But her difficulties aroused no compassion in him, nor would they have done so even if she had never cheated him at baccarat. Business is business, and a statue of sentiment has no niche hewn in the mining market. One can do one's kindnesses afterwards,he said to himself, and, to do him justice, he often did.
For the present there was a lull in the Carmel transaction, and after a very short spell at the ledgers Mr. Alington closed them with a sigh. There were several receipts lying on his table, and he took them up, read each, and docketed it. One was for a considerable sum of money paid to a political agency. He hesitated a moment before putting the docket on it, and finally wrote on the top left-hand corner:
"Baronetcy."
Toby was sitting after breakfast in the dining-room of his house in town reading the Times. It had been settled for him by Lily before their marriage that he was to have some sort of a profession, and, the choice being left to him, he had chosen politics. He was proposing to stand for a perfectly safe borough in about a month's time, and though hitherto he had known nothing whatever about the public management of his country's affairs, since he was going to take a hand in them himself, he now set himself, or had set for him, day by day to read the papers. He had just got through the political leaders in the Times with infinite labour, and had turned with a sigh of relief for a short interval to the far more human police reports, when Lily came in with a note in her hand.
"Good boy," she said approvingly, and Toby rustled quickly back to the leaders again.
"A most important speech by the Screamer," he announced, honouring by this name a prominent member of the Cabinet. "He seems to suggest an Anglo-Russo-Germanic-French-Italian-American alliance, and says with some justice that it ought to be a very fairly powerful combination. It is directed, as far as I can make out, against Mr. and Mrs. Kruger."
Lily looked over his shoulder for a moment, and saw the justice of therésumé.
"Yes, read it all very carefully, very carefully indeed, Toby," she said. "But just attend to me a moment first; I shan't keep you."
Toby put down the paper with alacrity. The Sportsman tumbled out from underneath it, but he concealed this with the dexterity bred of practice.
"What is it?" he asked, vexed at the interruption, you would have said, but patient of it.
"Toby, speaking purely in the abstract, what do you do if a man wants to borrow money from you?" she asked.
"In the abstract I am delighted to lend it to him," he said. "In the concrete I tell him I haven't got a penny, as a rule."
"I see," said Lily; "but if you had, you would lend it him?"
"Yes; for, supposing that it is the right sort of person who asks you for money, it is rather a compliment. It must be a difficult thing to do, and it implies a sort of intimacy."
"And if it is the wrong sort of person?" asked Lily.
"The wrong sort of person has usually just that shred of self-respect that prevents him asking you."
Lily sighed, and pulled his hair gently, rather struck by his penetration, but not wishing to acknowledge it.
"Door-mats—door-mats!" she observed.
"All right; but why be personal? Who wants to borrow money from you, Lily?"
"I didn't say anyone did," she replied, throwing the note of her envelope into the grate. "Don't be inquisitive. I shall ask abstract questions if I like,and when I like, and how I like. Read the Screamer's speech with great care, and be ready by twelve. You are going to take me to the Old Masters."
She went out of the room, leaving Toby to his politics. But he did not at once pick up the paper again, but looked abstractedly into the fire. He did not at all like the thought that someone was borrowing money from his wife, for his brain involuntarily suggested to him the name of a possible borrower. Lily had held a note in her hand, he remembered, when she came into the room, and it was the envelope of it, no doubt, which she had thrown into the grate. For one moment he had a temptation to pick it up and see whether the handwriting confirmed his suspicions, the next he blushed hotly at the thought, and, picking up the crumpled fragment from the grate with the tongs, thrust it into the hottest core of the fire.
But the interruption had effectually destroyed his power of interesting himself in this world-wide combination against Mr. and Mrs. Kruger. There was trouble in the air; what trouble he did not know, but he had been conscious of it ever since he had gone down one day late in last December to stay with Kit and Jack at Goring, and they had been blocked by the snow a couple of stations up the line. He had noticed then, and ever since, that there was something wrong between Kit and his brother. Kit had been unwell when they were there: she had hardly appeared at all during those few days, except in the evenings. Then, it is true, she had usually eaten and drank freely, screamed with laughter, and played baccarat till the small hours grew sensibly larger. But underneath it all lay an obvious sense of effort and the thundery, oppressive feeling of trouble—somethingimpossible to define, but impossible not to perceive. In a way, supposing it was Kit who wanted to borrow money from his wife, it would have been a relief to Toby; he would have been glad to know that cash alone was at the bottom of it all. He feared—he hardly knew what he feared—but something worse than a want of money.
He sat looking at the fire for a few minutes longer, and then, getting up, went to his wife's room. She was seated at the table, writing a note, and Toby noticed that her cheque-book was lying by her hand. He abstained carefully from looking even in the direction of the note she was writing, and stood by the window with his broad back to the room.
"Lily," he said, "will you not tell me who it is who wants to borrow money from you? For I think I know."
Lily put down her pen.
"Toby, you are simply odious," she said. "It is not fair of you to say that."
Toby turned round quickly.
"I am not a bit odious," he said. "If I had wanted not to play fair, I could have looked at the envelope you left in the dining-room grate. Of course, I burnt it without looking at it. But I thought of looking at it. I didn't; that is all."
Lily received this in silence. For all his freckles, she admired Toby too much to tell him so. And this simple act, necessitated by the crudest code of honour, impressed her.
"That is true," she said. "All the same, I don't think it is quite fair of you to ask me who it was."
Toby came across the room, and sat down by the fire. The suspicion had become a certainty.
"Lily, if it is the person I mean," he said, "it will be a positive relief to me to know it. Why, I can't tell you. I haven't spoken to you before about the whole thing; but since we went down to Goring on that snowy day I have had a horrible feeling that something is wrong. Don't ask me what: I don't know—I honestly don't know. But if it is only money I shall be glad."
Lily directed an envelope and closed it.
"Yes, it is Kit," she said at length.
"Ah, what have you done?"
"I have done what she asked."
"How much?" The moment after he was ashamed of the question; it was immaterial.
"That is my own affair, Toby," she said.
Toby poked the fire aimlessly, and a dismal, impotent anger against Kit burned in his heart.
"Borrowing! Kit borrowing!" he said at length.
"Of course, I haven't let her borrow," said Lily quietly, sealing the note.
"You have made her a present of it?"
"Oh, Toby, how you dot your i's this morning!" she said. "Shall I unseal what I have written, and put a postscript saying you wish it to be understood that so much interest is charged on a loan? No, I am talking nonsense. Come, it is time to go out. Kit is coming to see me this afternoon, soon after lunch, so we must be back before two."
"Kit coming to see you? What for?"
"She asked me if I would be in at three. I know no more. Oh, my good child, why look like a boiled owl?"
The boiled owl got up.
"It is a disgrace," he said; "I've a good mind to tell Jack."
"If you do," remarked Lily, "I shall get a divorce—that's all!"
"I'm not certain about the law in England," said Toby, with emphasis, "but I don't believe for a moment that they'd give it you for such a reason. But make the attempt. Try—do try."
"Certainly I should," said she. "But, seriously, Toby, you mustn't think of telling Jack. He and Kit have had a row, so I believe, and she doesn't like to ask him for money. I come next: I do really, because you haven't got any. Besides, you said it was rather a compliment being asked; I agree with you. But to tell Jack—preposterous!"
She stood in front of him, drawing on her long gloves, her eyes fixed on her hands. Then she looked up.
"Preposterous!" she said again.
Toby took one of the gloved hands in his.
"I love and honour you," he said simply.
"Thank you, Toby. And how dear it is to me to hear you say that, you know. So you'll be good, and let me manage my own affairs my own way?"
"For this time. Never again."
"As often as I wish, dear. Oh, am I a fool? You seem to think so."
"It's not that—oh, it's not that," said Toby. "Money—who cares? I don't care a damn—sorry—what you do with it. It doesn't interest me. But that Kit should ask you for money—oh, it beats me!"
"I think you are hard on her, Toby."
"You don't understand Kit," he said. "She is as thoughtless as a child in many things—I know that—but being thoughtless is not the same as being upscrupulous. And about money she is unscrupulous.Pray God it is only——" and he paused, "well, it is time for us to go out, if we want to see the Old Masters. Personally I don't; but you are a wilful woman. And I haven't even thanked you."
"I should advise you not," remarked Lily.
"Why? What would you do?" said the practical Toby.
"I should call you Evelyn for a month."
Toby was sent to a political meeting directly after lunch, and Lily was alone when Kit arrived. Fresh-faced as a child, and dressed with an exquisite simplicity, she rustled across the room, just as she rustled at church, and in her eye there was a certain soft pathos that was a marvel of art. A mournful smile held her mouth, and, giving a long sigh, she kissed Lily and sat down close beside her, retaining her hand. It is far more difficult to be a graceful recipient than a graceful donor in affairs of hard cash, and it must be acknowledged that Kit exhibited mastery in the precarious feat. With admirable grasp of the dramatic rights of the situation, for a long moment she said nothing, and only looked at Lily, and even the doubting Apostle might have gone bail that her feelings choked utterance. That she was very grateful for what Lily had done is true, if gratitude can be felt without generosity; but it was not her feelings that choked her utterance, so much as her desire to behave really beautifully, and express her feelings with the utmost possible charm. At last she spoke.
"What can I say to you?" she said. "Oh, Lily, if you only knew! What can you have thought of me? But you must believe I loathe myself for asking. And you—and you——"
Real moisture stood in Kit's eyes ready to fall.Lily was much moved and rather embarrassed. Passionate relief was in Kit's voice, beautifully modulated.
"Please say nothing more," she said. "It gave me real pleasure—I am speaking quite seriously—to do what I did. So all is said."
Kit had dropped her eyes as Lily spoke, but here she raised them again, and the genuineness of the eyes that met hers brought her more nearly to a sense of personal shame than anything had done for years; for even the most undulatingposeurfeels the force of genuineness when really brought into contact with it, for his own weapons crumple up before it like the paper lances and helmets with which children play. Kit's life, her words, her works, were and had always been hollow. But Lily's sincerity was dominant, compelling, and Kit's careful calculated manner, a subject of so great preoccupation but two seconds ago, slipped suddenly from her.
"Let me speak," she said. "I want to speak. You cannot guess in what perplexities I am. In a hundred thousand ways I have been a wicked little fool; and, oh, how dearly one pays for folly in this world!—more dearly than for anything else, I think. I have been through hell—through hell, I tell you!"
At last there was truth in Kit's voice, a genuineness beyond question. Her carefully studied speech and silences were swept away, as if by a wet sponge from a slate, and her soul spoke. A sudden unexpected, but imperative, need to speak to someone was upon her, to someone who was good, and these past weeks of silence were an intolerable weight. Goodness, as a rule, was synonymous in Kit's mind with dulness, but just now it had something infinitely restful and inviting about it. Her life withJack had grown day by day more impossible; he, too, so Kit thought, knew that there was always with them some veiled Other Thing about which each was silent. Whether he knew what it was she did not even try to guess; but the small things of life, the eating and the drinking, the talk on indifferent subjects when the two were alone, became a ghastly proceeding in the invariable presence of the Other Thing. To Lily also that presence was instantly manifest, the trouble about which Toby had spoken that morning. It was there unmistakably, and she braced herself to hear Kit give bodily form to it, for she knew that was coming.
Kit dropped her eyes and went on hurriedly.
"I am in unutterable distress and perplexity," she said; "and I dread—oh, I dread what lies before me! For days and nights, ever since that snow-storm down at Goring, I have thought only of what I have to go through—what is within a few months inevitable. I have tried to conceal it from Jack. But you guess, Lily. You know, I even went to a doctor to ask if anything could be done——"
Lily looked up with a glance of astonished horror.
"Stop, stop," she said; "you are saying horrible things!"
"Yes, I am saying horrible things," went on Kit, with a strange calmness in her voice; "but I am telling you the truth, and the truth is horrible. The truth about a wicked person like me cannot be nice. You interrupted me. I went, as I told you, but when I got there I drove away again. I was not so wicked as I thought I was."
Lily gave a great sigh of relief. But she had not seen the Other Thing yet.
"Oh, my poor Kit," she said; "I am so sorryfor you; but—but you see the same thing lies before me. But fear it? I thank God for it every moment of my life. Cannot you forget pain, risk, danger of death, even in that? Nothing in this world seems to me to matter when perhaps soon one will be a mother. A mother—oh, Kit! I would not change places with anyone in earth or heaven."
Kit did not look up.
"It is different for you," she said.
"Different? How different?" she asked; but a sudden misgiving shook her voice. Outlines of the Other Thing were discernible.
A sudden spasm of impatience seized Kit.
"Ah, you are stupid!" she cried. "You good people are always stupid."
There was a long silence, and during that silence Lily knew Kit's secret, and as with everyone the world of trivial things swarmed into her mind. She heard the ticking of the clock, the low boom of life outside, the rustle of Kit's dress as she moved slightly. Something perfectly direct had to be said by the one or the other; anything else would be as out of place as a remark on the weather to a dying man.
"What am I to do?" asked Kit at length simply.
And the answer was as simple:
"Tell your husband."
"I think Jack would kill me if I told him," said Kit.
"I am very sure he would not. Besides, what does that matter? Oh, what does that matter?"
Kit looked up at her in silence, but after a moment Lily went on.
"Don't you see what I mean?" she said. "There are some situations in life, Kit, and this is one, where no side-issue, like being killed, comes in. There is,as God is above us, absolutely only one thing to be done, though there are a hundred arguments against it. What is the use of telling him? you might ask. Use? Of course there is no use. Why tell the disgrace? why make him miserable? why make him hate you, perhaps? Simply because you must—you must! Oh, my poor, poor Kit, I am so glad you told me! It must be something to tell anyone, even a feeble little fool like me. How could you have borne it alone? Oh, Kit, Kit!"
Again there was silence. Lily sat leaning forward in her chair, bending towards the other, with all the pure sweet womanliness of her nature yearning in her eyes. Perhaps she should have been shocked. She was not, for pity swallowed up the very ground on which censure should have stood. The two women, as asunder as the poles, were for the moment brought close by the Divine identical experience of their sex; yet what was to be to one the flower of her life and the crown of her womanhood, was to the other a bitterness ineffaceable, a shuddering agony.
"Oh, it is difficult, it is difficult!" went on Lily; "but when was anything worth doing easy? Does not all in you that you know to be best point one way? You cannot imagine going on living with Jack, day by day, week by week, without telling him. And when it comes——"
Lily broke off suddenly. Here was no question of words. What could argument do in a case that admitted of none? There was one thing—one thing only—to be done; all else was impossible. If Kit did not feel that in her very blood and bones, no words could conceivably make her. She had been sitting quite still and silent, apathetic apparently, duringLily's speech. After her outbreak at the beginning, such entire composure was unnatural. The two might have been talking of Danish politics for all the interest Kit seemed to take in the subject. Inwardly storm and tempest raged; old voices, memories, all that was innocent, called to her; the gales of her soul bugled and shook the foundations of her building, but as yet the moment had not come. Then suddenly the slightest tremor seemed to shake her, and Lily saw that she was beginning to feel, and that some fibre long dormant or numb was still vital.
"All I say to you seems nothing more than platitude, perhaps?" she went on; "but platitudes are worth consideration when one touches the great things of life—when interest, tact, inclination, cleverness, are all sunk, and we are left with the real things, the big things—goodness, wickedness, what is right, what is wrong."
Her tone had a pleading wistfulness in it, her eyes were soft with tenderness, and the simple, homely words had the force of their simplicity. Kit was drawing on her gloves very slowly, still not looking up.
"Tell me two things more," she said, with a tremor in her voice. "Do you shrink from me? And the wrong I have done to—to your unborn child, what of that?"
Lily rose and kissed her on the forehead.
"I have answered you," she said.
Kit got up, hands trembling and with twitching mouth.
"Let me go," she said. "Let me go at once. Come if I send for you."
She hurried from the room without further good-bye, and Lily was too wise to try to detain her. Hercarriage was still waiting, and she stepped quickly into it.
"Home," she said.
Outside the air was brisk with spring, the streets clean and dry, and populous with alert faces. Shop-windows winked and sparkled in the lemon-coloured sunshine; at a corner was a barrow full of primroses from the country, and the news of the day lay on the cobbles of the crossing, with stones to keep it from flying, in scarlet advertisement. A shouting wind swept down Piccadilly, hats flapped and struggled, errand-boys whistled and chaffed, buses towered and nodded, hansoms jingled and passed, but for once Kit was blind to this splendid spectacle of life. Her own brougham moved noiselessly and swiftly on its India-rubber tires, and she knew only, and that with a blank heaviness of spirit, that each beat of the horses' hoofs brought her a pace nearer to her home, to her husband—a step closer to what she was going to do.
She got out at her own door, and, to her question whether her husband was in, was told that he was up in his room. He had ordered the carriage, however, which brought her back, to wait, as he was going out.
Kit went quickly up the staircase and along the parquetted floor of the passage, not loitering for fear she should not go at all. Jack was standing in front of his fireplace, an opened letter in his hand. As she came in he looked up.
Kit had advanced a few steps into the room, but stopped there, looking at him with eyes of mute entreaty. She had not stopped to think over what she should say, and though her lips moved she could not speak.
"What is it?" he said.
Kit did not reply, but her eyes dropped before his.
"What is the matter?" he asked again. "Are you ill, Kit?"
Then the inward storm broke. She half ran across the room and flung her arms round his neck.
"I wish I were dead!" she cried. "Jack, Jack—oh, Jack!"
Toby was just turning into the Bachelors' Club next morning after another terrible wrestle with the Screamer, when he ran into Ted Comber. They had met a dozen times since their interview in the Links Hotel at Stanborough last August; indeed, they were both of the snowed-up party which went to the cottage in Buckinghamshire in the winter. Toby, still in ignorance that his interference had only changed the scene of the week by the seaside, bore him no ill-will at all; in fact, having been extremely rude and dictatorial to him, he felt very much more kindly disposed to him afterwards, and, as usual, on meeting him to-day, he said "Hulloa!" in a genial and meaningless manner as they passed.
But this morning there was something comparatively dishevelled about Ted; the knotting of his tie was the work of a mere amateur, and he had no button-hole. As soon as he saw Toby he stopped dead.
"How is she?" he asked.
Toby stared.
"How is who?"
"Kit. Haven't you heard?"
Toby shook his head.
"I called there this morning," he said, "for Kit and I were going to an exhibition, and they told me she was ill in bed. And Jack would not see me."
"No, have heard nothing," said Toby. "Kit called on my wife yesterday, but I did not see her. Lily did not say anything about her being ill."
Lord Comber looked much relieved.
"I suppose it is nothing, then," he said; "I do hope so. It would be terrible for Kit to be ill, just when the season is beginning."
Toby stood for a moment thinking.
"Did you say Jack refused to see you?" he asked.
"Yes; I dare say he was very busy. No one sets eyes on him now that he has become a gold-miner. I am told he lives in the City, and plays dominoes in his leisure hours with stockbrokers. Probably he was only busy."
Toby bit his glove.
"Why else should he refuse to see you?" he asked.
"I can't think, because I'm really devoted to Jack. Well, good-bye, Toby. I'm so glad to have seen you. If there was anything serious, I'm sure they would have told you. Isn't the morning too heavenly?"
Lord Comber waved his hand delicately, and turned briskly into Piccadilly. He had really had rather a bad moment before he met Toby, and it was a great relief that that red-headed barbarian knew nothing of Kit's illness. It could scarcely be anything serious. One way and another he had seen almost nothing of her since he was down at the cottage in December, for he himself had been out of England, and in the country, until this week, whereas the Conybeares had been almost entirely in London.
It was a delicious spring morning, and his spirits rose quickly as he went eastwards. He was proposingto do a little shopping in Bond Street, since Kit could not come to the exhibition, and visit his hairdresser and his tailor. A play had just come out at the Haymarket, in which the men wore very smart coats with a great deal of thick braid about them, and he intended to order a coat with thick braid at once. He remembered having seen in an old fashion-book of 1850 pictures of men with heavily braided coats, and had often thought how smart they looked. But they belonged to the crinoline age, and till now he had never seriously thought of getting one made. But this new play had quite convinced him; though they were the fashion when crinolines were in, they were not of the same ephemeral stamp as their feminine counterparts, and the late nineties should see them again.
Just at the corner of Half-Moon Street was a flower-seller, with bunches and button-holes of spring flowers. The girl who sold them was pretty, and he looked at her a moment deftly twisting the wire round the stalks, wondering where the lower orders got their good looks from. There were yellow jonquils, breathing a heavy incense; creamy narcissi with flaming orange-coloured centres; exquisite single daffodils, most classic of all flowers, pure and girlish-looking; double daffodils, which reminded him of the same girls grown older and rather stout, overdressed, with fringes; and small fragrant bunches of violets. For violets, except in so far as they were of a lovely colour, he did not care; they were as formless as cotton-wool when put together for a button-hole (the object of flowers), and the scent of them was so precisely like essence of violets as to bebanale. But as he was dressed in dark blue serge, with a violet satin tie and a sapphirepin, he bought a bunch, and put it in his button-hole, completing his scheme of colour. He gave the girl a shilling, and when she would have offered him a heavy copper change, told her to keep it, and walked on with a little warm charitable feeling, unencumbered by the dead weight of so many pennies.
After his tailor's, a visit to Perrin's was necessary. He had a very particular hairdresser there, whom he must really take into serious consultation about certain gray hairs. There were at least a dozen of them above each of his ears, and they had appeared there during the last two or three months. All his family went gray early, and it was as well to face it. It was no use getting hair dyes, which might either ruin one's hair or be the wrong colour; it was only wise to consult the very best authorities, and if hair dye was necessary, let it be put on, at any rate directed, by a professional hand.
These were gloomy reflections; the shadow of age was beginning to peer over his shoulder, and he did not like it at all. He was as yet only thirty, but already ten years of being a young man, the only thing in the world worth being, were gone from him. Five years ago, men of forty, young for their age, were objects of amusing horror to him; their whole life, so he thought, must be one effort to retain the semblance of youth, and their antics were grotesque to thevraie jeunesse. But now both the amusement and the horror were gone; it would soon be worth while trying to learn a wrinkle or two from them. At twenty-five forty had seemed beyond the gray horizons; at thirty it had come so near that already, and without glasses (which he did not need yet), one could see the details of that flat, uninteresting land. What he would do with himselfwhen he was forty he could not imagine. Marry very likely.
But forty was still ten years off, thousands of days, and this morning was a jewel of spring, and he was so happy to think that probably Kit had nothing much amiss. Really, he had had some bad minutes, but Toby must have known if there had been anything wrong. So his spirits rebounded, and he resumed his reflections on age with a strong disposition towards cheerfulness as regards the outlook. When he looked over his contemporaries in his own mind, he candidly found himself younger than they. There was Tom Abbotsworthy, for instance, whose forehead was already nearly one with the top of his head, separated only by the most scrannel isthmus of hair, and corrugated with wrinkles on its lower parts, smooth and shining above. There was Jack Conybeare, with a visible tinge of gray in his hair, and lines about his eyes which were plain even by candlelight. Ted congratulated himself, when he thought of Jack, on his having so promptly gone to the facemasseuron his return from Aldeburgh in September. It had meant a week of tedious mornings, and an uncomfortable sort of mask at night over the upper part of the face two or three times a week ever since, but the treatment had been quite successful. "Not only," as the somewhat sententious professor of massage had said to him, "had the growth and spread of the lines been arrested, but some had actually been obliterated." He congratulated Ted on his elastic skin. Again, his teeth were good, and really the only reconnoitring-parties of age at present in sight were this matter of gray hairs and a tendency to corpulency. For the former he was going to take prompt steps this morning, andhe had already begun a course of gritty biscuits, most nutritious, but entirely without starch, which promised success in point of the latter.
But while he was making his butterfly way down Piccadilly, occasionally sipping at a jeweller's, or hovering lightly over a print-shop, Toby, after a long meditation on the top step of the club, during which time the hall-porter had held the door open for him, turned away instead of going in, and went up Park Lane to his brother's house. Kit's bedroom was directly over the front-door, and, looking up, he saw that the blinds were still down. Jack was coming into the hall from his room when Toby entered, and, seeing him, stopped.
"I was just coming to see you, Toby," he said. "I am glad you have come."
Jack's face looked curiously aged and drawn, as if he had spent a week of sleepless nights, and Toby followed him in silence, with a heart sunk suddenly into his boots. There was deadly presage in the air. Jack preceded him into the smoking-room, and threw himself down in a chair.
"Oh, Jack, what is it?" asked Toby.
The two remained together for nearly an hour, and at the end of that time came out together again. Toby took his hat and gloves from the hall-table, and was putting on his coat, when the other spoke.
"Won't you go and see her?" he asked, and his voice was a little trembling.
"I think I can't," said Toby.
"Why not?"
Toby had thrust one hand through the arm of his coat, and with it dangling remained a moment thinking.
"For two reasons: she is your wife—yours," he said, "and I am your brother; also you were a brute, Jack."
"For both reasons see her," he said; and his voice was sorry and ashamed.
"And it will do no good," said Toby, still irresolute.
"But it will be a pleasure to Kit," said Jack. "Don't, for God's sake, be always thinking about doing good, Toby! Oh, it maddens me!"
Toby disengaged the coated arm, and leaned against the hall-table.
"I shouldn't know what to say," he replied.
"You needn't know; just go and see her." Jack spoke with some earnestness. "Go and see her," he went on. "I can't, and I must know how she is. Toby, I believe you are sorry for both of us. Well, if that is so, I am sure Kit would like to see you, and certainly I want you to go. She was asking for you, her maid told me, an hour ago."
"I'm a damned awkward sort of fellow," said Toby. "Suppose she begins to talk, God knows what I shall say."
"She won't; I know her better than you."
Toby put his hat down, and drew off a glove.
"Very well," he said. "Send for her maid."
Jack laid his hand on Toby's arm.
"You're a good fellow, Toby," he said, "and may God preserve you from the fate of your brother!"
Jack rang the bell, and sent for Kit's maid. The two brothers remained together in the hall without speaking till she came down again.
"Her ladyship will see Lord Evelyn now," she said.
Toby went up the staircase behind the woman. They came to Kit's door, and having tapped and been answered, he entered.
The blinds, as he had seen from the street, were down, and the room in low half-light. The dressing-table was close in front of the window, and in the dim rose light that filtered through the red stuff, he could at first see nothing but a faint sparkle of silver-backed brushes and bottles. Then to the right of the window the bed became outlined to his more accustomed gaze, and from it came Kit's voice, rather gentler and lower-pitched than its wont.
"Toby, it is dear of you to come to see me," she said. "But isn't it stupid of me? Directly after seeing Lily yesterday I came back here, and tripped on those steps leading from Jack's room. I came an awful bang. I must have been stunned, for I remember nothing till I found myself lying on the sofa here. Oh dear, I've got such a headache!"
Toby found himself suddenly encouraged. Of all moral qualities, he was disposed to put loyalty the first, and certainly Kit was being magnificently loyal. Her voice was perfectly her own; she did not say that she had stumbled over something of Jack's, still less that he, as Toby knew, had knocked her down. He drew a chair up to the bedside.
"It is bad luck, Kit," he said; "and really I am awfully sorry for you. Is your head very bad?"
"Oh, it aches!" said Kit; "but it was all my own fault. Now, if anyone else had been to blame for it, I should have been furious, and that would have made it ache worse." She laughed rather feebly. "So one is saved something," she went on, "and even with this head I am duly grateful. Itis a day wasted, which is always a bore, but otherwise——"
And she stopped abruptly, for the glibness of her loyalty was suddenly cut short by a pang of pain almost intolerable, which pierced her like a sword. She bit the bedclothes in her determination not to cry aloud, and a twenty seconds' anguish left her weak and trembling.
"I wanted to see you, Toby," she said. "Just to tell you how, how——" And she paused a moment thinking that her insistence on the fact that her accident was no one's fault but her own, might seem suspicious—"how glad I was to see Lily yesterday!" she went on. "I wonder if she would come to see me; ask her. But you must go now; I can't talk. Just ring the bell as you go out. I want my maid."
She stretched a hand from under the bedclothes to him, and he took it with a sudden fright, feeling its cold feebleness.
"Good-bye, Kit," he said. "Get better soon."
She could not reply, for another sword of pain pierced her, and he went quickly out, ringing the bell as he passed the mantelpiece.
Jack was still in the hall when he came downstairs again, and he looked up in surprise at the speed of Toby's return.
"She fell down, she told me," he said. "You were quite right, Jack—not a word."
Jack had not time to reply when Kit's maid hurried downstairs into the hall.
"What is it?" asked Jack.
"Her ladyship is in great pain, my lord," she said. "She told me to send for the doctor at once."
Jack rang the bell and looked up at Toby blankly, appealingly.
"Go into your room, Jack," he said. "I'll send for the doctor, and do all that."
A footman was sent off at once for Kit's doctor, and Toby sat down at a writing-table in the hall and scribbled a note to his wife, to be taken by a messenger at once to his house. If Lily was not at home, he was to find out where she had gone and follow her. The note only contained a few words:
"My Dearest: Kit is in trouble—worse than I can tell you. Come at once to her. She wants you.
"My Dearest: Kit is in trouble—worse than I can tell you. Come at once to her. She wants you.
"Toby."
When he had written and sent this, he went back to Jack. The latter was sitting at his table, his face in his hands, doing nothing. Toby went up to him.
"Come, Jack," he said, speaking as if with authority, "make an effort and pull yourself together. Get to your work, or try to. There is a pile of letters there you haven't looked at. Read them. Some may want answers. If so, answer them. I have sent for Kit's doctor, and for Lily."
Jack looked up.
"It isn't fit that Lily should come here," he said.
Toby thought of Kit's visit the afternoon before, and Lily's refusal to him to say anything of what it had been about. That it had been private was all she would tell him, and not about money. And as they were sitting alone in the evening he thought he saw her crying once.
"I think it is very possible she knows," he said. "Kit had a private talk with her yesterday. Wait till she comes."
Jack rose from his seat.
"Oh, Toby, if you had only telegraphed for me from Stanborough, instead of packing him off!"
"I wish to God I had!" said Toby drearily.
Jack took up his letters, as Toby had told him, and began opening them. There was one from Mr. Alington enclosing a cheque. He barely looked at it. Money, his heart's desire, had been given him, and the leanness of it had entered into his soul. But seeing the sense of Toby's advice to do something, he answered some of these letters, mechanically and correctly.
Before long Lily was announced, and Toby rose quickly, and went out into the hall to meet her.
"Ah, Toby," she said, "you did quite right to send for me. They just caught me before I went out. You needn't tell me anything. Kit told me all."
Toby nodded.
"Will you see Jack?" he asked.
"Yes, if he would care to see me. Ask him whether he will or not."
But Jack had followed Toby, and before he could answer had come out of his room.
"It is awfully good of you to come, Lily!" he said. "But go away again. It is not fit you should be here."
"If Kit wants me, I shall see her," she said. "Please let her know that I am here, Jack."
"It isn't fit," said Jack again.
"I think differently," said Lily gently. "Please tell her at once, Jack."
Jack looked at her a moment in silence, biting his lip nervously.
"Ah God!" he cried, suddenly stung by some helpless remorse and regret, and without more wordshe went upstairs to see whether Kit would see her. He could not bring himself to go into the room, but asked through the maid. Soon he appeared again at the head of the stairs, beckoning to Lily, who was waiting in the hall below, and she went up. He held the door of Kit's bedroom open for her, and she went in.
The room was very dark, and, like Toby, it took her a few seconds before she could distinguish objects. From the corner to the right of the rose-square of the window came a faint moaning. Lily walked across to the bedside.
"Kit," she said, "my poor Kit! I have come."
There was silence, and the moaning ceased. Then came Kit's voice in a whisper:
"Lily," she said, "I told him. I told him all. Then—then—I somehow fell down those stairs leading from his room, and hurt myself awfully. My fault entirely.... I was not looking where I was going. Oh, I have felt so terribly ill since this morning, and it is only morning still, isn't it? Have they sent for the doctor?"
"Yes, they expect him immediately. Oh, Kit, are you not glad you told him? It was the only way. Now you have done all you can. It would be worse to bear if you had not told him. Oh, I wish—I wish I could take the pain instead of you! Hold my hand. Grip it with all your force; it will make the pain seem easier. And oh, Kit, pray to God without ceasing."
"I can't—I can't," moaned Kit; "I never pray. I have not prayed for years."
"Pray now, then. If you have turned your back on Him, He has never turned His back on you. The Man of Sorrows, acquainted with grief, born ofa woman! Only be willing to let Him help you—that is sufficient. Think of the graciousness of that! And this is the very week of His Passion."
"I can't pray," moaned Kit again; "but pray for me."
The grip of Kit's hand tightened in Lily's, and she could feel the stones in her rings biting into her flesh. Yet she hardly felt it; she was only aware of it. And her whole soul went up in supplication.
"O most pitiful, have pity," she said. "Help Kit in the hour of her need; deliver her body from pain and death, and her soul, above all, from sin. Give her amendment of life, and time to amend, and the will to amend. Make her sorry. Oh, Almighty One, stand near one of Thy children in her pain and need. Help her—help her!"
The door of the room opened quietly, and Dr. Ferguson entered. He held in his hand a little bag. He went to the window and drew up the blinds, letting in a splash of primrose-coloured sunshine; then shook hands with Lily, who rose at his entrance, in silence.
"You had better leave us, Lady Evelyn," he said. "Please send the nurse up as soon as she comes."
Lily turned to the bedside once more before leaving the room, and Kit smiled in answer to her. Her face was terribly drawn and white, and the dew of pain stood on her forehead. Lily bent and kissed her, and left the room.
She rejoined Toby and Jack in the smoking-room. Jack got up when she entered with eyes of questioning.
"The doctor is with her," said Lily. "He will be sure to tell us as soon as he can."
"Do you think she is very bad?"
"I don't know. She is in dreadful pain. How on earth did she manage to fall so badly down these steps?"
"Did she tell you that?"
"Yes; she said it was entirely her own fault."
Jack turned away a moment.
"I knocked her down," he said at length.
Lily's eye flashed, but grew soft again.
"Don't let her know that you have told me," she said. "Oh, poor Jack!"
Jack turned to her again quickly.
"Lily, do you think she will die?" he asked. "And will it be that which killed her?"
"Don't say such things, Jack," said Lily firmly. "You have no right to say or think them yet. We must hope for the best. Dr. Ferguson will certainly tell us as soon as he knows."
For another half-hour they sat there, the most part in silence. Lily took up a book, but did not read it; Jack sat at a table beginning letter after letter, and tearing them up again, and all waited in the grip of sickening, quaking suspense for the doctor's report. Footsteps, which at such times fall with a muffled sound, moved about the house, and occasionally the ceiling jarred with the reverberation of a step in Kit's room, which was overhead. Lunch was announced, but still none of them moved. At last a heavy footstep came downstairs, the door of the smoking-room opened, and Dr. Ferguson entered.
"It is a very grave case," he said quietly. "I should like another opinion, Lord Conybeare."
Jack had faced round in his chair, and sat for a moment in silence, biting the end of his pen. His hands were perfectly steady, but one of his eyebrowskept twitching, and the colour was struck from his face.
"Please telegraph, or send a carriage to whomever you wish for," he said.
"A hansom will be quickest," said Dr. Ferguson, "unless you have horses already in. Excuse me, I will write a note."
Toby got up.
"I'll take it, Jack," he said. "Lily's carriage is still waiting."
"Thank you, Lord Evelyn," said the doctor. "Sir John Fox will certainly see you if you send your card in. He will be at home now. In fact I need not write. Bring him back with you, please."
Toby left the room, and Dr. Ferguson got up.
"She is very ill?" said Jack.
"Yes, the condition may become critical in an hour or two. I shall then"—and he looked at Jack—"I shall then have to try to save Lady Conybeare at whatever cost."
Jack gave a sudden short crack of laughter, but recovered himself.
"Meanwhile, Lord Conybeare," continued the doctor, "you are to consider yourself a patient too. I insist on your having lunch."
"I can't eat," said Jack.
"Excuse me, but you have got to. And you too, Lady Evelyn. By the way, Lady Conybeare tells me she had a fall. That, of course, caused this premature event. When did it happen?"
For a moment Jack swayed where he stood, and sat down again heavily. He seemed about to speak; but Lily interrupted him quickly:
"Yesterday afternoon, about four o'clock. Lady Conybeare told me about it. Please come in tolunch, Dr. Ferguson, unless you are going upstairs again at once, in which case I will send you some up. Come, Jack."
Toby returned before long, bringing Sir John with him. The two doctors had a short consultation together, and then went upstairs again.
Outside the muffled house the spring day ran its course of exquisite hours. The trees in the Park opposite were already covered with little green buds, not yet turned black by the soot of the city, and the flower-beds were bright and heavily fragrant with big, succulent hyacinths. Up and down Park Lane surged the busy traffic; now a jingling hansom would cut in front of a tall, nodding bus, now a dray would slowly cross the Park gate, damming up for a moment the two tides of carriages passing in and out. The great bourdon hum of London droned like some overladen bee, still intent on gathering more riches, and the yearly renewal of the lease of life granted every springtime made gay the tenants of this goodly heritage of earth. Inside the house Jack and Lily sat alone, for she had sent Toby away for an hour or two to get some air. They hardly spoke to each other; each listened intently for a foot on the stairs.
About four o'clock, just as the sun, still high, was beginning to cut the rim of the taller trees in the Park, Dr. Ferguson entered. He beckoned to Jack, who left the room. Outside in the hall he stopped.
"You must decide," he said. "We cannot possibly save the mother and the child."
"Save the mother!" cried Jack. "Oh, save her!"
His voice was suddenly raised almost to a shriek,and through the closed door, Lily, hearing it, started up. In another moment he came back into the room, trembling frightfully, with a wild, scared look.
"Jack! Jack!" she said. "My poor fellow! be brave. What is it?"
"They have to try to save one," said Jack. "Oh, Lily!" And with a sudden upheaval of his nature, and an uprising of all that was tender and remorseful, long overlaid by his selfish, unscrupulous life, he gave way utterly and abandonedly. "Oh, Kit! Kit!" he moaned. "If she dies it will be my doing. I shall have murdered her. And we have been married six years! She was not twenty when we married—a child almost. And what have I done for her? Have I ever made this wicked, difficult business of life any easier for her? I, too, have been false and faithless, and when poor, brave Kit came to tell me—what she told me—I did that which may have killed her. She has to bear it all, and I, brute, bully and coward, go scot-free. She fell like a log, and I was not sorry, only frightened. And she told you, she told Toby, she told the doctor, that she had fallen herself. Poor, loyal Kit! And I am a fine fellow to be loyal to! O God! God! God!"
He writhed on the sofa, where he had flung himself in dumb, twisted agony. The pains of hell, a soul knowingly lost, were his. All the love he had once borne to Kit, all the years of their excellent comradeship together, rose and filled the cup of unutterable remorse.
Lily, woman to her heart's core, was one throb of pity for them both, and could scarce find words.
"Oh, Jack!" she said; "there is hope. It is not hopeless. They did not say that. It is awful; but be strong. We have to wait."
He did not answer her, but lay like a man dead, his face hidden in the elbow of his arm. Lily saw it was no use attempting to reach him by any words. For the time he lay outside the range of human sympathy, inaccessible. The outer darkness of remorse and regret was round him, not to be illuminated, but unpierceable and of necessity so. He was not a good man, but an utterly bad one would not have so suffered.
So they sat silent, and the sun sank lower behind the trees, till at length a few rays through the yet thinly clad branches came in level at the window. Suddenly Jack sat up.
"I hear a step," he said, and next moment Lily perceived it, too.
"Go into the hall to them, Jack," she said, thinking that he would rather face the inevitable moment of news alone.
"I can't," said he.
The step came down the stairs, across the flagged hall, and Dr. Ferguson entered.
"She will pull through," he said. "Unless anything quite unforeseen happens, Lady Conybeare will do well."
Ted Comber had passed an arduous but most satisfactory morning. His own particular hairdresser had been kind, sympathetic and consoling. Gray hairs were there, and it was no use denying it; but there was a wonderful new preparation, not really a hair-dye, but a natural product, which, like everything else connected with the hair, cost ten and sixpence the bottle, and was to be confidently recommended. He would send it round to South Audley Street. A little to be applied with a brush every day to the parts affected, and the smell was not unpleasant.
From there he had gone to his tailor's, and had a long talk to Mr. Barrett, who fully appreciated the solemnity of the braid idea, and said it might be an epoch. Down the edge of the coat—exactly so—and the waistcoat in the same manner, very broad. And what did his lordship think about the treatment of the trouser? Braid on the outside of the leg, or not? And his lordship thought braid. The suit could be ready by Saturday evening, and so Ted could wear it for the first time on Easter Sunday, said kind Mr. Barrett.
He came out of the shop humming a tune, very much pleased with himself and braid and Mr. Barrett. Mr. Barrett always consulted him as if his advicewas worth having, with a bent back. To be a sort ofarbiter elegantiarumin town was one of Ted's nasty little ideals, and he contrasted himself with a friend of his who was being measured as he came out, who, making some suggestion, not to Mr. Barrett, but only to an assistant, received the curt reply, "Not worn like that now, sir." How different would be the reception of any suggestion of his! Mr. Barrett would look respectfully thoughtful for a moment or two, and then say, "Very becoming, very becoming indeed." As likely as not he would recommend the same innovation to the next customer, endorsing it with, "Lord Comber has just ordered a coat of that cut, sir."
It was already after one when he left Bond Street, and he turned briskly homewards. The morning was so lovely that he determined to walk, and he reached home just before lunch. The inimitable preparation had already arrived from Perrin's, and he went up to his bedroom to try its properties. It was dark chestnut in colour, with a curious pungent smell about it, and he applied it carefully, as directed, to the affected regions. The affected regions smarted a little at the application, but the pain could not be called really serious.
Though Ted had passed such assiduous hours since breakfast, the afternoon was so pleasant that he determined to have another stroll before tea. He had seen no one he knew that day except Toby, and he yearned for a little light conversation. So, after changing his blue suit for a more rigorous costume, soon after four he was on his airy way to the Bachelors' Club. Tea and toast always tasted so good at the Bachelors' Club, and he liked to think he was a Bachelor. It was pleasant also, as he walked up the steps,to contrast the sunny content of his five o'clock mood with his moment of real anxiousness this morning.
The reading-room was nearly empty, and he sank peacefully into his favourite chair by the window, and took up the Pall Mall. He abstained from the leading article, and from "Silk and Stuff," or something of the kind, at the bottom of the first page, cast a vague eye over "The Wares of Autolycus," without any definite idea as to what they might be, and turned to the small paragraphs to which he bore a closer affinity. Royal Highnesses were doing various tedious things, race-meetings among them; the German Emperor had written a hymn, or climbed a tree, or ridden a locomotive; and about half-way down the page he saw the following:
"The Marchioness of Conybeare is lying in a very critical condition at her residence in Park Lane."
Ted read it through once, hardly grasping it, and once more, thinking he must be the victim of some gigantic practical joke. The next moment he got hastily up from his chair, and at the door ran into an apologetic waiter, who was bringing his delicious tea and toast. But he did not pause for that, and going out into the street hailed a hansom, directing the man to drive him to Toby's house. They would be sure to know there, and, for private reasons of his own, he did not wish after his repulse of this morning to make a target of himself again at Park Lane.
Now, barely half a minute before his hansom drew up there, Toby, who had been sent out by his wife to get air, had come in. He was intending to see whether there were any letters for either of them, and then walk back to Park Lane. His straightforward, wholesome soul was full to brimming, and theingredients of that cup were sympathy for Jack, anxiety for Kit, and blind anger and hatred for Ted. He was not a canting analyst, and could not have said which ingredient usurped proportion, nor did he cultivate mixed emotions, and the three existed quite separately and individually, making him as wretched as his nature permitted him to be. Between them all he felt pulled in pieces; any conclusion to either would make the other two more bearable.
He found a couple of letters lying on the hall-table for his wife, and putting them in his pocket to take back to her, he was just turning to leave the house again, when the front-door bell rang. The man who had let him in was still there, and Toby, half-way between unreasonable hope and sickening apprehension, thinking that it might be some news from Park Lane, advanced also towards the door, so that when it was opened he was close to it. Outside, on the topmost of the four steps that led up from the pavement, in the most well-cut of raiment, the glossiest of patent-leather shoes, and the most faultless of hats, stood Ted Comber.
Toby gave one short gasp, licked his lips with the tip of his tongue, took one step towards him, and knocked him backwards down the four steps. A cry of passionate dismay escaped the falling body; the faultless hat rolled under the hansom, the gold-crutched stick flew in a wide parabola into the area, and Toby, smiling for the first time since that morning, and not caring to improve or spoil the situation with words, walked away. The only regret that lingered in his mind was that there had not been a fuller gathering to observe the scene; however, the cabman and his own footman had an uninterrupted view of what had taken place.
So Toby's footsteps went briskly away along the wet pavement—there had been a cool spring shower some half-hour ago—and the footman at the front-door and the cabman on his exalted perch were left staring. The horse had shied and swerved at this considerable commotion on the pavement, and before the driver could stop it had taken a couple of prancing steps forward, bringing the off wheel with devilish precision over Ted's hat, crushing it lengthways. Its unenviable proprietor lay fallen across the pavement, his chestnut curls within a few inches of the curb, for the moment stunned. Returning consciousness reminded him of a severe pain on the side of his head, a really acute anguish in his right elbow, another hardly less distressing in his shoulder, and two more in his leg. Then he picked himself up, and a being more sunk beneath the zones of pity, take him body and mind together, could scarcely have been found in all big London. His frock coat was a fricassée of dirt, his face was vanished in a splash of mud, the elbow of his right sleeve, whence came one of the most excruciating pains, was torn through shirt, and as he got up he could feel the grating of his broken watch-glass. A footman, discreetly but undisguisedly grinning, watched him from the door of Toby's house, a cabman from his perch. Dignity is scarcely compatible with dirt, and Ted knew it. He picked up his hat, which looked as if a drunken man had been trying to fold an opera hat the wrong way, and the battered remnants of what so lately had been so fine climbed into the hansom again, and requested to be driven home. It had not been a very successful visit.
His reflections were not the most enviable. That act of Toby's, for which he was now but a sorryparcel of aches, meant the worst. And at that thought all that was passably decent in the man came to the surface. There was not enough to cover a large surface, but there was a little. He pushed open the trap at the top of the hansom and changed his destination to Park Lane. Aching and bleeding as he was, he would not wait, wait, wait for tardy news. Nor was his anxiety wholly selfish; he had—God knows what proportion this bore to the whole—a fear based on affection. Then, having given the order, he devoted himself to patching up a very sorry object.
His face was bleeding under the right eye, and his cheek was scratched and raw; it seemed as if all the stray small objects in a London street had been inlaid into it in layers by an unpractised hand. His elbow was cut, his knee was cut, and both ached like toothache. But he mopped and brushed and dabbed till the balance of dirt was on his handkerchief, and when that was clear, realizing that to touch the breaches any more meant the transference of the dirt back again, he leaned idly against the cushions of the cab, in a state of mind compounded of anxiety and unutterable depression. Little had he supposed that the mirrors in the corners, often by him so satisfiedly and light-heartedly used, would ever have reflected so battered a self.
There was a carriage at the door when he drove up, but it gave him access, and after ringing the bell he huddled back into his cab again. Even now, when, to do him justice, he was a prey to the most poignant emotions that had ever touched his putty soul, the instinct of regard for his own appearance, the desire to shield the shattering it had undergone, asserted itself. He leaned forward in the hansomwhen the front-door was opened, showing to the footman only his undamaged left.
"How is Lady Conybeare?" he asked.
"A great improvement, my lord," said the man.
"Thanks. Please tell the coachman to drive to 12, South Audley Street."
Kit was alive—better. His spirits, elastic as his complimented skin, instantly began to recover themselves, and his thoughts straying out of selfishness, absorbed for an hour in another, turned homewards again like sheep to their fold. He had been afraid that he had dropped that nice box of toys, the world, and that they would have been broken. But it seemed that it was not so. He had dropped them, it is true, and some of them, himself particularly, were rather scratched and muddy, but they were not broken. He could play with them a long time yet.
Instinctively again he turned to the slip of looking-glass in the corner of his hansom. His scratched face had stopped bleeding, and it did not look so bad as he had feared. His hat, it is true, was a sorry sight, but it is easy to get new hats, and the thought that Toby's barbarous revenge had mainly spent itself on a Lincoln and Bennett was even a little amusing. Much more important was the patch of whitening hair above his ear, and he turned his face sideways to examine it. Even that one application of the dark fluid he had made just before lunch had already changed it; the white hairs seemed to have been blotted with colour. How delightful!
He paid the cabman, let himself into the house, and went with a slight limp up to his bedroom, where he rang for his valet. He had had a fall, he explained, and must change his clothes and have a bath. Also, he would dine by himself at home,and a telegram must go at once to the Haslemeres to say that he had hurt himself and could not come. On the whole, he was not sorry to absent himself. Lady Haslemere had really become rather tiresome lately. She was always talking about bulls and bears, and Ted did not care in the least for the menagerie of the City. His warm bath with pine in it was soon ready, and he went to repair the damages of the day.
As he dressed he reviewed the agitations of the hour that had passed. An undignified part had been thrust on him by Toby, for the most complacent cannot flatter themselves that they show a brave figure when they are forcibly laid on pavements. But it was in the very nature of the case that the reason of the blow prevented the story going abroad. It was impossible that Toby should cause it to be known that he had knocked him down, for people would ask why. Secrecy, at any rate, was desired on both sides. As far, then, as that most unpleasant moment was to be regarded, he had only to apply vaseline to his cuts, order some new clothes, and live the occurrence down; not publicly—that would have been trying—but privately. He had only to get over it himself. Anyhow, Toby knew by this time how completely his bumble-bee diplomacy at Stanborough had miscarried, and at that thought the smarting of his own wounds grew appreciably less. Decidedly it had not been a pleasant moment when he flew backwards on to the pavement, but it was over. He smarted far more under the effect of the insult than under the insult itself. It was very like Toby, he thought, to deal with him in that manner. Anyhow, there was a smart in Toby's soul which no vaseline could reach.
Against the violence that had been done him he could set the news of Kit's ameliorated condition. He told himself with sublimenaïvetéthat it was worth while being knocked down to learn that. His anxiety had been terrible, really terrible, and he could not but balance that weight removed against other unpleasantnesses. Things were not so bad as they might have been. But it had been terrible, and he easily persuaded himself that he was suffering horribly. What had happened he did not yet exactly know; in any case it was horrible, and it would be wise not to dwell on it. He would know to-morrow, and as he brushed his hair he saw again with satisfaction the working of his pungent fluid.
He felt battered and tired, and, putting on a floss-silk dressing-gown, lay down on the sofa in his bedroom, and rang the bell for tea. Really, he had been through a life-time of suffering since he rang the bell for tea an hour before at the Bachelors' Club, and he desired that restorative agent most acutely. Most of all—and this was highly characteristic—he desired to dismiss the experiences of the day from his mind. It had all been extremely unpleasant, and there was a good deal that was unpleasant still hanging about, like the sultriness of a thundery day, low and imminent. But at the moment he could do nothing: no step that he could take would make matters better, no effort of will would disperse the thunder-clouds, and it was idle to brood over things, and mar one's natural cheerfulness with morose and gloomy reflections. His bright, shallow personality reflected like a wayside puddle whatever was immediately above it, and held no darkling shadows or remote lights of its own, and he was rightly very careful of the buoyancy ofhis spirits, since that was the best of him, and undeniably of the greatest use.