Lord and Lady Chesterford were sitting at breakfast at Winston towards
the end of September. He had an open letter in front of him propped up
against his cup, and between mouthfuls of fried fish he glanced at it.
"Dodo."
No answer.
"Dodo," rather louder.
Dodo was also reading a letter, which covered two sheets and was
closely written. It seemed to be interesting, for she had paused with a
piece of fish on the end of her fork, and had then laid it down again.
This time, however; she heard.
"Oh, what?" she said abstractedly. "Jack's coming to-day; I've just
heard from him. He's going to bring his hunter. You can get some
cub-hunting, I suppose, Chesterford? The hunt itself doesn't begin till
the 15th, does it?"
"Ah, I'm glad he can come," said Chesterford. "Little Spencer would be
rather hard to amuse alone. But that isn't what I was going to say."
"What is it?" said Dodo, relapsing into her letter.
"The bailiff writes to tell me that they have discovered a rich coal
shaft under the Far Oaks." A pause. "But, Dodo, you are not listening."
"I'm sorry," she said. "Do you know, Jack nearly shot himself the other
day at a grouse drive?"
"I don't care," said Chesterford brutally. "Listen, Dodo. Tompkinson
says they've discovered a rich coal shaft under the Far Oaks. Confound
the man, I wish he hadn't."
"Oh, Chesterford, how splendid!" said Dodo, dropping her letter in
earnest. "Dig it up and spend it on your party, and they'll make you a
duke for certain. I want to be a duchess very much. Good morning, your
grace," said Dodo reflectively.
"Oh, that's impossible," said he. "I never thought of touching it, but
the ass tells me that he's seen the news of it in the _Staffordshire
Herald_. So I suppose everybody knows, and I shall be pestered."
"But do you mean to say you're going to let the coal stop there?" asked
Dodo.
"Yes, dear, I can't possibly touch it. It goes right under all those
oaks, and under the Memorial Chapel, close to the surface."
"But what does that matter?" asked Dodo, in real surprise.
"I can't possibly touch it," said he; "you must see that. Why, the
chapel would have to come down, and the oaks, and we don't want a dirty
coal shaft in the Park."
"Chesterford, how ridiculous!" exclaimed Dodo. "Do you mean you're
going to leave thousands of pounds lying there in the earth?"
"I can't discuss it, dear, even with you," said he. "The only question
is whether we can stop the report of it going about."
Dodo felt intensely irritated.
"Really you are most unreasonable," she said. "I did flatter myself
that I had a reasonable husband. You were unreasonable about the
Brettons' ball, and you were unreasonable about Prince Waldenech's
coming here, and you are unreasonable about this."
Chesterford lost his patience a little.
"About the Brettons' ball," he said, "there was only one opinion, and
that was mine. About the Prince's coming here, which we agreed not to
talk about, you know the further reason. I don't like saying such
things. You are aware what that officious ass Clayton told me was said
at the club. Of course it was an insult to you, and a confounded lie,
but I don't care for such things to be said about my wife. And about
this--"
"About this," said Dodo, "you are as obstinate as you were about those
other things. Excuse me if I find you rather annoying."
Chesterford felt sick at heart.
"Ah, Dodo," he said, "cannot you believe in me at all?" He rose and
stood by her. "My darling, you must know how I would do anything for
love of you. But these are cases in which that clashes with duty. I
only want to be loved a little. Can't you see there are some things I
cannot help doing, and some I must do?"
"The things that you like doing," said Dodo, in a cool voice pouring
out some more tea. "I don't wish to discuss this either. You know my
opinion. It is absurd to quarrel; I dislike quarrelling with anybody,
and more especially a person whom I live with. Please take your hand
away, I can't reach the sugar."
Dodo returned to her letter. Chesterford stood by her for a moment, and
then left the room.
"It gets more and more intolerable every day. I can't bear quarrelling;
it makes me ill," thought Dodo, with a fine sense of irresponsibility.
"And I know he'll come and say he was sorry he said what he did. Thank
goodness, Jack comes to-day."
Chesterford, meanwhile, was standing in the hall, feeling helpless
and bewildered. This sort of thing was always happening now, do what
he could; and the intervals were not much better. Dodo treated him
with a passive tolerance that was very hard to bear. Even her frank
determination to keep on good terms with her husband had undergone
considerable modification. She was silent and indifferent. Now and then
when he came into her room he heard, as he passed down the passage, the
sound of her piano or her voice, but when he entered Dodo would break
off and ask him what he wanted. He half wished that he did not love
her, but he found himself sickening and longing for Dodo to behave to
him as she used. It would have been something to know that his presence
was not positively distasteful to her. Dodo no longer "kept it up," as
Jack said. She did not pat his hand, or call him a silly old dear, or
pull his moustache, as once she did. He had once taken those little
things as a sign of her love. He had found in them the pleasure that
Dodo's smallest action always had for him; but now even they, the husk
and shell of what had never existed, had gone from him, and he was left
with that which was at once his greatest sorrow and his greatest joy,
his own love for Dodo. And Dodo--God help him! he had learned it well
enough now--Dodo did not love him, and never had loved him. He wondered
what the end would be--whether his love, too, would die. In that case
he foresaw that they would very likely go on living together as fifty
other people lived--being polite to each other, and gracefully tolerant
of each other's presence; that nobody would know, and the world would
say, "What a model and excellent couple."
So he stood there, biting the ends of his long moustache. Then he said
to himself, "I was beastly to her. What the devil made me say all those
things."
He went back to the dining-room, and found Dodo as he had left her.
"Dodo, dear," he said, "forgive me for being so cross. I said a lot of
abominable things."
Dodo was rather amused. She knew this would happen.
"Oh, yes," she said; "it doesn't signify. But are you determined about
the coal mine?"
Chesterford was disappointed and chilled. He turned on his heel and
went out again. Dodo raised her eyebrows, shrugged her shoulders
imperceptibly, and returned to her letter.
If you had asked Dodo when this state of things began she could
probably not have told you. She would have said, "Oh, it came on by
degrees. It began by my being bored with him, and culminated when I no
longer concealed it." But Chesterford, to whom daily intercourse had
become an awful struggle between his passionate love for Dodo and his
bitter disappointment at what he would certainly have partly attributed
to his own stupidity and inadequacy, could have named the day and hour
when he first realised how far he was apart from his wife. It was when
he returned by the earlier train and met Dodo in the hall going to her
dance; that moment had thrown a dangerous clear light over the previous
month. He argued to himself, with fatal correctness, that Dodo could
not have stopped caring for him in a moment, and he was driven to the
inevitable conclusion that she had been drifting away from him for a
long time before that; indeed, had she ever been near him? But he was
deeply grateful to those months when he had deceived himself, or she
had deceived him, into believing that she cared for him. He knew well
that they had been the happiest in his life, and though the subsequent
disappointment was bitter, it had not embittered him. His love for Dodo
had a sacredness for him that nothing could remove; it was something
separate from the rest of his life, that had stooped from heaven and
entered into it, and lo! it was glorified. That memory was his for
ever, nothing could rob him of that.
In August Dodo had left him. They had settled a series of visits in
Scotland, after a fortnight at their own house, but after that Dodo had
made arrangements apart from him. She had to go and see her mother,
she had to go here and there, and half way through September, when
Chesterford had returned to Harchester expecting her the same night,
he found a postcard from her, saying she had to spend three days with
someone else, and the three days lengthened into a week, and it was
only yesterday that Dodo had come and people were arriving that very
evening. There was only one conclusion to be drawn from all this, and
not even he could help drawing it.
Jack and Mr. Spencer and Maud, now Mrs. Spencer, arrived that evening.
Maud had started a sort of small store of work, and the worsted and
crochet went on with feverish rapidity. It had become a habit with her
before her marriage, and the undeveloped possibilities, that no doubt
lurked within it, had blossomed under her husband's care. For there
was a demand beyond the limits of supply for her woollen shawls and
comforters. Mr. Spencer's parish was already speckled with testimonies
to his wife's handiwork, and Maud's dream of being some day useful to
somebody was finding a glorious fulfilment.
Dodo, I am sorry to say, found her sister more unsatisfactory than
ever. Maud had a sort of confused idea that it helped the poor if she
dressed untidily, and this was a ministry that came without effort.
Dodo took her in hand as soon as she arrived, and made her presentable.
"Because you are a clergy-man's wife, there is no reason that you
shouldn't wear a tucker or something round your neck," said she. "Your
sister is a marchioness, and when you stay with her you must behave as
if you were an honourable. There will be time to sit in the gutter when
you get back to Gloucester."
Dodo also did her duty by Mr. Spencer. She called him Algernon in the
friendliest way, and gave him several lessons at billiards. This done,
she turned to Jack.
The three had been there several days, and Dodo was getting impatient.
Jack and Chesterford went out shooting, and she was left to entertain
the other two. Mr. Spencer's reluctance to shoot was attributable not
so much to his aversion to killing live animals, as his inability to
slay. But when Dodo urged on him that he would soon learn, he claimed
the higher motive. She was rather silent, for she was thinking about
something important.
Dodo was surprised at the eagerness with which she looked forward to
Jack's coming. Somehow, in a dim kind of way, she regarded him as the
solution of her difficulties. She felt pretty certain Jack would do as
he was asked, and she had made up her mind that when Jack went away she
would go with him to see friends at other houses to which he was going.
And Chesterford? Dodo's scheme did not seem to take in Chesterford. She
had painted a charming little picture in her own mind as to where she
should go, and whom she would see, but she certainly was aware that
Chesterford did not seem to come in. It would spoil the composition,
she thought, to introduce another figure. That would be a respite,
anyhow. But after that, what then? Dodo had found it bad enough coming
back this September, and she could not contemplate renewing this
_tête-à-tête_ that went on for months. And by degrees another picture
took its place--a dim one, for the details were not worked out--but
in that picture there were only two figures. The days went on and Dodo
could bear it no longer.
One evening she went into the smoking-room after tea. Chesterford
was writing letters, and Maud and her husband were sitting in the
drawing-room. It may be presumed that Maud was doing crochet. Jack
looked up with a smile as Dodo entered.
"Hurrah," he said, "I haven't had a word with you since we came. Come
and talk, Dodo."
But Dodo did not smile.
"How have you been getting on?" continued Jack, looking at the fire.
"You see I haven't lost my interest in you."
"Jack," said Dodo solemnly, "you are right, and I was wrong. And I
can't bear it any longer."
Jack did not need explanations.
"Ah!"--then after a moment, "poor Chesterford!"
"I don't see why 'poor Chesterford,'" said Dodo, "any more than 'poor
me.' He was quite satisfied, anyhow, for some months, for a year in
fact, more or less, and I was never satisfied at all. I haven't got
a particle of pride left in me, or else I shouldn't be telling you.
I can't bear it. If you only knew what I have been through you would
pity me as well. It has been a continual effort with me; surely that
is something to pity. And one day I broke down; I forget when, it is
immaterial. Oh, why couldn't I love him! I thought I was going to, and
it was all a wretched mistake."
Dodo sat with her hands clasped before her, with something like tears
in her eyes.
"I am not all selfish," she went on; "I am sorry for him, too, but I
am so annoyed with him that I lose my sorrow whenever I see him. Why
couldn't he have accepted the position sooner? We might have been
excellent friends then, but now that is impossible. I have got past
that. I cannot even be good friends with him. Oh, it isn't my fault;
you know I tried to behave well."
Jack felt intensely uncomfortable.
"I can't help you, Dodo," he said. "It is useless for me to say I am
sincerely sorry. That is no word between you and me."
Dodo, for once in her life, seemed to have something to say, and not be
able to say it.
At last it came out with an effort.
"Jack, do you still love me?"
Dodo did not look at him, but kept her eyes on the fire.
Jack did not pause to think.
"Before God, Dodo,", he said, "I believe I love you more than anything
in the world."
"Will you do what I ask you?"
This time he did pause. He got up and stood before the fire. Still Dodo
did not look at him.
"Ah, Dodo," he said, "what are you going to ask? There are some things
I cannot do."
"It seems to me this love you talk of is a very weak thing," said Dodo.
"It always fails, or is in danger of failing, at the critical point.
I believe I could do anything for the man I loved. I did not think so
once. But I was wrong, as I have been in my marriage."
Dodo paused; but Jack said nothing; it seemed to him as if Dodo had not
quite finished.
"Yes," she said; then paused again. "Yes, you are he."
There was a dead silence. For one moment time seemed to Jack to have
stopped, and he could have believed that that moment lasted for
years--for ever.
"Oh, my God," he murmured, "at last."
He was conscious of Dodo sitting there, with her eyes raised to his,
and a smile on her lips. He felt himself bending forward towards her,
and he thought she half rose in her chair to receive his embrace.
But the next moment she put out her hand as if to stop him.
"Stay," she said. "Not yet, not yet. There is something first. I will
tell you what I have done. I counted on this. I have ordered the
carriage after dinner at half-past ten. You and I go in that, and leave
by the train. Jack, I am yours--will you come?"
Dodo had taken the plunge. She had been wavering on the brink of this
for days. It had struck her suddenly that afternoon that Jack was
going away next day, and she was aware she could not contemplate the
indefinite to-morrow and to-morrow without him. Like all Dodo's actions
it came suddenly. The forces in her which had been drawing her on to
this had gathered strength and sureness imperceptibly, and this evening
they had suddenly burst through the very flimsy dam that Dodo had
erected between the things she might do, and the things she might not,
and their possession was complete. In a way it was inevitable. Dodo
felt that her life was impossible. Chesterford, with infinite yearning
and hunger at his heart, perhaps felt it too.
Jack felt as if he was waking out of some blissful dream to a return
of his ordinary everyday life, which, unfortunately, had certain moral
obligations attached to it. If Dodo's speech had been shorter, the
result might have been different. He steadied himself for a moment, for
the room seemed to reel and swim, and then he answered her.
"No, Dodo," he said hoarsely, "I cannot do it. Think of Chesterford!
Think of anything! Don't tempt me. You know I cannot. How dare you ask
me?"
Dodo's face grew hard and white. She tried to laugh, but could not
manage it.
"Ah," she said, "the old story, isn't it? Potiphar's wife again. I
really do not understand what this love of yours is. And now I have
debased and humbled myself before you, and there you stand in your
immaculate virtue, not caring--"
"Don't, Dodo," He said. "Be merciful to me, spare me. Not caring--you
know it is not so. But I cannot do this. My Dodo, my darling."
The strain was too great for him. He knelt down beside her, and kissed
her hand passionately.
"I will do anything for you," he whispered, "that is in my power to do;
but this is impossible. I never yet did, with deliberate forethought,
what seemed to me mean or low, and I can't now. I don't want credit for
it, because I was made that way; I don't happen to be a blackguard by
nature. Don't tempt me--I am too weak. But you mustn't blame me for it.
You know--you must know that I love you. I left England last autumn to
cure myself of it, but it didn't answer a bit. I don't ask more than
what you have just told me. That is something--isn't it, Dodo? And, if
you love me, that is something for you. Don't let us degrade it, let
it be a strength to us and not a weakness. You must feel it so."
* * * * *
There was a long silence, and in that silence the great drama of love
and life; and good and evil, which has been played every day of every
year since the beginning of this world, and which will never cease till
all mankind are saints or sexless, filled the stage. Dodo thought, at
any rate, that she loved him, and that knowledge made her feel less
abased before him. All love--the love for children, for parents, for
husband, for wife, for lover, for mistress--has something divine about
it, or else it is not love. The love Jack felt for her was divine
enough not to seek its own, to sacrifice itself on the altar of duty
and loyalty and the pure cold gods, and in its tumultuous happiness
it could think of others. And Dodo's love was touched, though ever
so faintly, with the same divine spark, a something so human that it
touched heaven.
Now it had so happened that, exactly three minutes before this, Maud
had found that she had left a particularly precious skein of wool in
another room. About ten seconds' reflection made her remember she had
left it in the smoking-room, where she had sat with Dodo after lunch,
who had smoked cigarettes, and lectured her on her appearance. The
smoking-room had two doors, about eight yards apart, forming a little
passage lighted with a skylight. The first of those doors was of wood,
the second, which led into the smoking-room, of baize. The first door
was opened in the ordinary manner, the second with a silent push.
Maud had made this silent push at the moment when Jack was kneeling by
Dodo's side, kissing her hand. Maud was not versed in the wickedness
of this present world, but she realised that this was a peculiar
thing for Jack to do, and she let the door swing quietly back, and
ran downstairs, intending to ask her husband's advice. Chesterford's
study opened into the drawing-room. During the time that Maud had been
upstairs he had gone in to fetch Dodo, and seeing she was not there he
went back, but did not close the door behind him. A moment afterwards
Maud rushed into the drawing-room from the hall, and carefully shutting
the door behind her, lest anyone should hear, exclaimed:--
"Algy, I've seen something awful! I went into the smoking-room to fetch
my wool, and I saw Jack kissing Dodo's hand. What am I to do?"
Algernon was suitably horrified. He remarked, with much reason, that it
was no use telling Dodo and Jack, because they knew already.
At this moment the door of Lord Chesterford's study was closed quietly.
He did not wish to hear any more just yet. But they neither of them
noticed it.
He had overheard something which was not meant for his ears, related
by a person who had overseen what she was not meant to see; he hated
learning anything that was not his own affair, but he had learned it,
and it turned out to be unpleasantly closely connected with him.
His first impulse was to think that Jack had behaved in a treacherous
and blackguardly manner, and this conclusion surprised him so much that
he set to ponder over it. The more he thought of it, the more unlikely
it appeared to him. Jack making love to his wife under cover of his
own roof was too preposterous an idea to be entertained. He held a
very high opinion of Jack, and it did not at all seem to fit in with
this. Was there any other possibility? It came upon him with a sense of
sickening probability that there was. He remembered the long loveless
months; he remembered Dodo's indifference to him, then her neglect,
then her dislike. Had Jack been hideously tempted and not been able to
resist? Chesterford almost felt a friendly feeling for not being able
to resist Dodo. What did all this imply? How long had it been going
on? How did it begin? Where would it stop? He felt he had a right to
ask these questions, and he meant to ask them of the proper person.
But not yet. He would wait; he would see what happened. He was afraid
of judging both too harshly. Maud's account might have been incorrect;
anyhow it was not meant for him. His thoughts wandered on dismally and
vaguely. But the outcome was, that he said to himself, "Poor Dodo, God
forgive her."
He had been so long used to the altered state of things that this blow
seemed to him only a natural sequence. But he had been used to feed
his starved heart with promises that Dodo would care for him again;
that those months when they were first married were only the bud of
a flower that would some day blossom. It was this feeble hope that
what he had heard destroyed. If things had gone as far as that it was
hopeless.
"Yes," he repeated, "it is all gone."
If anything could have killed his love for Dodo he felt that it would
have been this. But, as he sat there, he said to himself, "She shall
never know that I know of it." That was his final determination. Dodo
had wronged him cruelly; his only revenge was to continue as if she had
been a faithful wife, for she would not let him love her.
Dodo should never know, she should not even suspect. He would go on
behaving to her as before, as far as lay in his power. He would do
his utmost to make her contented, to make her less sorry--yes, less
sorry--she married him.
Meanwhile Dodo and Jack were sitting before the fire in the
smoking-room. He still retained Dodo's hand, and it lay; unresistingly
in his. Dodo was the first to speak.
"We must make the best of it, Jack," she said; "and you must help me.
I cannot trust myself any longer. I used to be so sure of myself, so
convinced that I could be happy. I blame myself for it, not him; but
then, you see, I can't get rid of myself, and I can of him. Hence this
plan. I have been a fool and a beast. And he, you know, he is the best
of men. Poor, dear old boy. It isn't his fault, but it isn't mine. I
should like to know who profits by this absurd arrangement. Why can't I
love him? Why can't I even like him? Why can't I help hating him? Yes,
Jack, it has come to that. God knows there is no one more sorry than I
am about it. But this is only a mood. I daresay in half an hour's time
I shall only feel angry with him, and not sorry at all. I wonder if
this match was made in heaven. Oh, I am miserable."
Jack was really to be pitied more than Dodo. He knelt by her with her
hand in his, feeling that he would have given his life without question
to make her happy, but knowing that he had better give his life than do
so. The struggle itself was over. He felt like a chain being pulled in
opposite directions. He did not wrestle any longer; the two forces, he
thought, were simply fighting it out over his rigid body. He wondered
vaguely whether something would break, and, if so, what? But he did
not dream for a moment of ever reconsidering his answer to Dodo. The
question did not even present itself. So he knelt by her, still holding
her hand, and waiting for her to speak again.
"You mustn't desert me, Jack," Dodo went on. "It is easier for
Chesterford, as well as for me, that you should be with us often, and I
believe it is easier for you too. If I never saw you at all, I believe
the crash would come. I should leave Chesterford, not to come to you,
for that can't be, but simply to get away."
"Ah, don't," said Jack, "don't go on talking about it like that. I
can't do what you asked, you know that, simply because I love you and
am Chesterford's friend. Think of your duty to him. Think, yes, think
of our love for each other. Let it be something sacred, Dodo. Don't
desecrate it. Help me not to desecrate it. Let it be our safeguard. It
is better to have that, isn't it? than to think of going on living, as
you must, without it. You said so yourself when you asked me to be with
you often. To-night a deep joy has come into my life; let us keep it
from disgrace. Ah, Dodo, thank God you love me."
"Yes, Jack, I believe I do," said Dodo. "And you are right; I always
knew I should rise to the occasion if it was put forcibly before me. I
believe I have an ideal--which I have never had before--something to
respect and to keep very clean. Fancy me with an ideal! Mother wouldn't
know me again--there never was such a thing in the house."
They were silent for a few minutes.
"But I must go to-morrow," said Jack, "as I settled to, by the
disgusting early train. And the dressing-bell has sounded, and the
ideal inexorably forbids us to be late for dinner, so I sha'n't see you
alone again."
He pressed her hand and she rose..
"Poor little ideal," said Dodo. "I suppose it would endanger its life
if you stopped, wouldn't it, Jack? It must live to grow up. Poor little
ideal, what a hell of a time it will have when you're gone. Poor dear."
Dinner went off as usual. Dodo seemed to be in her ordinary, spirits.
Chesterford discussed parochial help with Mrs. Vivian. He glanced at
Dodo occasionally through the little grove of orchids that separated
them, but Dodo did not seem to notice. She ate a remarkably good
dinner, and talked nonsense to Mr. Spencer who sat next her, and showed
him how to construct a sea-sick passenger out of an orange, and smoked
two cigarettes after the servants had left the room. Maud alone was ill
at ease. She glanced apprehensively at Jack, as if she expected him to
begin kissing Dodo's hand again, and, when he asked her casually where
she had been since tea, she answered; "In the smoking-room--I mean the
drawing-room." Jack merely raised his eyebrows, and remarked that he
had been there himself, and did not remember seeing her.
In the drawing-room again Dodo was in the best spirits. She gave Mr.
Spencer lessons as to how to whistle on his fingers, and sang a French
song in a brilliant and somewhat broad manner. The ladies soon retired,
as there was a meet early on the following morning, and, after they had
gone, Jack went up to the smoking-room, leaving Chesterford to finish
a letter in his study. Shortly afterwards the latter heard the sound
of wheels outside, and a footman entered to tell him the carriage was
ready.
Chesterford was writing when the man entered, and did not look up.
"I did not order the carriage," he said.
"Her ladyship ordered it for half-past ten," said the man. "She gave
the order to me."
Still Lord Chesterford did not look up, and sat silent so long that the
man spoke again.
"Shall I tell her ladyship it is round?" he asked. "I came to your
lordship, as I understood her ladyship had gone upstairs."
"You did quite right," he said. "There has been a mistake; it will not
be wanted. Don't disturb Lady Chesterford, or mention it to her."
"Very good, my lord."
He turned to leave the room, when Lord Chesterford stopped him again.
He spoke slowly.
"Did Lady Chesterford give you any other orders?"
"She told me to see that Mr. Broxton's things were packed, my lord, as
he would go away to-night. But she told me just before dinner that he
wouldn't leave till the morning."
"Thanks," said Lord Chesterford. "That's all, I think. When is Mr.
Broxton leaving?"
"By the early train to-morrow, my lord."
"Go up to the smoking-room and ask him to be so good as to come here a
minute."
The man left the room, and gave his message. Jack wondered a little,
but went down.
Lord Chesterford was standing with his back to the fire. He looked up
when Jack entered. He seemed to find some difficulty in speaking.
"Jack, old boy," he said at last, "you and I have been friends a long
time, and you will not mind my being frank. Can you honestly say that
you are still a friend of mine?"
Jack advanced towards him.
"I thank God that I can," he said simply, and held out his hand.
He spoke without reflecting, for he did not know how much Chesterford
knew. Of course, up to this moment, he had not been aware that he knew
anything. But Chesterford's tone convinced him. But a moment afterwards
he saw that he had made a mistake, and he hastened to correct it.
"I spoke at random," he said, "though I swear that what I said was
true. I do not know on what grounds you put the question to me."
Lord Chesterford did not seem to be attending.
"But it was true?" he asked.
Jack felt in a horrible mess. If he attempted to explain, it would
necessitate letting Chesterford know the whole business. He chose
between the two evils, for he would not betray Dodo.
"Yes, it is true," he said.
Chesterford shook his hand.
"Forgive me for asking you, Jack," he said. "Then that's done with. But
there is something more, something which it is hard for me to say." He
paused, and Jack noticed that he was crumpling a piece of paper he held
in his hand into a tight hard ball. "Then--then Dodo is tired of me?"
Jack felt helpless and sick. He could not trust himself to speak.
"Isn't it so?" asked Chesterford again.
Jack for reply held out both his hands without speaking. There was
something horrible in the sight of this strong man standing pale and
trembling before him. In a moment Chesterford turned away, and stood
warming his hands at the fire.
"I heard something I wasn't meant to hear," he said, "and I know as
much as I wish to. It doesn't much matter exactly what has happened.
You have told me you are still my friend, and I thank you for it. And
Dodo--Dodo is tired of me. I can reconstruct as much as is necessary.
You are going off to-morrow, aren't you? I sha'n't see you again.
Good-bye, Jack; try to forget I ever mistrusted you. I must ask you to
leave me; I've got some things to think over."
But Jack still lingered.
"Try to forgive Dodo," he said; "and forgive me for saying so, but
don't be hard on her. It will only make things worse."
"Hard on her?" asked Chesterford. "Poor Dodo, it is hard on her enough
without that. She shall never know that I know, if I can help. I am not
going to tell you what I know either. If you feel wronged that I even
asked you that question, I am sorry for it, but I had grounds, and I am
not a jealous man. The whole thing has been an awful mistake. I knew it
in July, but I shall not make it worse by telling Dodo."
Jack went out from his presence with a kind of awe. He did not care to
know how Chesterford had found out, or how much. All other feelings
were swallowed up in a vast pity for this poor man, whom no human aid
could ever reach. The great fabric which his love had raised had been
shattered hopelessly, and his love sat among its ruins and wept. It
was all summed up in that short sentence, "Dodo is tired of me," and
Jack knew that it was true. The whole business was hopeless. Dodo had
betrayed him, and he knew it. He could no longer find a cold comfort in
the thought that some day, if the difficult places could be tided over,
she might grow to love him again. That was past. And yet he had only
one thought, and that was for Dodo. "She shall never know I know it."
Truly there is something divine in those men we thought most human.
Jack went to his room and thought it all over. He was horribly
vexed with himself for having exculpated himself, but the point of
Chesterford's question was quite clear, and there was only one answer
to it. Chesterford obviously did mean to ask whether he had been guilty
of the great act of disloyalty which Dodo had proposed, and on the
whole he would reconstruct the story in his mind more faithfully than
if he had answered anything else, or had refused to answer. But Jack
very much doubted whether Chesterford would reconstruct the story at
all. The details had evidently no interest for him. All that mattered
was expressed in that one sentence, "Dodo is tired of me." Jack would
have given his right hand to have been able to answer "No," or to have
been able to warn Dodo; but he saw that there was nothing to be done.
The smash had come, Chesterford had had a rude awakening. But his love
was not dead, though it was stoned and beaten and outcast. With this in
mind Jack took a sheet of paper from his writing-case, and wrote on it
these words:--
"Do not desecrate it; let it help you to make an effort."
He addressed it to Dodo, and when he went downstairs the next morning
he slipped it among the letters that were waiting for her. The footman
told him she had gone hunting.
"Is Lord Chesterford up yet?" said Jack.
"Yes, sir; he went hunting too with her ladyship," replied the man.