O'Connell had a hard struggle with Peg before she would consent to leave him. She met all his arguments with counter-arguments. Nothing would move her for hours.
"Why should I go to a man I have never seen and hate the name of?"
"He's your uncle, Peg."
"It's a fine uncle he's been to me all me life. And it was a grand way he threated me mother when she was starvin'."
"He wants to do somethin' for ye now, Peg."
"I'll not go to him."
"Now listen, dear; it's little I'll have to lave ye when I'm gone," pleaded O'Connell.
"I'll not listen to any talk at all about yer goin'. Yer a great strong healthy man—that's what ye are. What are ye talkin' about? What's got into yer head about goin'?"
"The time must come, some day, Peg."
"All right, we'll know how to face it when it does. But we're not goin' out all the way to meet it," said Peg, resolutely.
"It's very few advantages I've been able to give ye, me darlin'," and O'Connell took up the argument again.
"Advantages or no advantages, what can anybody be more than be happy? Answer me that? An' sure it's happy I've been with you. Now, why should ye want to dhrive it all away from me?"
To these unanswerable reasons O'Connell would remain silent for a while, only to take up the cudgels again. He realised what it would mean to Peg to go to London to have the value of education and of gentle surroundings. He knew her heart was loyal to him: nothing strangers might teach her would ever alter that. And he felt he owed it to her to give her this chance of seeing the great world. HE would never be able to do it for her. Much as he hated the name of Kingsnorth he acknowledged the fact that he had made an offer O'Connell had no real right to refuse.
He finally persuaded Peg that it was the wise thing: the right thing: and the thing he wished for the most.
"I don't care whether it's wise or right," said poor Peg, beaten at last, "but if you wish it—" and she broke off.
"I do wish it, Peg."
"Ye'll turn me away from ye, eh?"
"No, Peg. Ye'll come back to me a fine lady."
"I'd like to see anybody thry THAT with me. A lady, indeed! Ye love me as I am. I don't want to be any different."
"But ye'll go?"
"If ye say so."
"Then it's all settled?"
"I suppose it is."
"Good, me darlin'. Ye'll never regret it" O'Connell said this with a cheery laugh, though his heart was aching at the thought of being separated from her.
Peg looked at him reproachfully. Then she said:
"It's surprised I am at ye turnin' me away from ye to go into a stuck-up old man's house that threated me mother the way he did."
And so the discussion ended.
For the next few days Peg was busy preparing herself for the journey and buying little things for her scanty equipment. Then the cable came to the effect that a passage was reserved for her and money was waiting at a banker's for her expenses. This Peg obstinately refused to touch. She didn't want anything except what her father gave her.
When the morning of her departure came, poor Peg woke with a heavy heart. It was their first parting, and she was miserable.
O'Connell, on the contrary, seemed full of life and high spirits. He laughed at her and joked with her and made a little bundle of some things that would not go in her bag—and that he had kept for her to the last minute. They were a rosary that had been his mother's, a prayer-book Father Cahill gave him the day he was confirmed, and lastly the little miniature of Angela. It wrung his heart to part with it, but he wanted Peg to have it near her, especially as she was going amongst the relations of the dead woman. All through this O'Connell showed not a trace of emotion before Peg. He kept telling her there was nothing to be sad about. It was all going to be for her good.
When the time came to go, the strange pair made their way down to the ship—the tall, erect, splendid-looking man and the little red-haired girl in her simple black suit and her little black hat, with red flowers to brighten it.
O'Connell went aboard with her, and an odd couple they looked on the saloon-deck, with Peg holding on to "Michael"—much to the amusement of the passengers, the visitors and the stewards.
Poor, staunch, loyal, honest, true little Peg, going alone to—what? Leaving the one human being she cared for and worshipped—her playmate, counsellor, friend and father—all in one!
O'Connell never dropped his high spirits all the time they were together on board the ship. He went aboard with a laugh and when the bell rang for all visitors to go ashore he said good-bye to Peg with a laugh—while poor Peg's heart felt like a stone in her breast. She stood sobbing up against the rail of the saloon deck as the ship swung clear. She was looking for her father through the mists of tears that blinded her.
Just as the boat slowly swept past the end of the dock she saw him right at the last post so that he could watch the boat uninterruptedly until it was out of sight. He was crying himself now—crying like a child, and as the boat swung away he called up, "My little Peg! Peg o' my Heart!" How she longed to get off that ship and go back to him! They stood waving to each other as long as they remained in sight.
While the ship ploughed her way toward England with little Peg on board, the man whom she was crossing the Atlantic to meet died quietly one morning with no one near him.
The nurse found Mr. Kingsnorth smiling peacefully as though asleep. He had been dead several hours.
Near him on the table was a cable despatch from New York:
My daughter sailed on the Mauretania to-day at ten o'clock.FRANK OWEN O'CONNELL.
Mrs. Chichester—whom we last saw under extremely distressing circumstances in Ireland—now enters prominently into the story. She was leading a secluded and charming existence in an old and picturesque villa at Scarboro, in the north of England. Although her husband had been dead for several years, she still clung to the outward symbols of mourning. It added a softness to the patrician line of her features and a touch of distinction to her manner and poise. She had an illustrious example of a life-long sorrow, and, being ever loyal, Mrs. Chichester retained the weeds of widowhood and the crepe of affliction ever present.
She was proud indeed of her two children—about whom she had written so glowingly to her brother Nathaniel.
Alaric was the elder. In him Mrs. Chichester took the greater pride. He was so nearly being great—even from infancy—that he continually kept his mother in a condition of expectant wonder. He was NEARLY brilliant at school: at college he ALMOST got his degree. He JUST MISSED his "blue" at cricket, and but for an unfortunate ball dribbling over the net at a critical moment in the semi-final of the tennis championships, he MIGHT have won the cup. He was quite philosophic about it, though, and never appeared to reproach fate for treating him so shabbily.
He was always NEARLY doing something, and kept Mrs. Chichester in a lively condition of trusting hope and occasional disappointment. She knew he would "ARRIVE" some day—come into his own: then all these half-rewarded efforts would be invaluable in the building of his character.
Her daughter, Ethel, on the other hand, was the exact antithesis to Alaric. She had never shown the slightest interest in anything since she had first looked up at the man of medicine who ushered her into the world. She regarded everything about her with the greatest complacency. She was never surprised or angry, or pleased, or depressed. Sorrow never seemed to affect her—nor joy make her smile. She looked on life as a gentle brook down whose current she was perfectly content to drift undisturbed. At least, that was the effect created in Mrs. Chichester's mind. She never thought it possible there might be latent possibilities in her impassive daughter.
While her mother admired Ethel's lofty attitude of indifference toward the world—a manner that bespoke the aristocrat—she secretly chafed at her daughter's lack of enthusiasm.
How different to Alaric—always full of nearly new ideas: always about to do something. Alaric kept those around him on the alert—no one ever really knew what he would do next. On the other hand, Ethel depressed by her stolid content with everything about her. Every one knew what she would do—or thought they did.
Mrs. Chichester had long since abandoned any further attempt to interest her brother Nathaniel in the children.
Angela's wretched marriage had upset everything,—driven Nathaniel to be a recluse and to close his doors on near and distant relatives.
Angela's death the following year did not relieve the situation. If anything, it intensified it, since she left a baby that, naturally, none of the family could possibly take the slightest notice of—nor interest in.
It was tacitly agreed never to speak of the unfortunate incident, especially before the children. It was such a terrible example for Ethel, and so discouraging to the eager and ambitious Alaric.
Consequently Angela's name was never spoken inside of Regal Villa.
And so the Chichester family pursued an even course, only varied by Alaric's sudden and DEFINITE decisions to enter either public life, or athletics, or the army, or the world of art—it was really extremely hard for so well-equipped a young man to decide to limit himself to any one particular pursuit. Consequently he put off the final choice from day to day.
Suddenly a most untoward incident happened. Alaric, returning from a long walk, alone—during which he had ALMOST decided to become a doctor—walked in through the windows from the garden into the living-room and found his mother in tears, an open letter in her hand.
This was most unusual. Mrs. Chichester was not wont to give vent to open emotion. It shows a lack of breeding. So she always suppressed it. It seemed to grow inwards. To find her weeping—and almost audibly—impressed Alaric that something of more than usual importance had occurred.
"Hello, Mater!" he cried cheerfully, though his looks belied the buoyancy of his tone. "Hullo! what's the matter? What's up?"
At the same moment Ethel came in through the door.
It was 11:30, and at precisely that time every morning Ethel practised for half an hour on the piano. Not that she had the slightest interest in music, but it helped the morning so much. She would look forward to it for an hour before, and think of it for an hour afterwards—and then it was lunch-time. It practically filled out the entire morning.
Mrs. Chichester looked up as her beloved children came toward her—and REAL tears were in her eyes, and a REAL note of alarm was in her voice:
"Oh Ethel! Oh Alaric!"
Alaric was at her side in a moment. He was genuinely alarmed.
Ethel moved slowly across, thinking, vaguely, that something must have disagreed with her mother.
"What is it, mater?" cried Alaric.
"Mother!" said Ethel, with as nearly a tone of emotion as she could feel.
"We're ruined!" sobbed Mrs. Chichester.
"Nonsense!" said the bewildered son.
"Really?" asked the placid daughter.
"Our bank has failed! Every penny your poor father left me was in it," wailed Mrs. Chichester. "We've nothing. Nothing. We're beggars."
A horrible fear for a moment gripped Alaric—the dread of poverty. He shivered! Suppose such a thing should really happen? Then he dismissed it with a shrug of his shoulders. How perfectly absurd! Poverty, indeed! The Chichesters beggars? Such nonsense! He turned to his mother and found her holding out a letter and a newspaper. He took them both and read them with mingled amazement and disgust. First the headline of the newspaper caught his eye:
"Failure of Gifford's Bank."
Then he looked at the letter:
"Gifford's Bank suspended business yesterday!" Back his eye travelled to the paper: "Gifford's Bank has closed its doors!" He was quite unable, at first, to grasp the full significance of the contents of that letter and newspaper. He turned to Ethel:
"Eh?" he gasped.
"Pity," she murmured, trying to find a particular piece of music amongst the mass on the piano.
"We're ruined!" reiterated Mrs. Chichester.
Then the real meaning of those cryptic headlines and the business-like letter broke in on Alaric. All the Chichester blood was roused in him.
"Now that's what I call a downright, rotten, blackguardly shame—a BLACKGUARDLY SHAME!" His voice rose in tones as it increased in intensity until it almost reached a shriek.
Something was expected of him. At any rate indignation. Well, he was certainly indignant.
"Closed its doors, indeed!" he went on. "Why should it close its doors? That's what I want to know! Why—should—it?" and he glared at the unoffending letter and the non-committal newspaper.
He looked at Ethel, who was surreptitiously concealing a yawn, and was apparently quite undisturbed by the appalling news.
He found no inspiration there.
Back he went to his mother for support.
"What RIGHT have banks to fail? There should be a law against it. They should be made to open their doors and keep 'em open. That's what we give 'em our money for—so that we can take it out again when we want it."
Poor Mrs. Chichester shook her head sadly.
"Everything gone," she moaned. "Ruined! and at my age!"
"Nice kettle of fish," was all Alaric could think of. He was momentarily stunned. He turned once more to Ethel. He never relied on her very much, but at this particular crisis he would like to have some expression of opinion, however slight—from her.
"I say, Ethel, it's a nice kettle of fish all o-boilin', eh?"
"Shame!" she said quietly, as she found the particular movement of Grieg she had been looking for. She loved Grieg. He fitted into all her moods. She played everything he composed exactly the same. She seemed to think it soothed her. She would play some now and soothe her mother and Alaric.
She began an impassioned movement which she played evenly and correctly, and without any unseemly force. Alaric cried out distractedly: "For goodness' sake stop that, Ethel! Haven't you got any feelings? Can't you see how upset the mater is? And I am? Stop it. There's a dear! Let's put our backs into this thing and thrash it all out. Have a little family meetin', as it were."
Poor Mrs. Chichester repeated, as though it were some refrain: "Ruined! At my age!"
Alaric sat on the edge of her chair and put his arm around her shoulder and tried to comfort her.
"Don't you worry, mater," he said. "Don't worry. I'll go down and tell 'em what I think of 'em—exactly what I think of 'em. They can't play the fool with me. I should think NOT, indeed. Listen, mater. You've got a SON, thank God, and one no BANK can take any liberties with. What we put in there we've got to have out. That's all I can say. We've simply got to have it out. There! I've said it!"
Alaric rose, and drawing himself up to his full five feet six inches of manhood glared malignantly at some imaginary bank officials. His whole nature was roused. The future of the family depended on him. They would not depend in vain. He looked at Ethel, who was trying to make the best of the business by smiling agreeably on them both.
"It's bankrupt!" wailed Mrs. Chichester.
"Failed!" suggested Ethel, cheerfully.
"We're beggars," continued the mother. "I must live on charity for the rest of my life. The guest of relations I've hated the sight of and who have hated me. It's dreadful! Dreadful!"
All Alaric's first glow of manly enthusiasm began to cool.
"Don't you think we'll get anything?" By accident he turned to Ethel. She smiled meaninglessly and said for the first time with any real note of conviction:
"Nothing!"
Alaric sat down gloomily beside his mother.
"I always thought bank directors were BLIGHTERS. Good Lord, what a mess!" He looked the picture of misery. "What's to become of Ethel, mater?"
"Whoever shelters me must shelter Ethel as well," replied the mother sadly. "But it's hard—at my age—to be—sheltered."
Alaric looked at Ethel, and a feeling of pity came over him. It was distinctly to his credit—since his own wrongs occupied most of his attention. But after all HE could buffet the world and wring a living out of it. All he had to do was to make up his mind which walk in life to choose. He was fortunate.
But Ethel, reared from infancy in the environment of independence: it would come very hard and bitter on her.
Alaric just touched Ethel's hand, and with as much feeling as he could muster, he said: "Shockin' tough, old girl."
Ethel shook her head almost determinedly and said, somewhat enigmatically, and FOR HER, heatedly:
"NO!"
"No?" asked Alaric. "No—what?"
"Charity!" said Ethel.
"Cold-blooded word," and Alaric shuddered. "What will you do, Ethel?"
"Work."
"At what?"
"Teach."
"TEACH? Who in the wide world can YOU teach?"
"Children."
Alaric laughed mirthlessly. "Oh, come, that's rich! Eh, mater? Fancy Ethel teachin' grubby little brats their A B C's! Tush!"
"Must!" said Ethel, quite unmoved.
"A CHICHESTER TEACH?" said Alaric, in disgust.
"Settled!" from Ethel, and she swept her finger slowly across the piano.
"Very well," said Alaric, determinedly: "I'll work, too." Mrs. Chichester looked up pleadingly.
Alaric went on: "I'll put my hand to the plough. The more I think of it the keener I am to begin. From to-day I'll be a workin' man."
At this Ethel laughed a queer, little, odd, supercilious note, summed up in a single word: "Ha!" There was nothing mirthful in it. There was no reproach in it. It was just an expression of her honest feeling at the bare suggestion of her brother WORKING.
Alaric turned quickly to her:
"And may I ask WHY that 'Ha!'? WHY, I ask you? There's nothing I couldn't do if I were really put to it—not a single thing. Is there, mater?"
His mother looked up proudly at him.
"I know that, dear. But it's dreadful to think of YOU—WORKING."
"Not at all," said Alaric, "I'm just tingling all over at the thought of it. The only reason I haven't so far is because I've never had to. But now that I have, I'll just buckle on my armour, so to speak, and astonish you all."
Again came that deadly, cold, unsympathetic "Ha!" from Ethel.
"Please don't laugh in that cheerless way, Ethel. It goes all down my spine. Jerry's always tellin' me I ought to do something—that the world is for the worker—and all that. He's right, and I'm goin' to show him." He suddenly picked up the paper and looked at the date. "What's to-day? The FIRST? Yes, so it is. June the first. Jerry's comin' to-day—all his family, too. They've taken 'Noel's Folly' on the hill. He's sure to look in here. Couldn't be better. He's the cove to turn to in a case like this."
Jarvis, a white-haired, dignified butler who had served the family man and boy, came in at this juncture with a visiting card on a salver.
Alaric picked it up and glanced at it. He gave an expression of disgust and flung the card back on the salver.
"Christian Brent."
For the first time Ethel showed more than a passing gleam of interest. She stopped strumming the piano and stood up, very erect and very still.
Mrs. Chichester rose too: "I can't see any one," she said imperatively. "Nor I," added Alaric. "I'm all strung up." He turned to Jarvis. "Tell Mr. Brent we're very sorry, but—"
"I'LL see him," interrupted Ethel, almost animatedly. "Bring Mr. Brent here, Jarvis."
As Jarvis went in search of Mr. Brent, Mrs. Chichester went up the great stairs: "My head is throbbing. I'll go to my room."
"Don't you worry, mater," consoled Alaric. "Leave everything to me. I'll thrash the whole thing out—absolutely thrash it out."
As Mrs. Chichester disappeared, Alaric turned to his calm sister, who, strangely enough, was showing some signs of life and interest.
"Awful business, Ethel, eh?"
"Pretty bad."
"Really goin' to teach?"
"Yes."
"Right! I'll find somethin', too. Very likely a doctor. We'll pull through somehow."
Ethel made a motion toward the door as though to stop any further conversation.
"Mr. Brent's coming," she said, almost impatiently.
Alaric started for the windows leading into the garden.
"Jolly good of you to let him bore you. I hate the sight of the beggar, myself. Always looks to me like the first conspirator at a play."
The door opened, and Jarvis entered and ushered in "Mr. Brent." Alaric hurried into the garden.
A few words of description of Christian Brent might be of interest, since he represents a type that society always has with it.
They begin by deceiving others: they end by deceiving themselves.
Christian Brent was a dark, tense, eager, scholarly-looking man of twenty-eight years of age. His career as a diplomatist was halted at its outset by an early marriage with the only daughter of a prosperous manufacturer. Brent was moderately independent in his own right, but the addition of his wife's dowry seemed to destroy all ambition. He no longer found interest in carrying messages to the various legations or embassies of Europe, or in filling a routine position as some one's secretary. From being an intensely eager man of affairs he drifted into a social lounger—the lapdog of the drawing-room—where the close breath of some rare perfume meant more than the clash of interests, and the conquest of a woman greater than that of a nation.
Just at this period Ethel Chichester was the especial object of his adoration.
Her beauty appealed to him.
Her absolute indifference to him stung him as a lash. It seemed to belittle his powers of attraction. Consequently he redoubled his efforts.
Ethel showed neither like nor dislike—just a form of toleration. Brent accepted this as a dog a crumb, in the hope of something more substantial to follow. He had come that morning with a fixed resolve. His manner was determined. His voice wooed as a caress. He went tenderly to Ethel the moment the door closed on Jarvis.
"How are you?" he asked, and there was a note of subdued passion in his tone.
"Fair," replied Ethel, without even looking at him. "Where is your mother?" suggesting that much depended on the answer.
"Lying down," answered Ethel, truthfully and without any feeling.
"And Alaric?"
"In the garden."
"Then we have a moment or two—alone?" Brent put a world of meaning into the suggestion.
"Very likely," said Ethel, picking up a score of Boheme and looking at it as if she saw it for the first time: all the while watching him through her half-closed eyes.
Brent went to her. "Glad to see me?" he asked.
"Why not?"
"I am glad to see you." He bent over her. "More than glad."
"Really?"
He sat beside her: "Ethel," he whispered intensely: "I am at the Cross-roads."
"Oh?" commented Ethel, without any interest.
"It came last night."
"Did it?"
"This is the end—between Sybil and myself."
"Is it?"
"Yes—the end. It's been horrible from the first—horrible. There's not a word of mine—not an action—she doesn't misunderstand."
"How boring," said Ethel blandly.
"She would see harm even in THIS!"
"Why?"
"She'd think I was here to—to—" he stopped.
"What?" innocently inquired Ethel.
"Make love to you," and he looked earnestly into her eyes.
She met his look quite frankly and astonished him with the question: "Well? Aren't you?"
He rose anxiously: "Ethel!"
"Don't you always?" persisted Ethel.
"Has it seemed like that to you?"
"Yes," she answered candidly. "By insinuation: never straightforwardly."
"Has it offended you?"
"Then you admit it?"
"Oh," he cried passionately, "I wish I had the right to—to—" again he wavered.
"Yes?" and Ethel looked straight at him.
"Make love to you straightforwardly." He felt the supreme moment had almost arrived. Now, he thought, he would be rewarded for the long waiting; the endless siege to this marvellous woman who concealed her real nature beneath that marble casing of an assumed indifference.
He waited eagerly for her answer. When it came it shocked and revolted him.
Ethel dropped her gaze from his face and said, with the suspicion of a smile playing around her lips:
"If you had the right to make love to me straightforwardly—you wouldn't do it."
He looked at her in amazement.
"What do you mean?" he gasped. "It's only because you haven't the right that you do it—by suggestion," Ethel pursued.
"How can you say that?" And he put all the heart he was capable of into the question.
"You don't deny it," she said quietly.
He breathed hard and then said bitterly:
"What a contemptible opinion you must have of me."
"Then we're quits, aren't we?"
"How?" he asked.
"Haven't YOU one of ME?"
"Of YOU? Why, Ethel—"
"Surely every married man MUST have a contemptible opinion of the woman he covertly makes love to. If he hadn't he couldn't do it, could he?" Once again she levelled her cold, impassive eyes on Brent's flushed face.
"I don't follow you," was all Brent said.
"Haven't you had time to think of an answer?"
"I don't now what you're driving at," he added.
Ethel smiled her most enigmatical smile:
"No? I think you do." She waited a moment. Brent said nothing. This was a new mood of Ethel's. It baffled him.
Presently she relieved the silence by asking him:
"What happened last night?"
He hesitated. Then he answered:
"I'd rather not say. I'd sound like a cad blaming a woman."
"Never mind how it sounds. Tell it. It must have been amusing."
"Amusing? Good God!" He bent over her again. "Oh, the more I look at you and listen to you, the more I realise I should never have married."
"Why DID you?" came the cool question.
Brent answered with all the power at his command. Here was the moment to lay his heart bare that Ethel might see.
"Have you ever seen a young hare, fresh from its kind, run headlong into a snare? Have you ever seen a young man free of the trammels of college, dash into a NET?Idid! I wasn't trap-wise!"
He paced the room restlessly, all the self-pity rising in him. He went on: "Good God! what nurslings we are when we first feel our feet! We're like children just loose from the leading-strings. Anything that glitters catches us. Every trap that is set for our unwary feet we drop into. I did. Dropped in. Caught hand and foot—mind and soul."
"Soul?" queried Ethel, with a note of doubt.
"Yes," he answered.
"Don't you mean BODY?" she suggested.
"Body, mind AND soul!" he said, with an air of finality.
"Well, BODY anyway," summed up Ethel.
"And for what?" he went on. "For WHAT? Love! Companionship! That is what we build on in marriage. And what didIrealise? Hate and wrangling! Wrangling—just as the common herd, with no advantages, wrangle, and make it a part of their lives—the zest to their union. It's been my curse."
"Why wrangling?" drawled Ethel.
"She didn't understand."
"You?" asked Ethel, in surprise.
"My thoughts! My actions!"
"How curious."
"You mean you would?"
"Probably."
"I'm sure of it." He tried to take her hand. She drew it away, and settled herself comfortably to listen again:
"Tell me more about your wife."
"The slightest attention shown to any other woman meant a ridiculous—a humiliating scene."
"Humiliating?"
"Isn't doubt and suspicion humiliating?"
"It would be a compliment in some cases."
"How?"
"It would put a fictitious value on some men."
"You couldn't humiliate in that way," he ventured, slowly.
"No. I don't think I could. If a man showed a preference for any other woman she would be quite welcome to him."
"No man could!" said Brent, insinuatingly.
She looked at him coldly a moment.
"Let me see—where were you? Just married, weren't you? Go on."
"Then came the baby!" He said that with a significant meaning and paused to see the effect on Ethel. If it had any, Ethel effectually concealed it. Her only comment was:
"Ah!"
Brent went on:
"One would think THAT would change things. But no. Neither of us wanted her. Neither of us love her. Children should come of love—not hate. And she is a child of hate." He paused, looking intently at Ethel. She looked understandingly at him, then dropped her eyes.
Brent went on as if following up an advantage: "She sits in her little chair, her small, wrinkled, old disillusioned face turned to us, with the eyes watching us accusingly. She submits to caresses as though they were distasteful: as if she knew they were lies. At times she pushes the nearing face away with her little baby fingers." He stopped, watching her eagerly. Her eyes were down.
"I shouldn't tell you this. It's terrible. I see it in your face. What are you thinking?"
"I'm sorry," replied Ethel simply.
"For me?"
"For your wife."
"MY WIFE?" he repeated, aghast.
"Yes," said Ethel. "Aren't you? No? Are you just sorry for yourself?"
Brent turned impatiently away. So this laying-open the wound in his life was nothing to Ethel. Instead of pity for him all it engendered in her was sorrow for his wife.
How little women understood him.
There was a pathetic catch in his voice as he turned to Ethel and said reproachfully:
"You think me purely selfish?"
"Naturally," she answered quickly. "IAM. Why, not be truthful about ourselves sometimes? Eh?"
"We quarrelled last night—about you!" he said, desperately.
"Really?"
"Gossip has linked us together. My wife has heard and put the worst construction on it."
"Well?"
"We said things to each other last night that can never be forgiven or forgotten. I left the house and walked the streets—hours! I looked my whole life back and through as though it were some stranger's" He turned abruptly away to the windows and stayed a moment, looking down the drive.
Ethel said nothing.
He came back to her in a few moments. "I tell you we ought to be taught—we ought to be taught, when we are young, what marriage really means, just as we are taught not to steal, nor lie, nor sin. In, marriage we do all three—when we're ill-mated. We steal affection from some one else, we lie in our lives and we sin in our relationship."
Ethel asked him very quietly:
"Do you mean that you are a sinner, a thief, and a liar?"
Brent looked at her in horror.
"Oh, take some of the blame," said Ethel; "don't put it all on the woman."
"You've never spoken to me like this before."
"I've often wanted to," replied Ethel. Then she asked him: "What do you intend doing?"
"Separate," he answered, eagerly. "You don't doctor a poisoned limb when your life depends on it; you cut it off. When two lives generate a deadly poison, face the problem as a surgeon would. Amputate."
"And after the operation? What then?" asked Ethel.
"That is why I am here facing you. Do you understand what I mean?"
"Oh, dear, yes. Perfectly. I have been waiting for you to get to the point."
"Ethel!" and he impulsively stretched out his arms as though to embrace her.
She drew back slightly, just out of his reach.
"Wait." She looked up at him, quizzically: "Suppose we generate poison? What would you do? Amputate me?"
"You are different from all other women."
"Didn't you tell your wife that when you asked her to marry you?"
He turned away impatiently: "Don't say those things, Ethel, they hurt."
"I'm afraid, Christian, I'm too frank, aren't I?"
"You stand alone, Ethel. You seem to look into the hearts of people and know why and how they beat."
"I do—sometimes. It's an awkward faculty."
He looked at her glowingly: "How marvellously different two women can be! You—my wife."
Ethel shook her head and smiled her calm, dead smile "We're not really very different, Christian. Only some natures like change. Yours does. And the new have all the virtues. Why, I might not last as long as your wife did."
"Don't say that. We lave a common bond—UNDERSTANDING."
"Think so?"
"I understand you."
"I wonder."
"You do me."
"Yes—that is just the difficulty."
"I tell you I am at the cross-roads. The fingerboard points the way to me distinctly."
"Does it?"
"It does." He leaned across to her: "Would you risk it?"
"What?" she asked.
"I'll hide nothing. I'll put it all before you. The snubs of your friends. The whisper of a scandal that would grow into a roar. Afraid to open a newspaper, fearing what might be printed in it. Life, at first, in some little Continental village—dreading the passers through—keeping out of sight lest they would recognise one. No. It wouldn't be fair to you."
Ethel thought a moment, then answered slowly:
"No, Chris, I don't think it would."
"You see I AM a cad—just a selfish cad!"
"Aren't you?" and she smiled up at him.
"I'll never speak of this again. I wouldn't have NOW—only—I'm distracted to-day—completely distracted. Will you forgive me for speaking as I did?"
"Certainly," said Ethel. "I'm not offended. On the contrary. Anyway, I'll think it over and let you know."
"You will, REALLY?" he asked greedily, grasping at the straw of a hope. "You will really think it over?"
"I will, really."
"And when she sets me free," he went on, "we could, we could—" He suddenly stopped.
She looked coolly at him as he hesitated and said: "It IS a difficult little word at times, isn't it?"
"WOULD you marry me?" he asked, with a supreme effort.
"I never cross my bridges until I come to them," said Ethel, languidly. "And we're such a long way from THAT one, aren't we?"
"Then I am to wait?"
"Yes. Do," she replied. "When the time comes to accept the charity of relations, or do something useful for tuppence a week, Bohemian France or Italy—but then the runaways always go to France or Italy, don't they?—Suppose we say Hungary? Shall we?"
He did not answer.
She went on: "Very well. When I have to choose between charity and labour, Bohemian Hungary may beckon me."
He looked at her in a puzzled way. What new mood was this?
"Charity?" he asked. "Labour?"
"Yes. It has come to that. A tiresome bank has failed with all our sixpences locked up in it. Isn't it stupid?"
"Is ALL your money gone?"
"I think so."
"Good God!"
"Dear mamma knows as little about business as she does about me. Until this morning she has always had a rooted belief in her bank and her daughter. If I bolt with you, her last cherished illusion will be destroyed."
"Let me help you," he said eagerly.
"How?" and she looked at him again with that cold, hard scrutiny. "Lend us money, do you mean?"
He fell into the trap.
"Yes," he said. "I'd do that if you'd let me."
She gave just the suggestion of a sneer and turned deliberately away.
He felt the force of the unspoken reproof:
"I beg your pardon," he said humbly.
She went on as if she had not heard the offensive suggestion: "So you see we're both, in a way, at the crossroads."
He seized her hand fiercely: "Let me take you away out of it all!" he cried.
She withdrew her hand slowly.
"No," she said, "not just now. I'm not in a bolting mood to-day."
He moved away. She watched him. Then she called him to her. Something in the man attracted this strange nature. She could not analyse or define the attraction. But the impelling force was there.
He went to her.
Ethel spoke to him for the first time softly, languorously, almost caressingly:
"Chris! Sometime—perhaps in the dead of night—something will snap in me—the slack, selfish, luxurious ME, that hates to be roused into action, and the craving for adventure will come. Then I'll send for you."
He took her hand again and this time she did not draw it away. He said in a whisper:
"And you'll go with me?"
Ethel stretched lazily, and smiled at him through her half-closed eyes.
"I suppose so. Then Heaven help you!"
"Why should we wait?" he cried.
"It will give us the suspense of expectation."
"I want you! I need you!" he pleaded.
"Until the time comes for AMPUTATION?"
"Don't! Don't!" and he dropped her hand suddenly.
"Well, I don't want you to have any illusions about me, Chris. I have none about you. Let us begin fair anyway. It will be so much easier when the end comes."
"There will be no end," he said passionately. "I love you—love you with every breath of my body, every thought in my mind, every throb of my nerves. I love you!" He kissed her hand repeatedly. "I love you!" He took her in his arms and pressed her to him.
She struggled with him without any anger, or disgust, or fear. As she put him away from her she just said simply:
"Please don't. It's so hot this morning."
As she turned away from him she was struck dumb. Sitting beside the table in the middle of the room, her back turned to them, was the strangest, oddest little figure Ethel had ever seen.
Who was she? How long had she been in the room?
Ethel turned to Brent. He was quite pale now and was nervously stroking his slight moustache.
Ethel was furious! It was incredible that Brent could have been so indiscreet!
How on earth did that creature get there without their hearing or seeing her?
Ethel went straight to the demure little figure sitting on the chair.