I TELL JULIAN
_(James Orlebar Cloyster’s narrative continued)_
Is any man really honourable? I wonder. Hundreds, thousands go
triumphantly through life with that reputation. But how far is this due
to absence of temptation? Life, which is like cricket in so many ways,
resembles the game in this also. A batsman makes a century, and, having
made it, is bowled by a ball which he is utterly unable to play. What
if that ball had come at the beginning of his innings instead of at the
end of it? Men go through life without a stain on their honour. I
wonder if it simply means that they had the luck not to have the good
ball bowled to them early in their innings. To take my own case. I had
always considered myself a man of honour. I had a code that was rigid
compared with that of a large number of men. In theory I should never
have swerved from it. I was fully prepared to carry out my promise and
marry Margaret, at the expense of my happiness—until I met Eva. I would
have done anything to avoid injuring Julian, my friend, until I met
Eva. Eva was my temptation, and I fell. Nothing in the world mattered,
so that she was mine. I ought to have had a revulsion of feeling as I
walked back to my rooms in Walpole Street. The dance was over. The
music had ceased. The dawn was chill. And at a point midway between
Kensington Lane and the Brompton Oratory I had proposed to Eversleigh’s
cousin, his Eva, “true as steel,” and had been accepted.
Yet I had no remorse. I did not even try to justify my behaviour to
Julian or to Margaret, or—for she must suffer, too—to Mrs.
Gunton-Cresswell, who, I knew well, was socially ambitious for her
niece.
To all these things I was indifferent. I repeated softly to myself, “We
love each other.”
From this state of coma, however, I was aroused by the appearance of my
window-blind. I saw, in fact, that my room was illuminated. Remembering
that I had been careful to put out my lamp before I left, I feared, as
I opened the hall door, a troublesome encounter with a mad
housebreaker. Mad, for no room such as mine could attract a burglar who
has even the slightest pretensions to sanity.
It was not a burglar. It was Julian Eversleigh, and he was lying asleep
on my sofa.
There was nothing peculiar in this. I roused him.
“Julian,” I said.
“I’m glad you’re back,” he said, sitting up; “I’ve some news for you.”
“So have I,” said I. For I had resolved to tell him what I had done.
“Hear mine first. It’s urgent. Miss Margaret Goodwin has been here.”
My heart seemed to leap.
“Today?” I cried.
“Yes. I had called to see you, and was waiting a little while on the
chance of your coming in when I happened to look out of the window. A
girl was coming down the street, looking at the numbers of the houses.
She stopped here. Intuition told me she was Miss Goodwin. While she was
ringing the bell I did all I could to increase the shabby squalor of
your room. She was shown in here, and I introduced myself as your
friend. We chatted. I drew an agonising picture of your struggle for
existence. You were brave, talented, and unsuccessful. Though you went
often hungry, you had a plucky smile upon your lips. It was a
meritorious bit of work. Miss Goodwin cried a good deal. She is
charming. I was so sorry for her that I laid it on all the thicker.”
“Where is she now?”
“Nearing Guernsey. She’s gone.”
“Gone!” I said. “Without seeing me! I don’t understand.”
“You don’t understand how she loves you, James.”
“But she’s gone. Gone without a word.”
“She has gone because she loved you so. She had intended to stay with
the Gunton-Cresswells. She knows them, it seems. They didn’t know she
was coming. She didn’t know herself until this morning. She happened to
be walking on the quay at St. Peter’s Port. The outward-bound boat was
on the point of starting for England. A wave of affection swept over
Miss Goodwin. She felt she must see you. Scribbling a note, which she
despatched to her mother, she went aboard. She came straight here.
Then, when I had finished with her, when I had lied consistently about
you for an hour, she told me she must return. ‘I must not see James,’
she said. ‘You have torn my heart. I should break down.’ And she said,
speaking, I think, half to herself, ‘Your courage is so noble, so
different from mine. And I must not impose a needless strain upon it.
You shall not see me weep for you.’ And then she went away.”
Julian’s voice broke. He was genuinely affected by his own recital.
For my part, I saw that I had bludgeon work to do. It is childish to
grumble at the part Fate forces one to play. Sympathetic or otherwise,
one can only enact one’s _rôle_ to the utmost of one’s ability. Mine
was now essentially unsympathetic, but I was determined that it should
be adequately played.
I went to the fireplace and poked the fire into a blaze. Then, throwing
my hat on the table and lighting a cigarette, I regarded Julian
cynically.
“You’re a nice sort of person, aren’t you?” I said.
“What do you mean?” asked Julian, startled, as I had meant that he
should be, by the question.
I laughed.
“Aren’t you just a little transparent, my dear Julian?”
He stared blankly.
I took up a position in front of the fire.
“Disloyalty,” I said tolerantly, “where a woman is concerned, is in the
eyes of some people almost a negative virtue.”
“I don’t know what on earth you’re talking about.”
“Don’t you?”
I was sorry for him all the time. In a curiously impersonal way I could
realise the depths to which I was sinking in putting this insult upon
him. But my better feelings were gagged and bound that night. The one
thought uppermost in my mind was that I must tell Julian of Eva, and
that by his story of Margaret he had given me an opening for making my
confession with the minimum of discomfort to myself.
It was pitiful to see the first shaft of my insinuation slowly sink
into him. I could see by the look in his eyes that he had grasped my
meaning.
“Jimmy,” he gasped, “you can’t think—are you joking?”
“I am not surprised at your asking that question,” I replied
pleasantly. “You know how tolerant I am. But I’m not joking. Not that I
blame you, my dear fellow. Margaret is, or used to be, very
good-looking.”
“You seem to be in earnest,” he said, in a dazed way.
“My dear fellow,” I said; “I have a certain amount of intuition. You
spend an hour here alone with Margaret. She is young, and very pretty.
You are placed immediately on terms of intimacy by the fact that you
have, in myself, a subject of mutual interest. That breaks the ice. You
are at cross-purposes, but your main sympathies are identical. Also,
you have a strong objective sympathy for Margaret. I think we may
presuppose that this second sympathy is stronger than the first. It
pivots on a woman, not on a man. And on a woman who is present, not on
a man who is absent. You see my meaning? At any rate, the solid fact
remains that she stayed an hour with you, whom she had met for the
first time today, and did not feel equal to meeting me, whom she has
loved for two years. If you want me to explain myself further, I have
no objection to doing so. I mean that you made love to her.”
I watched him narrowly to see how he would take it. The dazed
expression deepened on his face.
“You are apparently sane,” he said, very wearily. “You seem to be
sober.”
“I am both,” I said.
There was a pause.
“It’s no use for me,” he began, evidently collecting his thoughts with
a strong effort, “to say your charge is preposterous. I don’t suppose
mere denial would convince you. I can only say, instead, that the
charge is too wild to be replied to except in one way, which is this.
Employ for a moment your own standard of right and wrong. I know your
love story, and you know mine. Miss Eversleigh, my cousin, is to me
what Miss Goodwin is to you—true as steel. My loyalty and my friendship
for you are the same as your loyalty and your friendship for me.”
“Well?”
“Well, if I have spent an hour with Miss Goodwin, you have spent more
than an hour with my cousin. What right have you to suspect me more
than I have to suspect you? Judge me by your own standard.”
“I do,” I said, “and I find myself still suspecting you.”
He stared.
“I don’t understand you.”
“Perhaps you will when you have heard the piece of news which I
mentioned earlier in our conversation that I had for you.”
“Well?”
“I proposed to your cousin at the Gunton-Cresswells’s dance tonight,
and she accepted me.”
The news had a surprising effect on Julian. First he blinked. Then he
craned his head forward in the manner of a deaf man listening with
difficulty.
Then he left the room without a word.
He had not been gone two minutes when there were three short, sharp
taps at my window.
Julian returned? Impossible. Yet who else could have called on me at
that hour?
I went to the front door, and opened it.
On the steps stood the Rev. John Hatton. Beside him Sidney Price. And,
lurking in the background, Tom Blake of the _Ashlade_ and _Lechton_.
_(End of James Orlebar Cloister’s narrative.)_
Sidney Price’s Narrative