The next day Enid Raleigh came home.
Almost the first thing she said to her mother, who had met her at the
station with the carriage, was:
"Well, and where is Master Vane, please? He is in town, isn't he? Why
didn't he come to meet me? I shall have to make him do penance for
this."
The words were lightly spoken, spoken in utter unconsciousness of the
deep meaning which Fate had put into them. So far as Enid herself was
concerned, and as, in fact, she was just thinking at the moment, all
they meant was that at their next meeting she would refuse Vane his
long-accustomed lover's kiss, and then, after an explanation occupying
some three or four minutes at most, surrender at discretion, after which
would come the luxury of playing at being offended and standing on her
dignity for a few minutes more, and then enjoying the further luxury of
making it up.
"Yes, dear," said her mother, "Vane is in town still. I think he doesn't
go back to Oxford until the end of the week, but he hasn't been very
well lately----"
"Not well!" exclaimed Enid, sitting up out of the corner of the carriage
into which she had leaned back with that easy abandon which comes so
naturally to people accustomed to comfort all their lives. "Ill! Why,
Vane's never been ill in his life. What's the matter? It isn't anything
serious, is it? You don't mean that he's really ill, mother, do you?"
There was no mistaking the reality of the anxiety in her tone. Her
mother recognised it instantly, but she also saw that a brougham
rattling over the streets of London was not exactly the place to enter
upon such explanations as it was her destiny and her duty to make to
this brilliant, beautiful, spoilt darling of a daughter who was sitting
beside her.
So far as she knew, every hope, every prospect of Enid's life, that
bright young life which, in the fuller acceptation of the term, was only
just going to begin, was connected more or less intimately with Vane
Maxwell.
Ever since they had come home together from Bombay on that memorable
voyage, she and Vane had been sweethearts. They were very much in love
with each other, and so far their love had been a striking exception to
that old proverb which comes true only too often. Saving only those
lovers' quarrels which don't count because they end so much more
pleasantly than they begin, there had never been a cloud in that
morning-sky of life towards which they had so far walked hand in hand.
It seemed as though the Fates themselves had conspired to make
everything pleasant and easy for them; and of course it had never struck
either of them that when the Fates do this kind of thing, they always
have a more or less heavy account on the other side--to be presented in
due course.
Lady Raleigh knew this, and her daughter did not. She knew that the
terrible explanation had to come, but she very naturally shrank from
the inevitable--and so, woman-like, she temporised.
"Really, dear," she said, "I can't talk with all this jolting and
rattle. When we get home I will tell you all about it. Vane himself is
not ill at all. He is just as well as ever he was. It isn't that."
"Then I suppose," said Miss Enid, looking round sharply, "my lord has
been getting himself into some scrape or other--something that has to be
explained or talked away before he likes to meet me. Is that it?"
"No, Enid, that is not it," replied her mother gravely, "but really,
dear, I must ask you to say nothing more about it just now. When we get
home we'll have a cup of tea, and then I'll tell you all about it."
"Oh, very well," said Enid, a trifle petulantly. "I suppose there's some
mystery about it. Of course there must be, or else he'd have come here
himself, so we may as well change the subject. How do you like the new
flat, and what's it like?"
As she said this she threw herself back again into the corner and stared
out of the opposite window of the brougham with a look in her eyes which
seemed to say that for the time being she had no further interest in any
earthly affairs.
Lady Raleigh, glad of the relief even for the moment, at once began a
voluble and minute description of the new flat in Addison Gardens into
which they had moved during her daughter's last sojourn in Paris, and
this, with certain interjections and questions from Enid, lasted until
the brougham turned into the courtyard and drew up in front of the
arched doorway out of which the tall, uniformed porter came with the
fingers of his left hand raised to the peak of his cap, to open the
carriage door.
Sir Godfrey was out, and would not be back until dinner time; so, as
soon as they had taken their things off, Lady Raleigh ordered tea in her
own room, and there, as briefly as was consistent with the gravity of
the news she had to tell, she told Enid everything that her husband had
heard from Sir Arthur.
Enid, although she flushed slightly at certain portions of the
narrative, listened to the story with a calmness which somewhat
surprised her mother.
The little damsel for whose kisses those two boys had fought ten or
eleven years ago, had now grown into a fair and stately maiden of
eighteen, very dainty and desirable to look upon, and withal possessing
a dignity which only comes by birth and breeding and that larger
training and closer contact with the world which modern girls of her
class enjoy. Young as she was, hers was not the innocence of ignorance.
She had lived too late in the century, and had already been too far
afield in the world for that.
"It comes to this, then," she said quietly, almost hardly, "instead of
being dead, as we have believed all along, Vane's mother is alive; an
imbecile who has become so through drink, and who seems to have
misbehaved herself very badly when Vane was a baby. She is in an asylum,
and will probably remain there till she dies. No one but ourselves and
this interesting young person, Miss Carol Vane, appears to know anything
about it, and I really don't see why Vane is to be held responsible for
his mother's insanity--for I suppose that's what it comes to.
"And then there is Miss Carol herself. Of course she's not a
particularly desirable family connection; but I don't suppose Vane would
expect me to meet her, much less fall upon her neck and greet her as his
long-lost sister. I suppose, too, that between us we could manage to do
something for her, and put her in a more respectable way of living and
induce her to hold her tongue.
"As for Vane getting drunk that night, of course it's very improper and
all that sort of thing from the Sunday School point of view; but I don't
suppose he was the only undergraduate who took too much to drink that
night. Probably several hundreds of them did, and I daresay a good many
of them were either engaged or going to be. Would they consider that a
reason why they should go and break off their engagements? I'm afraid
there wouldn't be many marriages nowadays if engagements were broken off
on that account.
"Of course, mam, dear, what you've told me is not exactly pleasant to
hear, but still, after all, I really can't see anything so very dreadful
in it. Most families have a skeleton of some sort, I suppose, and this
is ours, or will be when Vane and I are married. We must simply keep the
cupboard door shut as closely as possible. It's only what lots of other
people have to do."
"Well, my dear," said her mother, "I must say I'm very glad to see you
take it so reasonably. I'm afraid I could not have done so at your age,
but then girls are so different now, and, besides, you always had more
of your father's way of looking at things than mine. Then, I suppose,
Vane may come and see you. I think it was very nice of him not to come
until you had been told everything."
"May come!" said Enid. "I should think so. If he doesn't I shall be
distinctly offended. I shall expect him to come round and make his
explanations in person before long, and when he does we will have a few
minutes chat _a deux_--and I don't think I shall have very much
difficulty in convincing him of the error of his ways, or, at any rate,
of his opinions."
"What an extremely conceited speech to make, dear!" said her ladyship
mildly, and yet with a glance of motherly pride at the beauty which went
so far towards justifying it. "Well, perhaps you are right. Certainly,
if anyone can, you can, and I sincerely hope you will. It would be
dreadful if anything were to happen to break it off after all these
years."
The colour went out of Enid's cheeks in an instant, and she said in
quite an altered voice:
"Oh, for goodness sake, mamma, don't say anything about that! You know
how fond I am of Vane. I simply couldn't give him up, whatever sort of a
mother he had, and if he had a dozen half-sisters as disreputable as
this Miss Carol Vane--the very idea of her having the impudence to use
his name! No, I shan't think of that--I couldn't. If Vane did that it
would just break my heart--it really would. It would be like taking half
my life away, and it would simply kill me. I couldn't bear it."
She honestly meant what she said, not knowing that she said it in utter
ignorance of the self that said it.
It was in Enid's mind, as it also was in her mother's, to send a note
round to Warwick Gardens to ask both Vane and his father to come round
to an informal dinner, and to discuss the matter there and then; but
neither of them gave utterance to the thought. Lady Raleigh, knowing her
daughter's proud and somewhat impetuous temperament, instinctively
shrank from making a suggestion which she would have had very good
grounds for rejecting, more especially as she had already given such a
very decided opinion as to Vane's scruples.
As for Enid herself, she honestly thought so little of these same
scruples that she felt inclined to accuse Vane of a Quixotism which,
from her point of view at least, was entirely unwarrantable. It was,
therefore, quite impossible for her to first suggest that they should
meet after a parting during which they might have unconsciously reached
what was to be the crisis of both their lives.
The result was that the thought remained unspoken, and Enid, after
spending the evening in vexed and anxious uncertainty, went to bed; and
then, as soon as she felt that she was absolutely safe in her solitude,
discussed the whole matter over again with herself, and wound the
discussion up with a good hearty cry, after which she fell into the
dreamless slumber of the healthy and innocent.
When she woke very early the next morning, or, rather, while she was on
that borderland between sleeping and waking where the mind works with
such strange rapidity, she reviewed the whole of the circumstances, and
came to the conclusion that she was being very badly treated. Vane knew
perfectly well that she was coming back yesterday afternoon, and
therefore he had no right to let these absurd scruples of his prevent
him from performing the duties of a lover and meeting her at the
station. But, even granted that something else had made it impossible
for him to do so, there was absolutely no excuse for his remaining away
the whole afternoon and evening when he must have known how welcome a
visit would have been.
Meanwhile Vane had been doing the very last thing that she would have
imagined him doing.
After his fateful conversation with his father he had left the house in
Warwick Gardens to wander he knew and cared not whither. His thoughts
were more than sufficient companionship for him, and, heeding neither
time nor distance, he walked as he might have walked in a dream, along
the main road through Hammersmith and Turnham Green and Kew, and so
through Richmond Hill till he had climbed the hill and stopped for a
brief moment of desperate debate before the door of the saloon bar of
the "Star and Garter." The better impulse conquered the worse, and he
entered the park, and, seating himself on one of the chairs under the
trees, he made an effort to calmly survey the question in all its
bearings.
It was the most momentous of all human tasks--the choosing of his own
future life-path at the parting of the ways. One of them,
flower-bordered and green with the new-grown grass of life's
spring-time, and the other dry, rugged and rock-strewn--the paths of
inclination and duty: the one leading up to the golden gates of the
Paradise of wedded love, and the other slanting down to the wide
wilderness which he must cross alone, until he passed alone into the
shadows which lay beyond it.
A few days before he had seen himself well on the way to everything that
can make a man's life full and bright and worthy to be lived. He was,
thanks to his father's industry, relieved from all care on the score of
money, and, better still, he had that within him which made him
independent of fortune, perfect health and great abilities, already
well-proved, although he had yet to wait nearly a year for his
twenty-first birthday.
He had great ambitions and the high hopes which go with them. The path
to honour and distinction, even to fame itself, had lain plainly open
before him--and now everything was so different. The sun which he had
thought was only rising was already setting. He knew now that the fruit
which looked so sweet and luscious had the canker-worm feeding on the
core; that the flesh which seemed so healthy was really tainted and
leprous; and that, worse than all, the brightest and sweetest promise of
his life, a promise infinitely sweeter and dearer than even the
fulfilment of his highest material ambition, was now no longer a promise
but a denial, a life-sacrifice demanded, not only by his honour as a
man, but by his love as a lover.
He sat thus thinking until the buzzing of a motor-car woke him from his
day-dream. He looked at his watch, and found that he had about time to
get across the park to Sheen Gate; but he fell to dreaming again on the
way, and when he reached the gate it was closed.
He turned back with the idea of asking a keeper to unlock the gate and
let him out, but after a few strides he halted and sat down again on a
seat. After all, were he to go home, he could not sleep, and it better
suited his mood to keep vigil in the open air than within the four walls
of his room.
And so he passed the night, walking half awake, and then sitting, half
asleep, dimly reviewing this sudden crisis of his fate again and again
from all possible aspects. And again and again the determination to
adhere to the decision which duty had marked out so clearly seemed to
beat itself deeper and deeper into his brain.
The taint of alcoholism was in his blood, and matrimony and parentage
were not for him. In the morning he would go straight to Enid's father
and admit that, although ties reaching back into her childhood and his
had to be broken, yet it was impossible for the engagement between him
and Enid to be continued.
The night passed, and the park gates were again opened, but still Vane
sat on, until, noticing the suspicious glances of some of the early
pedestrians, he decided to get home, have a tub, and pay his fateful
visit to Sir Godfrey Raleigh.
As it happened, however, that visit was never to be paid. Enid had found
her waking thoughts unpleasant, if not almost intolerable, and, being
too perfectly healthy to indulge in anything of the nature of moping or
sulks, she came to the conclusion that a good sharp spin on her bicycle
would be the best mental tonic she could have; so she got a cup of
coffee and a biscuit, took out her machine, and started away to work
off, as she hoped, the presentiment of coming trouble which seemed to
have fastened itself upon her.
Thus it happened that she entered Richmond Park by Sheen Gate just as
Vane, physically weary yet still mentally sleepless, was coming out of
it.
During his night's vigil he had nerved himself, as he thought, to meet
every imaginable trial but this one--this vision of his well-beloved,
not waiting for him, but coming to him fresh and radiant in her young
beauty, delightful and desirable, tempting almost beyond the powers of
human resistance, and his, too, his own sweetheart, pledged to him ever
since that memorable afternoon when he had fought for her and won her
behind the wheelhouse in the midst of the Indian Ocean.
When her wonder had given way to complete recognition Enid dismounted
and waited, naturally expecting that he would greet her; but he stood
silent, looking at her as though he were trying to find some words of
salutation.
"Well, Vane," she said at last, "I suppose we may shake hands. I did not
expect to see you here. Cannot you look a little more cheerful? What is
the matter? You look as if you hadn't been home all night."
He took her hand mechanically, and, as he held it and looked down into
the sweet upturned face with a bright flush on the cheeks and the
dawning of an angry light in the gentle eyes, he felt an almost
irresistible desire to take her in his arms just as he had done at their
last meeting and kiss into silence the tempting lips which had just
shaped those almost scornfully spoken words.
It dawned upon her in the same moment that he was looking as she had
never seen him look before. His face was perfectly bloodless. The
features were hard-set and deep-lined. There were furrows in his
forehead and shadows under his eyes. When she had last seen his face it
was that of a boy of twenty, full of health and strength, and without a
care on his mind. Now it was the face of a man of thirty, a man who had
lived and sinned and sorrowed.
In that instant her mood and her voice changed, and she said:
"Vane, dear, what is it? Why don't you speak to me? Are you ill?"
He took her bicycle from her, and, turning, walked with her back into
the park. After a few moments' silence he replied in a voice which
seemed horribly strange to her:
"Yes, Enid, I am. I am ill, and I am afraid there is no cure for the
disease. I have not been home. In fact, I have been in the park all
night. I was shut in by accident, and I remained from choice, trying to
think out my duty to you."
"Oh, nonsense!" she replied. "I know what you mean. It's about you
getting drunk the other night--and--and your unfortunate mother and this
newly-found half-sister of yours. Well, of course, I suppose it was
exceedingly wrong of you to get so very drunk. And the rest--I mean
about your mother--that is very sad and terrible. But, bad as it is, I
think you are taking it a great deal too seriously. I've talked it all
over with mamma, and she thinks just as I do about it."
When she had said this Enid felt that she had gone quite as far as her
self-respect and maidenly pride would permit her to go. As she looked up
at him she saw the pallor of his face change almost to grey. His hand
was resting lightly on her arm, and she felt it tremble. Then he drew it
gently away and said:
"I know what you mean, Enid, and it is altogether too good and generous
of you; but I don't think you quite understand--I mean, you don't seem
to realise how serious it all is."
"Really, Vane, I must say that you are acting very strangely. What is
the good of going all over it again? You can't tell me anything more, I
suppose, than I have heard already from mamma. Surely you don't mean
that you intend that everything is to be over between us--that we are
only to be friends, as they say, in future?"
"I quite see what _you_ mean," he said, his lips perceptibly tightening;
"and that, too, in a certain sense, is what I mean also."
"What!" she exclaimed. "Do you really mean that I am not to be any more
what I have been to you, and that if we meet again it must only be as
ordinary acquaintances, just friends who have known each other a certain
number of years? Surely, Vane, you don't mean that--dear?"
The last word escaped her lips almost involuntarily. She tried to keep
it back, but it got out in spite of herself. It was only the fact that
they were walking on the public highway that prevented her from giving
way altogether to the sense of despair that had come over her. As his
face had changed a few moments before so did hers now, and as she
looked at him he stopped momentarily in his walk.
But the lessons which he had learnt during the last few days, and most
of all during this last night of lonely wandering and desperate
questioning with himself, had ground the moral into his soul so deeply
that not even the sight of her so anxiously longing for just one word
from him to bring them together again, and make them once more as they
had always been--almost since either of them could remember
anything--was strong enough to force him to speak it.
He involuntarily wheeled the bicycle towards the middle of the road, as
though he was afraid to trust himself too near her, and said, speaking
as a man might speak when pronouncing his own death sentence:
"Yes, Enid, that is what I do mean. I mean that there is a great deal
more, something infinitely more serious in what has happened during the
last few days, in what I have learnt and you have been told, than you
seem to have any idea of."
Enid made a gesture as though she would interrupt him, but he went on
almost hotly:
"Listen to me, Enid, and then judge me as you please--only listen to me.
Four days ago, after I had seen the Boat Race, I did as a good many
other fellows from the 'Varsity do--I went West. By sheer accident I met
a girl so like myself that--well, I didn't know then that I had a
sister. Yesterday I learnt, then, that I have one--not my father's
daughter, only my mother's--and you know what that means. We had supper
together at the Trocadero----"
"Really, Vane, I do think you might spare me these little details," said
Enid, with a sort of weary impatience. "I have heard of this
half-sister of yours already. Suppose we leave her out for the present?"
"Yes," he said, again stopping momentarily in his walk. "We _will_ leave
her out for the present. In fact, as far as you are concerned, Enid, she
may be left out for ever."
"Why--what do you mean, Vane?" she exclaimed, stopping short.
"I mean," he said, beginning quickly and then halting for a moment. "I
mean that, considering everything that has happened during the last few
days, I have no intention of asking you to become her half-sister--even
in law."
The real meaning of his utterance forced itself swiftly enough upon her
now, and for a minute rendered her incapable of speech. She, however,
like others of her blood and breed, had learned how to seem most
careless when she cared most, and so she managed to reply not only
steadily but even stiffly:
"Of course, after that there is very little to be said, Mr. Maxwell. I'm
afraid I have not properly understood what has happened. Perhaps,
though, it would have been better for you to have seen my father and
talked this over with him first."
The "Mr. Maxwell" cut him to the quick. It was the first time he had
ever heard it from her lips. Yet it did not affect the decision which
was, as he had for the time being, at least, convinced himself,
inevitable, and so miserable was he that even her scornful indignation
was something like a help to him.
He was even grateful that this interview, which he had looked forward to
with dread, had taken place in the open air rather than in the
drawing-room of Sir Godfrey Raleigh's house, for if she had simply sat
down and cried, as, perhaps, nine out of ten girls in her position would
have done, his task would have been infinitely more difficult, perhaps
even impossible of accomplishment. Her present attitude, however, seemed
to appeal to his masculine pride and stimulate it. He turned slightly
towards her, and said, with a sudden change in his voice which she felt
almost like a blow:
"Yes, Miss Raleigh, you are quite right. I will spare you the details;
at least, those which are not essential. But there are some which are.
For instance," he went on, with a note of vehemence in his tone which
made it impossible for her to interrupt him, "four nights ago I was
lying on the floor of the Den at home, blind, dead drunk--drunk, mind
you, after this sister of mine had seen in my eyes the sign of
drunkenness which she had seen in her mother's--that was my mother, too,
an imbecile dipsomaniac, remember--who had sunk to unspeakable
degradation before she became what she is. I was as sober as I am now
when I told my father this--I mean what Carol had told me. I noticed
that there was something strange about him while I was telling him, but
I thought that was just a matter of circumstances, you know----"
"Yes, I think I know, or at any rate I can guess," said Miss Enid, with
angry eyes and tightened lips.
"Very well, then," he went on, "and after that--after my father had
asked me to have a glass of whiskey with him--after I had refused and he
had gone to bed and I was putting the spirit-case away without any idea
of drinking again, one smell of the whiskey seemed to paralyse my whole
mental force. It turned me from a sane man who had had a solemn warning
into a madman who had only one feeling--the craving for alcohol in some
shape. I smelt again, and the smell of it went like fire through my
veins. I tasted it, and then I drank. I drank again and again, until, as
I suppose your mother has told you, I fell on the rug, no longer a man,
but simply a helpless, intoxicated beast. I was utterly insensible to
everything about me, I didn't care whether I lived or died. When I woke
and thought about it I would a thousand times rather have been dead.
"It wasn't that I wanted the liquor. I didn't get drunk because I wanted
to. I got drunk, Enid, because I _had_ to; because there was a lurking
devil in my blood which forced me to drink that whiskey just because it
was alcohol, because it was drink, because it was the element ready to
respond to that craving which I have inherited from this unhappy mother
of mine.
"Do you know what that means, Enid? I don't think you do. It means that
my blood has been poisoned from my very birth. Of course, you don't know
this. Your parents don't know it, any more than they know that it is too
late to redeem the ruin which has fallen upon me. That, at least, I can
say with a clear conscience is no fault or sin of mine. Since then I
have thrashed this miserable thing out in every way that I can think of.
I have talked it over with my father, and he has talked it over with
yours. I have been wandering about the park all night trying to find out
what I ought to do--and I think I have found it."
"From which I suppose I am to understand," she replied, in a voice which
was nothing like as firm as she intended it to be, "you mean, Vane--or
perhaps I ought to say Mr. Maxwell now--that henceforth--I mean that we
are not going to be married after all."
"What I mean is this, Enid," he replied, "that dearly as I love you, and
just because I love you so dearly, because I would give all the world if
I had it to have you for my wife, I would _not_ make you the wife of a
man who could become the thing that was lying on the hearthrug of the
Den four nights ago--a man drunk against his own will, a slave to one of
the vilest of habits--no, something much worse than a habit, a disease
inherited with tainted, poisoned blood!
"What would you think of your parents and my father if they allowed you
to marry a lunatic? Well, with that taint in my blood I am worse, a
thousand times worse, than a lunatic, and I should be a criminal as well
if I asked you or any other girl for whom I had the slightest feeling of
love or respect to marry me.
"Think what the punishment of such a crime might be!" he went on even
more vehemently. "Every hour of our married life I should be haunted by
this horrible fear. Tempted by a devil lurking in every glass of wine or
spirits that I drank, or even looked at--the same devil which had me in
its grip the other night. Enid, if you could have seen me then, I think
you would have understood better; but if, which God forbid, you could
have gone through what I went through after I swallowed that first drink
of whiskey, you would as soon think of marrying a criminal out of jail
or a madman out of a lunatic asylum as you would of marrying me. I
daresay all this may seem unreasonable, perhaps even heartless, to you;
but, dear, if you only knew what it costs to say it----"
He broke off abruptly, for as he said this a note of tenderness stole
for the first time into his voice, and found an instant echo in Enid's
heart. So far she had borne herself bravely through a bitterly trying
ordeal, but as she noticed a change in his tone a swift conviction came
to her that if she remained many more minutes in his company she would
certainly break down and there would be "a scene," which, under the
circumstances, was not to be thought of. So she stopped him by holding
out her hand and saying in a voice which cost her a terrible effort to
keep steady:
"No, Vane, we have talked quite enough. I see your mind is made up, and
so there is, of course, nothing more to be said except 'good-bye.' I
think we had better not meet again until we both have had more time to
think about it all."
This was as far as she could get. They had by this time reached Sheen
Gate again, and Enid took her bicycle from him. She did not look at him,
and, indeed, could not even trust herself to say "thank you." She
mounted and rode through the comparatively lonely roads in a sort of
dream until the traffic at Hammersmith Bridge and Broadway mercifully
compelled her to give her whole attention to the steering of her
machine.
When she got home she gave her bicycle to the porter, went straight to
her own room, took off her hat and gloves and jacket, and then dropped
quietly on the bed and laid there, staring with tearless eyes up at the
ceiling, wondering vaguely what it all meant, and if it was really true.
Vane stood and watched her until she swept round a bend in the road, and
then walked on with the one thought echoing and re-echoing in the
emptiness of his soul--the thought of the course which he was bound to
follow by the dictates of both love and duty. He had reached the Surrey
end of Hammersmith Bridge when the strong smell of alcoholic liquor
coming through the open door of a public-house caused him to stop for a
moment. Would a drink do him any harm after what had happened? He had
passed a sleepless night in the open air, and felt almost
fainting--surely a drop of brandy would do him no harm under the
circumstances? Then he remembered the hearthrug in the Den, and turned
towards the bridge with something between a sneer and a curse on his
lips.
Was he always to be beset by temptation in this way--and would he always
have strength to successfully combat the evil influence? If Fate had
really marked him out for a dipsomaniac, was it any use his fighting
against what must inevitably be his destiny? His thoughts were
interrupted by the rumbling of a 'bus which was coming towards him, and,
seeing that it was one which went through Kensington, he jumped on it
and went home.
He alighted at Warwick Gardens, and on reaching the house found that his
father had just come in for lunch.
"It's all right, dad," he said, anticipating his inevitable question. "I
got shut in Richmond Park by accident, and did a night in the open. But
I'll tell you all about it at lunch. I'm going to have a tub now."
Lunch was ready by the time Vane came downstairs, re-clothed and
refreshed, and when they were alone he repeated to his father almost
verbatim the conversation he had had with Enid.
"Well, my boy," he said when he had concluded. "I cannot but think that
as far as you can see now you have acted rightly. It is terribly hard on
you, but I will help you all I can. And perhaps, after all, the future
may prove brighter than it looks now for all of us."