he jerked his horse to its haunches to avoid running

over me. And in that moment, pawing wildly, the horse struck the back

of my head with one of his fore feet.

For the second time in my life I lay in a hospital, suffering from

concussion of the brain. Almost twelve hours passed before I first

regained consciousness, and the morning of the following day was well

advanced before I was able to inform the hospital authorities of my

identity. No papers, nothing but a handful of silver, had been found

in my pockets.

At eleven o'clock that morning there was solemnised at St. Margaret's

Church the marriage of Cynthia and Charles Barthrop.

'If you call, I will come.'

But I had not called. I had even left Cynthia to pace to and fro

through an afternoon in the park; at that most critical juncture in

both our lives I had failed her. In a brief letter, posted to an

address given me by her brother, I acquainted Cynthia with the facts

of my accident, and nothing more than the facts.

In ten days I was out of the hospital; and Cynthia, another man's

wife, was in Norway.