The courts had just risen, and the barristers in their wigs and gowns
were hastening through the Temple on the way to their various
chambers. It was not a day on which to linger, for a pitiless east
wind swept across Fountain Court, making little eddies in the basin of
water where the goldfish swam, and swirling the dust into little
sandstorms to blind the shivering people who were using the
thoroughfare down to the Embankment. The city clocks were chiming the
quarter after four, as Paul Wilton came along with the precise and
measured step that never varied whatever the weather might be, and
mounted the wooden staircase that led to his rooms. A man rose from
his easiest chair as he walked into his sitting-room, and they greeted
one another in the cordial though restrained manner of men who had not
met for some time.
"Sorry you've been waiting, Heaton. Been here long?" said Paul,
throwing off his gown with more rapidity than he usually showed.
"Oh, no matter; my fault for getting here too early," returned Heaton
cheerily, as he sat down again and pulled his chair closer to the
fire. He never entered anybody's house without making elaborate
preparations to stay a long while.
"Fact is," he continued, "it's so long since I saw you that, directly
I heard you were back, I felt I must come round and look you up. It
was young Linton who told me,--you remember Linton? Ran across him in
the club, last night; he knows some friends of yours,--Kerry, or
Keeley, or some such name as that; just been calling on them,
apparently, and they told him you had travelled back with them.
Suppose you know the people I mean?"
Paul admitted that he knew the people he had been travelling with, and
Heaton rattled on afresh.
"We were talking about you at the club, only the other afternoon;
coincidence, wasn't it? Two or three of us,--Marston, and Hallett, and
old Pryor. You remember old Pryor, don't you? Stock Exchange, and
swears a lot--ah, you know; he wanted to know what had become of you
and your damned career; it was a damned pity for the most brilliant
man at the bar, and the only one with a conscience, to be wasted on a
lot of damned foreigners, and so on. You know old Pryor. Of course I
agreed with him, but it wasn't my business to say so."
He paused a little wistfully, as though he expected Paul to say
something to explain his long absence; but the latter only smiled
slightly, and walked across to his cupboard in the corner.
"I'm going to have some tea," he observed, "but I don't expect you to
join me in that, Heaton. There's some vermuth here, Italian vermuth;
or, of course, you can have whiskey if you prefer it."
"Thanks, my boy," laughed the other. "I'm glad to see that five months
in the infernal regions haven't spoilt your memory. Claret for boys,
brandy for heroes, eh?"
He helped himself to whiskey, and then leaned back in his chair to
survey Paul, who was making a cigarette while the water boiled. There
was one of the long silences that were inevitable with Paul, unless
his companion took the initiative; and for the next five minutes the
only sounds to be heard were the singing of the kettle, the rise and
fall of footsteps in the court below, and the occasional rattle of the
window sash as the wind wrestled with it. Paul made the tea, and
brought his cup to the table, and flung himself at full length on the
sofa beside it.
"Well," he said at last, "haven't you any news to tell me? Who is the
last charming lady you have been trotting round to all the picture
galleries,--the one who is more beautiful, and more intellectual, and
more sympathetic than any woman you have ever met?"
Heaton laughed consciously.
"Now, it's odd you should happen to say that," he said in his simple
manner. "Of course I know it's only your chaff, confound you, but
there _is_ just a smattering of truth in it. By Jove, Wilton, you must
come and meet her; you never saw such a figure, and she's the wittiest
creature I ever ran across! I'm nowhere, when it comes to talk; but
she's so kind to me, Wilton,--you can't think; I never met such a
sympathetic woman. Really, she has the most extraordinary effect upon
me; I haven't been so influenced by any woman since poor little May
died, 'pon my word I haven't. I can't think how it's all going to end,
I tell you I can't. It's giving me a lot of worry, I know."
"Ah," said Paul gravely. "Widow?"
"Her husband was a brute," said Heaton energetically. "Colonel in the
army, drank, used her villainously I expect, though she doesn't say
much; she's awfully staunch to the chap. Women are, you know; I can't
think why, when we treat them so badly. That's where they get their
hold over us, I suppose. But her influence over me is wonderful. I
wouldn't do anything to lose her respect, for the world."
He blinked his eyes, and drank some more whiskey. Perhaps it occurred
to him that his companion was even less responsive than usual, for
there was more vigour and less sentiment in his tone when he resumed
the conversation.
"You never tell me anything about yourself," he complained, rather
pathetically. "You draw me out, and I'm ass enough to be drawn; and
then you sit and smile cynically, while I make a fool of myself. How
about _your_ experiences, eh? 'Pon my word, I don't remember a single
instance of your giving me your confidence! You're such a rum,
reserved sort of chap. Well, I dare say you're right to keep it all to
yourself. It does me good to tell things; but then, I'm different."
"My dear fellow, I've nothing to tell," replied Paul, smiling. "You
forget that my life is not full of the charming experiences that seem
to fall so continually to your lot. And your conversation is so much
more interesting than mine would be, that I prefer to listen; that's
all. I'm not secretive; I have merely nothing to secrete."
"That's all very well," said Heaton, shaking his head; "but I'm older
than you, so that won't wash. You should have heard what those fellows
at the club were saying about you."
"Yes? It doesn't interest me in the least," said Paul coldly. But tact
was not the strong point of his friend's character, and he went on,
notwithstanding.
"Of course I didn't say much,--it isn't my way; besides, you know I
think you're always right in the main. But it's enough to make fellows
talk, when a man like you, who always sets his career before his
pleasure, goes away out of the vacation, and stays away all these
months. You must own it's reasonable to speculate a little; it's only
in man's nature."
"Some men's," said Paul, as coldly as before. "I should never dream of
speculating about anybody's course of action, myself."
"No, no, of course not; I quite agree with you, quite," said Heaton.
"By the way," he added, with bland innocence in his expression, "what
sort of people are these Kerrys you have been travelling with? An old
married couple of sorts, I suppose!"
Paul raised himself on his elbow and drank his tea straight off, as
though he had not heard the question. He was always divided, in his
conversations with Heaton, between a desire to snub him and a fear of
wounding his sensitiveness.
"You haven't told me the charming widow's name," he said, dropping
back into his former position. The other man's face brightened, and
the conversation again became a monologue until even Heaton's
prosiness was exhausted, and silence fell upon them both. And then,
very characteristically, as soon as he was quite sure he was not
expected to say anything, Paul suddenly became communicative.
"The Keeleys are rather nice people," he observed, taking his
cigarette out of his mouth and staring fixedly at the lighted end of
it. "Mother and daughter, you know, just abroad for the winter. Nice
little place in Herefordshire, I believe, but they come to town for
the season,--Curzon Street."
Heaton was wise enough to remain silent; and Paul went on, after a
pause.
"Sat next to them at table d'hôte, and that sort of thing. One is
always glad of a compatriot abroad, don't you know! And the mother was
really rather nice," he added, as an afterthought.
"And what was the daughter like?" asked Heaton.
"Oh, just an ordinary amusing sort of girl! She's pretty, too, in a
sort of way, but I don't admire that kind of thing much, myself. And I
think she found me very dull." He paused, and looked thoughtful. "I
must take you there when they come up to town, Heaton. You'd get on
with them, and the girl is just your style, I fancy. She is really
very pretty," he added, becoming thoughtful again.
"Nothing I should like better! Delightful of you to think of it!"
exclaimed Heaton, with a warmth that was a little overdone. His want
of a sense of proportion was always an annoyance to Paul. "You take me
there, that's all," he said, chuckling; "and let me have my head--"
"Which is precisely what you wouldn't have," said Paul drily. "And I'm
sure I don't know why you want to know them; they are quite ordinary
people, and don't possess every grace and virtue and talent, like all
your other lady friends. However, I shall be very pleased if you
really care about it. But you'll be disappointed."
Heaton agreed to be disappointed, and as another pause seemed
imminent, he began to think about taking his departure. But Paul did
not notice his intention, and seized the occasion to start a new
subject.
"Look here, Heaton," he began, so suddenly that the elder man sat down
again with precision; "you say I never tell you anything about my
experiences. Does that mean that you really think I have anything to
tell?"
Heaton looked at him dubiously.
"I'm hanged if I know," he said.
Paul smiled, a little regretfully.
"After years of renunciation," he murmured, "to be merely accounted a
riddle! Then you think," he continued, with an interested expression,
"that I am not the sort of man women would care about, eh? Well, I
dare say you're right. But then, why do they ever care for any of us?
I never expect them to, personally."
Heaton was looking at him in a perplexed manner.
"Perhaps I didn't express myself quite clearly," he hastened to say,
with his usual wish to compromise. "I only meant that I sometimes
think you never can have cared for any one seriously. But I've no
doubt I'm wrong. And I never said that nobody had ever cared for
_you_; I think that's extremely unlikely. In fact-- Do you really want
me to say what I think?"
"It would be most interesting," said Paul, still smiling.
"Well," said Heaton decidedly, "I think you're the sort of man who
would break a woman's heart and spare her reputation, and perhaps not
discover that she liked you at all. I know what women are, and they
just love to pine away for a man like you who would never dream of
giving them any encouragement. And you have such a fascinating way
with you that you just lead them on, without meaning to in the least.
You can curse, if you like, Wilton; it's great impertinence on my
part, eh?"
"My dear fellow," was all Paul said. As a matter of fact, he had never
liked him better than he did at that moment, and his words had set him
thinking. But Heaton's next remark undid the good impression he had
unwittingly made.
"The fact is," he said, "a woman's reputation is worth only half as
much to her as her happiness."
And his worldly wisdom jarred on Paul's nerves, and sounded
unnecessarily coarse to him in his present mood; and he did not try to
detain him again, when Heaton rose for the second time to take his
leave. When he had gone, Paul strolled to the window-seat and smoked
another cigarette, looking down into the wind-swept court. And his
thoughts deliberately turned to Katharine Austen. He had not seen her
for five months, he had not written to her for two, and her last
letter to him was dated six weeks back. It had not occurred to him,
until he drew it from his pocket now and looked at it, that it was
really so long as that since she had written to him; and he became
suddenly possessed of a wish to know what those six weeks had held for
her. Out there in the orange groves of the South, walking by the side
of the beautiful Marion Keeley, with the rustle of her skirts so close
to him and the shallow levity of her conversation in his ears, it had
been easy to forget the desperately earnest child who was toiling away
to earn her living in the dullest quarter of a dull city. But here,
where she had so often sat and talked to him, where they had loved to
quarrel and to make it up again, where she had given him rare
glimpses of her quaint self and then hastily hidden it from him again,
where she had been whimsical and serious by turns, where he had
sometimes kissed her and felt her cheek warm at his touch,--here, all
sorts of memories rushed back into his mind, and made him wonder why
he had yielded so easily to the persuasions of the Keeleys, and
remained so long away from England. It was impossible to name Marion
Keeley in the same breath with this curiously lovable child who had
held him in her sway all last summer, who had never used an art to
draw him to her, and yet had succeeded, by force of qualities that she
did not know she possessed, in gaining his sincere affection. Yet he
had hardly thought of her for two months, and she had not written to
him for six weeks. What had she been doing in those six weeks? It had
not seemed to matter, when he walked by the side of Marion Keeley, how
Katharine was passing her time in London; but now that Marion was no
longer near him, now that he was free from her fascination and the
necessity of replying to her banalities, it suddenly became of the
first importance to him to know what had happened to Katharine in
those six weeks. He had gone away, he told himself, because he had
taken fright at the situation, because he could not analyse his own
feelings for her, because everything, in the eyes of the world, was
hurrying them on to marriage,--and of marriage he had the profoundest
dread. And he had allowed himself to be captivated almost immediately,
by the ordinary beauty of an ordinary girl, someone who knew how to
play upon a certain set of his emotions which Katharine had never
learnt to touch. An expression of distaste crossed his face as he
threw away his cigarette only half smoked, and looked down at the
fountain as he had so often stood and looked with her in the hot days
of last July. Heaton's words returned to his mind with a new
significance: "Their reputation is worth only half as much to them as
their happiness." He remembered how he had parted from Katharine in
this very room, before he went abroad; and how he had congratulated
himself afterwards on having refrained from kissing her. But he had a
sudden recollection now of the look on her face as she turned away
from him; and, for the first time, he thought he understood its
meaning.
He had never acted on an impulse in his life, before, nor yielded to a
wish he could not analyse; but this afternoon he did both. It was
about an hour later that Phyllis Hyam strolled into Katharine's
cubicle with the announcement that a gentleman was in the hall,
waiting to speak to her.
"Bother!" grumbled Katharine, who was correcting exercises on the bed.
"He never said he was coming to-night."
"It isn't Mr. Morton," volunteered Phyllis, from behind her own
curtain. "I've never seen him before. He's tall, and thin, and serious
looking, with a leathery sort of face, and a dear little fizzly
beard."
She made a few more gratuitous remarks on the gentleman in the hall,
until she began to wonder why she received no reply to them, and then
made the discovery that the occupant of the neighbouring cubicle was
no longer there.
Paul was already regretting his impulse. He had never been inside the
little distempered hall before, and it struck a feeling of chill into
him. A good many girls came in at the door while he was waiting, and
they all stared at him inquiringly, and most of them were dull
looking. He remembered the sumptuous house in Mayfair that would soon
contain Marion Keeley, and he shuddered a little.
"I don't think I should like to live with working-women much," he
said, when Katharine came running down the wooden stairs.
It was the only remark that came easily to him, when he felt the warm
clasp of her hand and saw the glad look in her eyes.