THE THIRD ROUND
"When we two parted
In silence and tears,
Half broken-hearted
To sever for years,
Pale grew thy cheek and cold,
Colder thy kiss;
Truly that hour foretold
Sorrow to this."
LORD BYRON: _When We Two Parted_.
Though the flat in Adelphi Terrace became my home from this time until
the end of my residence in England, I saw little of the Seraph for the
week following my change of quarters. I think he liked my company at
meals, and whenever we were together I certainly worked hard to
distract his mind from the unhappy quarrel with Sylvia. But I will not
pretend that I sat by him day and night devising consolatory speeches;
I am no good at that kind of thing, he would have seen through me, and
we should speedily have got on one another's nerves. For the first day
or two, then, I purposely measured out my companionship in small
doses; later on, when he had got used to my presence, I became more
assiduous. Those were the days when I could see reflected in his eyes
the fast approaching nightmare of his dreams.
My one positive achievement lay in persuading him to resume the
curious journal he had started at Brandon Court and continued in
Oxford. I called--and still call--it the third volume of Rupert
Chevasse's life, or, more accurately, "The Child of Misery"; for
though it will never be published, its literary parentage is the same,
and its elder brothers are Volumes One and Two. I count it one of the
great tragedies of the book-world that--at least in his life-time--the
third volume will never be given to the public; in my opinion--for
what that is worth--it is the finest work Aintree has ever
accomplished. At the same time I fully endorse his resolution to
withhold it; it has been a matter of lasting surprise that even I was
allowed to read the manuscript.
He worked a great many hours each day as soon as I had helped the
flywheel over dead-point. Half-way through the morning I would wander
into the library and find a neat manuscript chapter awaiting me; when
I had finished reading, he would throw me over sheet after sheet as
each was completed. It was an interesting experience to sit, as it
were, by an observation hive and watch his vivid, hyper-sensitive mind
at work. I had been present at half the scenes and meetings he was
describing. I had heard large fragments of the dialogue and allowed my
imagination to browse on the significance of each successive
"soul-brush." Yet--I seemed to have heard and seen less than nothing!
His insight enabled him to depict a psychological development where I
had seen but a material friendship. It was one-sided, of course, and
gave me only the impression that a vital, commanding spirit like
Sylvia's would leave on his delicate, receptive imagination. When at a
later date Sylvia took me into her confidence and showed me reverse
and obverse side by side, I felt like one who has assumed a fourth
dimension and looked down from a higher plane into the very hearts of
two fellow-creatures. It was a curious experience to see those souls
stripped bare--I am not sure that I wish to repeat it--there comes a
point where a painful "study of mankind is man."
While the Seraph worked, I had plentiful excuse for playing truant.
Decency ordained that after my twenty years' respite I should spend a
certain amount of time with my brother and his wife, and since
Sylvia's edict of banishment, I was the sole channel of communication
between Cadogan Square and Adelphi Terrace. It was noticeable--though
I say it in no carping spirit--that Philip sought my company a shade
less assiduously when I ceased to watch over the welfare of Gladys.
Finally, I devoted a portion of each day to Chester Square. Elsie
adhered to her decision that the Seraph must be no more seen in
company with her in public, and even a private call at the house was
impossible so long as his face carried the marks of Sylvia's
resentment.
The burden of the publicity-campaign fell on my shoulders, though it
came to be relieved--to his honour be it said!--by Gartside. I gave
him my views of Elsie's behaviour, brought the two of them together at
dinner, and left his big, kind heart to do the rest. He responded as I
knew he would, and his adhesion to our party was matter of grave
offence to Elsie's detractors, for his name carried more weight with
the little-minded than the rest of us put together. Culling enrolled
himself for a while, but dropped away as he dropped out of most
sustained efforts. Laziness brought about his defection more than want
of faith or the pressure of orthodox friends; indeed I am not sure
that his strongest motive in joining us was not a passing desire to
confound Nigel Rawnsley. In this as in other things, we never treated
him seriously; but with Gartside it was different. At a time when
Carnforth's resignation of the Bombay Governorship was in the hands of
the India Office--and it was an open secret that Gartside's name stood
high on the list of possible successors--it required some courage to
incur the kind of notoriety that without doubt we both of us did
incur. He ought to have been lunching with Anglo-Indians and patting
the cheeks of Cabinet Ministers' children, instead of trying to infect
Society with his belief in a divorced woman's innocence.
In the course of the campaign I began to see a little, but only a
little, more of Joyce than I had been privileged to do during the time
when I was supposed to be watching over the destiny of Gladys. I am
not sure that I altogether enjoyed my new liberty of access to her
house; it worried me to see how overworked and tired she was beginning
to look, though I had the doubtful satisfaction of knowing that
nothing I could say or do would check her. She risked her health as
recklessly as she had been risking her liberty since the inauguration
of the New Militancy. I had to treat her politics like a cold in the
head and allow them to run their nine days' course. Though I saw she
was still cumbered with my scarab ring, we never referred to our
meeting in Oxford. I am vain enough to think that she did not regard
me even at this time with complete disfavour, but I will atone for my
vanity by saying I dared do next to nothing to forward my suit. My
foothold was altogether too precarious; an attempt to climb higher
would only have involved me in a headlong fall.
And yet, before I had been a week at Adelphi Terrace, I made the
attempt. Elsie telephoned one evening that she was going out, but
would have to leave Joyce who was too tired to face a restaurant and
theatre. She would be dining alone; if I had nothing better to do,
would I look in for a few minutes and see if I could cheer her up? I
had promised to dine with Nigel, but it was a small party and I
managed to slip away before ten. Joyce was half asleep when I was
shown into the drawing-room; she did not hear me announced, and I was
standing within two feet of her before she noticed my presence.
"I've run you to earth at last," I said.
Then I observed a thing that made me absurdly pleased. Joyce was
looking very white and tired, with dark rings round the eyes, and
under either cheekbone a little hollow that ought not to have been
there. When she opened her eyes and saw me, I could swear to a tiny
flush of pleasure; the blue eyes brightened, and she smiled as
children smile in their sleep.
"Very nearly inside it," she answered, with a woebegone shake of the
head. "Oh, Toby, but I'm so tired! Don't make me get up."
I had no thoughts of doing so. Indeed, my mind was solely concerned
with the reflection that she had called me Toby; it was the first
time.
"What have you been doing to get yourself into this state?" I asked
severely.
"Working."
"There you are!" I said. "Something always happens when people take to
work. I shall now read you a short lecture on female stamina."
"You're sure you wouldn't prefer to smoke?"
"I can do both."
"Oh, that's not fair."
Joyce Davenant and Sylvia Roden have only two characteristics in
common; one is that I am very fond of both, the other, that I can do
nothing with either. I capitulated, and selected a cigarette.
"A live dog's worth a good many dead lions," I reminded her as a final
shot.
"Are _you_ trying to convince me of the error of my ways?"
"I am not your Suffragan Bishop," I answered in the tone Robert
Spencer adopted in telling a surprised House of Commons that he was
not an agricultural labourer.
"I'm so glad. I couldn't bear an argument to-night."
The effort she had made on my arrival had spent itself, and I was not
at all certain whether I ought to stay.
"Look here," I said, "if you're too tired to see me, I'll go."
"Please, don't!" she laid a restraining hand on my sleeve. "I'm all
right if you don't argue or use long words; but I've had such a
headache the last few days that I haven't been able to sleep, and now
I don't seem able to fix my attention properly, or remember things."
I had met these symptoms before; the first time in India with men who
were being kept too long at work in the hot weather.
"In other words, you want a long rest."
She nodded without speaking.
"Why don't you take it?"
"I simply can't. I've put my hand to the plough, and you know what we
are. Obstinate, hard-mouthed brutes, the whole family of us. I've got
other people to consider, I mustn't fail them."
"And the benighted, insignificant people who don't happen to be your
followers? Some of them may cherish a flickering interest in your
existence."
"Oh! they don't count."
"Thank you, Joyce."
She held out a pacifying hand. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be
ungracious. But those women---- You know, you get rather attached to
people when you've spoken and fought and been imprisoned side by side
with them. I always feel rather mean; any one of them 'ud die for me,
and I'm not at all sure I'd do the same for them. Everything's been
different since Elsie got her freedom; it's easier to fight for a
person than a principle."
"Are you weakening?"
"Heavens! No! I'm just showing you I should be honour-bound to stand
by my fellows even if I lost all faith in the cause. I say, don't go
on smoking cigarettes; ring the bell and make Dick give you a cigar.
He's in the house somewhere. I heard him come in a few minutes ago."
"I came to see you," I pointed out.
"But I'm dreadfully poor company to-night."
"I take you as I find you, in sickness and health, weal and woe----"
"Mr. Merivale!"
Her voice was very stern.
"You remember our wager?" I said, with a shrug of the shoulders.
"It was a joke," she retorted. "And not in very good taste. Oh, I was
as much to blame as you were."
"But I was quite serious."
"Did you seriously think I should give up the Cause?"
"I offered very long odds. A twopenny ring--but you remember what they
were."
"Are you any nearer winning?"
"I should like to think so."
"Because we haven't answered Mr. Rawnsley's time-arrangements in the
House?"
"Oh, I've no doubt the reply has been posted."
She nodded significantly. "And they haven't found their hostages yet."
"But they've paid no ransom."
"It's an indurance test."
I got up to find myself a match. As I did so, I caught a glimpse of
her left hand, wearing the scarab-ring; it disappeared for a moment,
and to my surprise reappeared without the ring.
"Suppose we call the bet off?" she suggested. "It was all rather
silly."
"Odds offered and taken and horses running. It's too late now. How did
you find out the secret?"
"I didn't. My finger shrank and the ring came off three days ago when
I was washing my hands."
"You didn't pull?"
"No."
"Show me."
"It was like this," she began, slipping the ring back on to the third
finger. "Rather loose----"
I tightened the couplings before she saw what I was about.
"That's soon remedied. Come to me when the finger's nice and plump
again, and I'll let it out."
A shadow of annoyance crossed her face.
"Now I shall have it cut," she said.
"You could have had that done three weeks ago. You could have thrown
the thing away three days ago. You didn't do either."
A smile dimpled its way into her cheeks. "How old are you? Over
forty?"
"What a way of looking at things!" I exclaimed. "Marlborough was fifty
before he started his campaigns, Wren nearer fifty than forty before
ever he put pencil to paper. You don't know the possibilities of
virgin soil."
"I was wondering how long it was since you left school."
I got up and dusted the flecks of cigarette ash from my shirt.
"I'm going now," I said. "It's time you were in bed. Just one word
before I go. You want to win this wager, don't you? So do I. Well, if
you don't give yourself a holiday, you're going to break down and lose
it."
Smiling mischievously, she got up and took my proffered hand.
"It'll be an ill-wind, then----"
"Damn the wager!" I burst out. "I don't want to win it at that price.
Joyce, if I say I'm beaten, will you be a good girl and go to bed and
stay there? Win or lose, I can't bear to see you looking as ill as you
are now."
She shook her head a little sadly. "I can't take a holiday now."
"You'll lose the wager."
She looked up swiftly into my face, and lowered her eyes.
"I don't know that I mind that much."
"Joyce!"
"But I can't take a holiday," she repeated.
I opened the door, and on the threshold waved my hand in farewell.
"Won't you wait till Elsie comes back?" she asked.
"I will wait for no one."
"But where are you off to?"
I scratched my chin, as one does when one wishes to appear reflective.
"I am going to break the Militant Suffrage Movement."
"A good many people have failed," she warned me.
"They never tried."
"How will you begin?"
I walked downstairs thoughtfully, weighed Dick's tall hat in the
balance, and decided in favour of my own.
"I have no idea," I called back to the figure at the stair-head.
The Seraph had marked his confidence in me by the bestowal of a
latch-key. I let myself in at Adelphi Terrace and wandered round the
flat in search of him. He was not in the library or dining-room, but
at length I discovered him in pyjamas sitting in the balcony outside
his bedroom, and gazing disconsolately out over the river. He knew
where I had been before I had time to tell him, and was able to make a
fairly accurate guess at the nature of my conversation with Joyce.
Perhaps there was nothing very wonderful in that, but it fitted in
with the rest of his theory: I remember he summarised her mental
condition by saying that a certain sub-conscious idea was coming to be
consciously apprehended. It was a cumbrous way of saying that both
Joyce and I had made rather an important discovery; what puzzled me
then, and puzzles me still, is that at my first meeting with her
either of us should have given him grounds for forming any theory at
all. Even admitting that I may have been visibly impressed, I could
see no response in her; but I have almost given up trying to
understand the Seraph's mind or mode of thought.
"You've not got her yet," he warned me.
"No one knows that better than I do."
"Her mind's still very full of her cause."
"Yes, damn it."
"Almost as full of it as of you. She's torn between you, and you'll
have to fight if you want to keep your foothold."
I told him, as I had told Joyce, that I proposed to break the Suffrage
movement.
"How?" he asked.
"I thought you might be able to help. What _is_ going to be the end of
it?"
He shook his head moodily, and picked up a cigarette.
"I'm not a prophet."
"You've prophesied to some purpose before now," I reminded him.
He paused to look at me with the cigarette in one hand and a lighted
match in the other.
"Guesswork," I heard him murmur.
"But it worked out right?"
"Coincidence."
"_You_ don't think that."
"I may think the world's flat if it amuses me," he answered, blowing
out the match.
The abruptness of his tone was unusual.
"What's been worrying you, Seraph?" I asked.
"Nothing. Why?"
I lay back in my chair and looked him up and down.
"You've forgotten to light your cigarette," I pointed out. "You're
shaking as if you'd got malaria, and wherever your mind may be, it's
not in this room and it's not attending to me."
"I'm sorry," he apologised, sitting down. "I'm rather tired."
To belie his words he jumped up again and began pacing feverishly up
and down before the open balcony window.
"Let's hear about it," I urged.
"You can't do any good."
"Let _me_ judge of that."
He paused irresolutely and stood leaning his head against the frame
of the window and looking out at the flaming sky-signs on the far side
of the river.
"It won't do any good," he repeated over his shoulder. "Nobody 'ud
believe you, but--I don't know, you might try. She must be warned.
Sylvia, I mean. She's absolutely on the brink, and if some one doesn't
save her, she'll be over. I can't interfere, I should only precipitate
it. Will you go, Toby? She might listen to you. It's worth getting
your face laid open to keep her out of danger. Will you go?"
He turned and faced me, wild-eyed and excited. His lips were white,
and his fingers locked and unlocked themselves in uncontrollable
nervous restlessness.
"What's the danger?" I asked, with studied deliberation.
"I don't know. How should I? But it's there; will you go?"
"I don't mind trying," I answered, taking out my watch.
"You must go now!"
It was a quarter to one, and I told him so. Nobody can be less
sensitive than I to the charge of eccentricity, but I refuse to
disturb a Cabinet Minister's household at one in the morning to
proclaim that an overstrung nervous visionary has a premonition that
peril of a vague undefined order is menacing the daughter of the
house.
"We must wait till Christian hours," I insisted.
"Ah, you don't believe it; no one does!"
At eleven o'clock next morning--as soon, in fact, as I had drunk my
coffee and was comfortably shaved and dressed--I drove round to
Cadogan Square in search of Sylvia. I had no very clear idea what
warning I was to give her when we met; indeed I felt wholly
ridiculous and slightly resentful. However, my word had gone forth,
and I was indisposed to upset the Seraph by breaking it. I left him in
the library, silent and pale, writing hard and accumulating an
industrious pile of manuscript against my return. By morning light no
trace remained of his overnight excitement.
To my secret relief Sylvia was not in when I arrived. The man believed
she was shopping and would be out to luncheon, but if I called again
about three I should probably find her at home. It hardly seemed worth
my while to return to Adelphi Terrace, so I ordered some cigars, took
a turn in the Park, lunched at the Club, and talked mild scandal with
Paddy Culling. At three I presented myself once more in Cadogan
Square.
The door stood open, and Sylvia appeared in sight as I mounted the
steps.
"Worse and worse!" she exclaimed as she gave me a hurried shake of the
hand. "I was so sorry to be out when you called this morning. Look
here, will you go inside and tell mother you're coming to dinner
to-night."
"But I'm dining out already."
"Oh, well, when will you come? Ring up and fix a night. I must simply
fly now."
"It won't take a minute."
"Honestly I can't wait! I've got to go down to Chiswick of all
unearthly places! My poor old darling of a fräulein's been taken ill
and she's got no one to look after her. I _must_ just see she's got
everything she wants. It's horribly rude, but you will forgive me,
won't you? She rang up at half-past twelve, and I've only just got
back."
Touching my hand with the tips of her fingers, she flashed down the
steps before I could stop her. The bearded Orthodox Church retainer
was waiting at the kerb, and I heard her call out "Twenty-seven,
Teignmouth Road, Chiswick," as he slammed the door and clambered into
his seat. I caught my last glimpse of her rounding the corner into
Sloane Street, the same black and white study that I had admired when
I first visited Gladys--white dress, black hat; white skin, dark hair,
and soft unfathomable brown eyes; a splash of red at the throat, a
flush of colour in her cheeks. Then I hailed a taxi on my own account
and drove back to Adelphi Terrace.
The Seraph was still in the library, sitting as I had left him more
than four hours before. An empty coffee cup at his elbow marked the
only visible difference. He was writing quicker than I think I have
ever seen a man write, and allowed me to enter the room and drop into
an armchair by the window without raising his eyes or appearing to
notice my presence. I had been there a full five minutes before he
condescended--still without looking up from his writing--to address
me.
"You couldn't stop her, then?"
"No."
"But you saw her?"
"Just for a moment."
"'Just for a moment.' Those were the words I had used."
He stopped writing, drew a line under the last words, blotted the page
and threw it face-downwards on the pile of manuscript. Then for the
first time our eyes met, and I saw it was only by biting his lips and
gripping the arms of the chair that he could keep control over
himself.
"You'd like some tea," he said, in the manner of a man recalling his
mind from a distance. "Can you reach the bell?"
"Is this the end of the chapter?" I asked as he tidied the pile of
manuscript and bored it with a paper fastener.
"It's the end of everything."
"How far does it carry you?"
"To your parting from Sylvia."
"Present time, in fact?"
"Forty minutes ago."
I checked him by my watch. "And what now?" I asked.
He looked up at me, looked through me, I might say, and sat staring at
the window without answering.
The next two hours were the most uncomfortable I have ever spent. If
in old age my guardian angel offers me the chance of living my whole
life over again, I shall refuse the offer if I am compelled to endure
once again that silent July afternoon. The Seraph sat from four till
six without speech or movement. As the sun's rays lengthened, they
fell on his face and lit it with cold, merciless limelight. He had
started pale and grew gradually grey; the eyes seemed to darken and
increase in size as the face became momentarily more pinched and
drawn. I could see the lips whitening and drying, the forehead dewing
with tiny beads of perspiration.
I made a brave show of noticing nothing. Tea was brought in; I poured
him out a cup, drank three myself, and ostentatiously sampled two
varieties of sandwich and one of cake. I cut my cigar noisily, damned
with audible good humour when the matches refused to strike, picked up
a review and threw it down again, and wandered round the room in
search of a book, humming to myself the while.
At six I could stand it no longer.
"I'm going to play the piano, Seraph," I said.
"For pity's sake don't!" he begged me, with a shudder; but I had my
way.
When the _City of Pekin_ went down in '95 as she tried to round the
Horn, one of my fellow-passengers was a gigantic, iron-nerved man from
one of the Western States. I suppose we all of us found it trying work
to sit calm while the boats were lowered away: no one knew how long we
could keep our heads above water and we all had a shrewd suspicion that
the boat accommodation was insufficient. We should have been more
miserable than we were if it had not occurred to the Westerner to
distract our minds. In spite of a thirty-degree list he sat down to the
piano and I helped hold him in position while we thundered out the old
songs that every one knows without consciously learning--"Clementine,"
"The Tarpaulin Jacket," "In Cellar Cool." We were taking a call for
"The Tavern in the Town" when word reached us that there was room in
the last boat.
I set myself to distract the Seraph's mind, and gave him a tireless
succession of waltzes and ragtimes till eight o'clock. Then the bell
of the telephone rang, and I was told Philip Roden wished to speak to
me.
"It's about Sylvia," he began. "She hasn't come back yet, and we don't
know where she is. The man says you had a word with her as she started
out: did she say where she was going?"
I told him of the message from Chiswick, and repeated the address I
had heard her give the chauffeur.
"I don't know what the matter was," I added. "Sylvia may have found
the woman worse than she expected. Hadn't you better inquire who took
the message and see if he or she can throw any light on the mystery?"
I was half dressed for dinner when Philip rang me up again, this time
with well-marked anxiety in his voice.
"I say, there's something very fishy about this," he began. "I've just
rung up the Chiswick address and the Fräulein answered in person. She
wasn't ill, she hadn't been ill, and she certainly hadn't sent any
message to Sylvia."
"Well, but who----?" I started.
"Lord knows!" he answered. "It might be any one. The address is a
boarding house with a common telephone: any one in the house could
have used it. You said twelve-thirty, didn't you? The Fräulein was out
in Richmond Park at twelve-thirty."
"What about Sylvia?" I asked.
"That's the devil of it: Sylvia hadn't been near the place. When was
it exactly that you saw her? Three-five, three-ten? And she turned
into Sloane Street? North or South? Well, North's the Knightsbridge
end. And that's all you can say?"
I mentioned the invitation she had given me, and asked if I could be
of any assistance in helping to trace her. Philip told me he was going
at once to Chiswick to investigate the mystery of the telephone, and
promised to advise me if there was anything fresh to report. Then he
rang off, and I gave a _résumé_ of our conversation to the Seraph. He
had just come out of the bath and was sitting wrapped in a towel on
the edge of the bed. I remember noticing at the time how thin he had
gone the last few weeks: he had always been slightly built, but the
outline of his collarbones and ribs was sharply discernible under the
skin.
"I think it would be rather friendly if I went round after dinner to
see if there's any news of her," I concluded.
"There won't be," he answered.
"Well, that of course we can't say."
"_I_ can. They won't have found her, they don't know where she is."
"Philip may hear something in Chiswick; it looks like a silly
practical joke."
"But you know it isn't."
"I don't know what to think," I answered, as I returned to my room and
the final stages of my toilet. I soon came back, however, to tie my
tie in front of his glass and propound a random question. "I suppose
_you_ don't know where she is?"
"How should I?"
"You sometimes do."
"So do other people."
"You sometimes know where she is when other people don't--and when
you've no better grounds for knowing than other people."
He was still sitting on the bed in _déshabille_, his hands clasped
round his bare knees and his head bowed down and resting on his hands.
For a moment he looked up into my face, then dropped his head again
without speaking.
"You remember what happened at Brandon Court?" I persisted.
"Guess-work," he answered.
"Nonsense!"
"Well, what other explanation do you offer?"
"I don't know; you've got some extra sensitiveness where Sylvia's
concerned. Call it the Sixth Sense, if you like."
"There _is_ no Sixth Sense. I thought Nigel disposed of that fallacy
at Brandon."
"Not to my satisfaction--or yours."
The Seraph jumped up and began to dress.
"Well, anyway I don't know where she is now," he observed.
"Meaning that you did once?"
"You _say_ I did."
"You know you did."
"There's not much sign of it now."
"May be in abeyance. It may come back."
I watched him spend an unduly long time selecting and rejecting
dress-socks.
"It won't come back as long as the connection's broken at her end," I
heard him murmur.