"I have done," said he, and, laying his thin yellow hand in hers, he went on, "If you meet him again—and I think you will—tell him that I longed to see him, as a man who is dying longs for his son. He would be a breath of life to me in this room, where everything seems dead. He is full of life—full as a tiger. And you can tell him——" He stopped a moment and smiled. "You can tell him why I was a buyer of Omofagas. What will he say?"
"What will he say?" she echoed, with wide-opened eyes, that watched the old man's slow-moving lips.
"Will he weep?" asked the Baron.
"In God's name, don't!" she stammered.
"He will say, 'Behold, the Baron von Geltschmidt was a good man—he was of use in the world—may he sleep in peace!' And now—how goes the railway?"
The old man lay silent, with a grim smile on his face. The woman sat by, with lips set tight in an agony of repression. At last she spoke.
"If I'd known you were going to tell me this, I wouldn't have come."
"It's hard, hard, hard, but——"
"Oh, not that. But—I knew it."
She rose to her feet.
"Good-bye," said the Baron. "I shan't see you again. God make it light for you, my dear."
She would not seem to hear him. She smoothedhis pillows and his scanty straggling hair; then she kissed his forehead.
"Good-bye," she said. "I will tell Willie when I see him. I shall see him soon."
The old man moaned softly and miserably.
"It would be better if you lay here," he said.
"Yes, I suppose so," she answered, almost listlessly. "Good-bye."
Suddenly he detained her, catching her hand.
"Do you believe in people meeting again anywhere?" he asked.
"Oh, I suppose so. No, I don't know, I'm sure."
"They've been telling me to have a priest. I call myself a Catholic, you know. What can I say to a priest? I have done nothing but make money. If that is a sin, it's too simple to need confession, and I've done too much of it for absolution. How can I talk to a priest? I shall have no priest."
She did not speak, but let him hold her hand.
"If," he went on, with a little smile, "I'm asked anywhere what I've done, I must say, 'I've made money.' That's all I shall have to say."
She stooped low over him and whispered,
"You can say one more thing, Baron—one little thing. You once tried to save a woman," and she kissed him again and was gone.
Outside the house, she found Semingham waiting for her.
"Oh, I say, Mrs. Dennison," he cried, "Harry's come. He got away a day earlier than he expected. I met him driving up towards your house."
For just a moment she stood aghast. It came upon her with a shock; between a respite of a day and the actual terrible now, there had seemed a gulf.
"Is he there—at the house—now?" she asked.
Semingham nodded.
"Will you walk up with me?" she asked eagerly. "I must go directly, you know. He'll be so sorry not to find me there. Do you mind coming? I'm tired."
He offered his arm, and she almost clutched at it, but she walked with nervous quickness.
"He's looking very well," said Semingham. "A bit fagged, and so on, you know, of course, but he'll soon get all right here."
"Yes, yes, very soon," she replied absently, quickening her pace till he had to force his to match it. But, half-way up the hill, she stopped suddenly, breathing rapidly.
"Yes, take a rest, we've been bucketing," said he.
"Did he ask after me?"
"Yes; directly."
"And you said——?"
"Oh, that you were all right, Mrs. Dennison."
"Thanks. Has he seen Mr. Loring?"
"No; but he knew he had come here. He told me so."
"Well, I needn't take you right up, need I?"
Semingham thought of some jest about not intruding on the sacred scene, but the jest did not come. Somehow he shrank from it. Mrs. Dennison did not.
"We shall want to fall on one another's necks," said she, smiling. "And you'd feel in the way. You hate honest emotions, you know."
He nodded, lifted his hat, and turned. On his way down alone, he stopped once for a moment and exclaimed,
"Good heavens! And I believe she'd rather meet the devil himself. She is a woman!"
Mrs. Dennison pursued her way at a gentler pace. Before she came in sight, she heard her children's delighted chatterings, and, a moment later, Harry's hearty tones. His voice brought to her, in fullest force, the thing that was always with her—with her as the cloak that a man hath upon him, and as the girdle that he is always girded withal.
When the children saw her, they ran to her, seizing her hands and dragging her towards Harry. A little way off stood Marjory Valentine, with a nervous smile on her lips. Harry himself stood waiting, and Mrs. Dennison walked up to him and kissed him. Not till that was done did she speak or look him in the face. He returned her kiss, and then, talking rapidly, she made him sit down, and sat herself, andtook her little boy on her knee. And she called Marjory, telling her jokingly that she was one of the family.
Harry began to talk of his journey, and they all joined in. Then he grew silent, and the children chattered more about the delights of Dieppe, and how all would be perfect now that father was come. And, under cover of their chatter, Maggie Dennison stole a long covert glance at her husband.
"And Tom's here, father," cried the little boy on her lap exultingly.
"Yes," chimed in Madge, "and Mr. Ruston's gone."
There was a momentary pause; then Mrs. Dennison, in her calmest voice, began to tell her husband of the sickness of the Baron. And over Harry Dennison's face there rested a new look, and she felt it on her as she talked of the Baron. She had seen him before unsatisfied, puzzled, and bewildered by her, but never before with this look on his face. It seemed to her half entreaty and half suspicion. It was plain for everyone to see. He kept his eyes on her, and she knew that Marjory must be reading him as she read him. And under that look she went on talking about the Baron. The look did not frighten her. She did not fear his suspicions, for she believed he would still take her word against all the world—ay, against the plainest proof. But she almost broke under the burdenof it; it made her heart sick with pity for him. She longed to cry out, then and there, "It isn't true, Harry, my poor dear, it isn't true." She could tell him that—it would not be all a lie. And when the children went away to prepare for lunch, she did much that very thing; for, with a laughing glance of apology at Marjory, she sat on her husband's knee and kissed him twice on either check, whispering,
"I'm so glad you've come, Harry."
And he caught her to him with sudden violence—unlike his usual manner, and looked into her eyes and kissed her. Then they rose, and he turned towards the house.
For a moment Marjory and Mrs. Dennison were alone together. Mrs. Dennison spoke in a loud clear voice—a voice her husband must hear.
"We're shamefully foolish, aren't we, Marjory?"
The girl made no answer, but, as she looked at Maggie Dennison, she burst into a sudden convulsive sob.
"Hush, hush," whispered Maggie eagerly. "My God! if I can, you can!"
So they went in and joined the children at their merry noisy meal.
Willie Ruston slept, on the night following his return to London, in the Carlins' house at Hampstead. The all-important question of the railway made a consultation necessary, and Ruston's indisposition to face his solitary rooms caused him to accept gladly the proffered hospitality. The little cramped place was always a refuge and a rest; there he could best rejoice over a victory or forget a temporary defeat. There he fled now, in the turmoil of his mind. The question of the railway had hurried him from Dieppe, but it could not carry away from him the memories of Dieppe. Yet that was the office he had already begun to ask of it—of it and of the quiet busy life at Hampstead, where he lingered till a week stretched to two and to three, spending his days at work in the City, and his evenings, after his romp with the children, in earnest and eager talk and speculation. He regretted bitterly his going to Dieppe. He had done what he condemned; he had raisedup a perpetual reproach and a possible danger. He was not a man who could dismiss such a thing with a laugh or a sneer, with a pang of penitence and a swift reaction to the low levels of morality, with a regret for imprudence and a prayer against consequences. His nature was too deep, and the influence he had met too strong, for any of these to be enough. Yet he had suffered the question of the railway to drag him away at a moment's notice; and he was persuaded that he must take his leaving as setting an end to all that had passed. All that must be put behind; forgetfulness in thought might be a relief impossible to attain, a relief that he would be ashamed of striving to attain; but forgetfulness in act seemed a duty to be done. In his undeviating reference of everything to his own work in life and his neglect of any other touchstone, he erected into an obligation what to another would have been a shameless matter of course; or, again, to yet another, a source of shame-faced relief. His sins were sin first against himself, in the second degree only against the participant in them; his preoccupation with their first quality went far to blind him to the second.
Yet he was very sorry for Maggie Dennison. Nay, those words were ludicrously feeble for the meaning he wanted from them. Acutely conscious of having done her a wrong, he was vaguely aware that he might underestimate the wrong, and remembereduneasily how she had told him that he did not understand, and despaired because he could not understand. He felt more for her now—much more, it seemed to him; but the consciousness of failure to put himself where she stood dogged him, making him afraid sometimes that he could not realise her sufferings, sometimes that he was imputing to her fictitious tortures and a sense of ignominy which was not her own. Searching light, he began to talk to Carlin in general terms, of course, and by way of chance discourse; and he ran up against a curious stratum of Puritanism imbedded amongst the man's elastic principles. The narrowest and harshest judgment of an erring woman accompanied the supple trader and witnessed the surviving barbarian in Mr. Carlin; an accidental distant allusion displayed an equally relentless attitude in his meek hard-working little wife. Willie Ruston drew in his feelers, and, aghast at the evil these opinions stamped as the product of his acts, declared for a moment that his life must be the only and insufficient atonement. The moment was a brief one. He dismissed the opinions with a curse, their authors with a smile, and did not scorn to take for comfort even Maggie Dennison's own enthusiasm for his work. That had drawn them together; that must rule and limit the connection which it had created. An end—a bound—a peremptory stop (there was still time to stop) was the thing. She would see that, as he saw it.God knew (he said to himself) what a wrench it was—for she meant more to him than he had ever conceived a woman could mean; but the wrench must be undergone. He would rather die than wreck his work; and she, he knew, rather die than prove a wrecking siren to him.
Suddenly, across the desponding stubbornness of his resolves, flashed, with a bright white light, the news of the Baron's legacy, accompanying, but, after a hasty regretful thought and a kindly regretful smile, obliterating the fact of the Baron's death. Half the steps upward, he felt, which he had set himself painfully and with impatient labour to cut, were hewn deep and smooth for his feet; he had now but to tread, and lift his foot and tread again. From a paid servant of his Company, powerful only by a secret influence unbased on any substantial foundation, he leapt to the position of a shareholder with a larger stake than any man besides; no intrigue could shake him now, no sudden gust of petulant impatience at the tardiness of results displace him. He had never thought of this motive behind the Baron's large purchases of Omofaga shares; as he thought of it, he had not been himself had he not smiled. And his smile was of the same quality as had burst on his face when first Maggie Dennison dropped the veil and owned his sway.
One day he did not go down to the city, but spenthis time wandering on the heath, mapping out what he would do in the fast-approaching days in Omofaga. The prospects were clearing; he had had two interviews with Lord Detchmore, and the Minister had fallen back from his own objections on to the scruples of his colleagues. It was a promising sign, and Willie was pressing his advantage. The fall in the shares had been checked; Tom Loring wrote no more; and Mrs. Carlin had forgotten to mourn the extinct coal business. He came home, with a buoyant step, at four o'clock, to find Carlin awaiting him with dismayed face. There was the worst of news from Queen Street. Mr. Dennison had written announcing resignation of his place on the Board.
"It's a staggering blow," said Carlin, thrusting his hands into his pockets. "Can't you bring him round? Why is he doing it?"
"Well, what does he say?" asked Ruston, a frown on his brow.
"Oh, some nonsense—pressure of other business or something of that kind. Can't you go and see him, Willie? He's back in town. He writes from Curzon Street."
"I don't know why he does it," said Ruston slowly. "I knew he'd been selling out."
"He hasn't made money at that."
"No. I've made the profit there," said Ruston, with a sudden smile.
"The Baron bought 'em, eh?" laughed Carlin. "You generally come out right side up, Willie. You'll go and see him, though, won't you?"
Yes. He would go. That was the resolution which in a moment he reached. If there were danger, he must face it, if there were calamity, he must know it. He would go and see Harry Dennison.
As he was, on the stroke of half-past four, he jumped into a hansom-cab, and bade the man drive to Curzon Street.
Harry was not at home—nor Mrs. Dennison, added the servant. But both were expected soon.
"I'll wait," said Willie, and he was shown up into the drawing-room.
As the servant opened the door, he said in his low respectful tones,
"Mrs. Cormack is here, sir, waiting for Mrs. Dennison."
A moment later Willie Ruston was overwhelmed in a shrilly enthusiastic greeting. Mrs. Cormack had been in despair fromennui; Maggie's delay was endless, and Mr. Ruston was in verity a godsend. Indeed there was every appearance of sincerity in the lady's welcome. She stood and looked at him with an expression of most wicked and mischievous pleasure. The remorse detected by Tom Loring was not visible now; pure delight reigned supreme, and gave free scope to her frivolous fearlessness.
"Enfin!" she said. "Behold the villain of the piece!"
He opened his eyes in questioning.
"Oh, you think to deceive me too? Why, I have prophesied it."
"You are," said Willie, standing on the hearth-rug, and gazing at her nervous restless figure, so rich in half-expressed hints too subtle for language, "the most outrageous of women, Mrs. Cormack. Fortunately you have a fling at everybody, and the saints come off as badly as the sinners."
A shrug asserted her opinion of his pretences. He answered,
"I really am so unfortunate as not to have the least idea what you're driving at."
An inarticulate scornful little sound greeted this protest.
"Oh, well, I shall wait till you say something," remarked Willie, with a laugh. "I can't deny villainies wholesale, and I can't argue against Gallic ejaculations."
"You still come here?" she asked, ignoring his rudeness, and coming to close quarters with native audacity.
He looked at her for a moment, and then walked up to her chair, and stood over her. She leant back, gazing up at him with a smile.
"Look here! Don't talk nonsense," he saidbrusquely; "even such talk as yours may do harm with fools."
"Fools!" she echoed. "You mean——?"
"More than half the world," he interrupted.
"Including——?" she began again in mockery.
"Some of our acquaintance," he answered, with the glimmer of a smile.
"Ah, I thought you were angry!" she cried, pointing at the smile on his lips.
"I shall be, if you don't hold your tongue."
"You beg me to be silent, Mr. Ruston?"
"I desire you not to chatter about me, Mrs. Cormack."
"Ah, what politeness! I shall say what I please," and she rose and stood facing him defiantly.
"I wish," he said, "that I could tell you what they do to gossiping women in Omofaga. It is so very disagreeable—and appropriate."
"Oh, I don't mind hearing."
"I can believe it, but I mind saying."
She flushed, and her breath came more quickly.
"No doubt you will enforce the treatment—in your own interest," she said.
"You won't be there," replied he, with affected regret.
"Well, here I shall say what I please."
"And who will listen?"
"One man, at least," she cried, in incautiousanger. "Ah, you'd like to beat me, wouldn't you?"
"Why suggest the impossible?" he asked, smiling. "I can't beat every——" he paused, and added with deliberateness, "every vulgar-minded woman in London;" and turning his back on her, he sat down and took up a newspaper that lay on the table.
For full five or six minutes Mrs. Cormack sat silent. Willie Ruston glanced through the leading article, and turned the paper, folding it neatly. There was a letter from a correspondent on the subject of the watersheds of Central South Africa, and he was reading it with attention. He thought that he recognised Tom Loring's hand. The watersheds of Omofaga were not given their due. Ah, and here was that old falsehood about arid wastes round Fort Imperial!
"By Jove, it's too bad!" he exclaimed aloud.
Mrs. Cormack, who had for the last few moments been watching him, first with a frown, then with a half-incredulous, half-amazed smile, burst out into laughter.
"Really, one might as well be offended with a grizzly bear!" she cried.
He put down the paper, and met her gaze.
"How in the world," she went on, "does she—there, I beg your pardon. How does anyone endure you, Mr. Ruston?"
As she spoke, before he could answer, the dooropened, and Harry Dennison came in. He entered with a hesitating step. After greeting Mrs. Cormack, he advanced towards Ruston. The latter held out his hand, and Harry took it. He did not look Ruston in the eyes.
"How are you?" said he. "You want to see me?"
"Well, for a moment, if you can spare the time—on business."
"Is it about my letter to Carlin?"
Ruston nodded. Mrs. Cormack kept a close watch.
"I—I can't alter that," said Harry, in a confused way. "Sir George is so crippled now, so much of the work falls on me; I have really no time."
"You might have left us your name."
"I couldn't do that, could I? Suppose you came to grief?" and he laughed uncomfortably.
Willie Ruston was afflicted by a sense of weakness—a vulnerability new in his experience—forbidding him to be urgent with the renegade. Had Carlin been present, he would have stood astounded at his chief's tonguetiedness. Mrs. Cormack smiled at it, and her smile, caught in a swift glance by Ruston, spurred him to a voluble appeal, that sounded to himself hollow and ineffective. It had no effect on Harry Dennison, who said little, but shook his head with unfailing resolution. Mrs. Cormack could not resist the temptation to offer matters an opportunity of development.
"But what does Maggie say to your desertion?" she asked in an innocently playful way.
Harry seemed nonplussed at the question, and Willie Ruston interposed.
"We needn't bring Mrs. Dennison into it," he said, smiling. "It's a matter of business, and if Dennison has made up his mind——"
He ended with a shrug, and took up his hat.
"I—I think so, Ruston," stumbled Harry.
"Where is Maggie?" asked Mrs. Cormack curiously. "They told me she would be in soon."
"I don't know," said Harry. "She went out driving. She's sometimes late in coming back."
Ruston was shaking hands with Mrs. Cormack, and, when he walked out, Harry followed him. The two men went downstairs in silence. Harry opened the front door. Willie Ruston held out his hand, but Harry did not this time take it. Holding the door-knob, he looked at his visitor with a puzzled entreaty in his eyes, and his visitor suddenly felt sorry for him.
"I hope Mrs. Dennison is well?" said Ruston, after a pause.
"No," answered Harry, with rough abruptness. "She's not well. I knew how it would be; I told you. You would go."
"My dear fellow——"
"You would talk to her about your miserable Company—our Company,if you like. I knew it would do her harm. I told you so."
He was pouring out his incoherent charges and repetitions in a fretful petulance.
"The doctor says her nerves are all wrong; she must be left alone. I see it. She's not herself."
"Then that," said Ruston, "is the real reason why you're severing yourself from us?"
"I don't want her to hear anything more about it; she got absorbed in it. I told you she would, but you wouldn't listen. Tom Loring thought just the same. But you would go."
"Is she ill?"
"Oh, I don't know that she's ill. She's—she's not herself. She's strange."
The note of distress in his voice grew more acute as he went on.
"I'm very sorry," said Willie, baldly. "Give her my best——"
"If you want to see me again about it, I—you'll always know where to find me in the City, won't you?" He shuffled his feet nervously, and twisted the door-knob as he spoke.
"You mean," asked Ruston, slowly, "that I'd better not come here?"
"Well, yes—just now," mumbled Harry; and he added apologetically, "She's seeing very few people just now, you know."
"As you please, of course," said Ruston, shortly. "I daresay you're right. I should like to say, Dennison, that I did not intend——." He suddenly stopped short. There was no need to rush unbidden into more falseness. "Good-bye," he said.
Harry took the offered hand in a limp grasp, but his eyes did not leave the ground. A moment later the door closed, and Ruston was alone outside—knowing that he had been turned out—in however ineffective blundering manner, yet, in fact, turned out—and by Harry Dennison. That Harry knew nothing, he hardly felt as a comfort; that perhaps he suspected hardly as a danger. He was angry and humiliated that such a thing should happen, and that he should be powerless to prevent, and without title to resent, the blow.
Looking up he caught sight dimly in the dim light of a lithe figure and a mocking face. Mrs. Cormack had regained her own house by means of the little gate, and stood leaning over the balcony smiling at him like some disguised fiend in a ballet or opera-bouffe. He heard a tinkling laugh. Had she listened? She was capable of it, and if she had, it might well be that she had caught a word or two. But perhaps his air and attitude were enough to tell the tale. She craned her neck over the parapet, and called to him.
"I hope we shall see you soon again. Of course, you'll be coming to see Maggie soon?"
"Oh, soon, I hope," he answered sturdily, and the low tinkle of laughter rang out again in answer.
Without more, he turned on his heel and walked down the street, a morose frown on his brow.
He had been gone some half-hour when, just before eight o'clock, Mrs. Dennison's victoria drove quickly up to the door. The evening was chilly and she was wearing her furs. Her face rose pale and rigid above them; and as she walked to the house, her steps dragged as though in weariness. She did not go upstairs, but knocked, almost timidly, at the door of her husband's study. Entering in obedience to his call, she found him sitting in his deep leathern arm-chair by the fire. She leant her arm on the back and stared over his head into the fire.
"Anyone been, Harry?" she asked.
He lifted his eyes with a start.
"Is it you, Maggie?" he cried, leaping up and seizing her hand. "Why, how cold you are, dear! Come and sit by the fire."
She did as he bade her.
"Any visitors?" she asked again.
"Ruston," he answered, turning and poking the fire as he did so. "He came to see me about the Company, you know."
"Is he long gone?"
"Yes, some time."
"He was angry, was he?"
"Yes, Maggie. But I stuck to it. I won't have anything more to do with the thing."
His petulance betrayed itself again in his voice. She said nothing, and, after a moment, he asked anxiously,
"Do you mind much? You know the doctor——?"
"Oh, the doctor! No, Harry, I don't mind. Do as you like. He can get on without us."
"If you really mind, I'll try——"
"No, no, no," she burst out. "You're quite right. Of course you're right. I don't want you to go on. I'm tired of it too."
"Are you?" he asked, with a face suddenly brightening. "Are you really? Then I'm glad I told Ruston not to come bothering about it here."
Had he been listening, he could have heard the sharp indrawing of her breath.
"What do you mean?" she asked.
"Why, I told him not to come and see you till—till you were stronger."
She shot a terrified glance at him. His expression was merely anxious and, according to its wont when he was in a difficulty, apologetic.
"And he won't be here much longer now," he added, comfortingly.
"No, not much," she forced herself to murmur.
"Won't you go and dress for dinner?" he asked,after a moment. "It's ordered for a quarter-past, and it's more than that now."
"Is it? I'll come directly. You go, and I'll follow you. I shan't be long."
He came near to where she sat.
"Are you feeling better?" he asked.
"Oh, Harry, Harry, I'm well, perfectly well! You and your doctor!" and she broke into an impatient laugh. "You'll persuade me into the grave before you've done."
He looked at her for a moment, and then, shaping his lips to whistle, sounded a few dreary notes and stole out of the room.
She heard the door close, and, sitting up, stretched her arms over her head. Then she sighed for relief at his going. It was much to be alone.
"A month to-day!" said Lady Valentine, pausing in her writing (she had just set "Octr. 10th" at the head of her paper) and gazing sorrowfully across the room at Marjory.
Marjory knew well what she meant. The poor woman was counting the days that still lay between her and the departure of her son.
"Now don't, mother," protested Marjory.
"Oh, I know I'm silly. I met Mr. Ruston at the Seminghams' yesterday, and he told me that there wasn't the least danger, and that it was a glorious chance for Walter—just what you said from the first, dear—and that Walter could run over and see me in about eighteen months' time. Oh, but, Marjory, I know it's dangerous!"
Marjory rose and crossed over to where her mother sat.
"You must be a Spartan matron, dear," said she. "You can't keep Walter in leading strings all his life."
"No; but he might have stayed here, and got on, and gone into Parliament, and so on." She paused and added, "Like Evan, you know."
Marjory coloured—more from self-reproach than embarrassment. She had gone in these last weeks terribly near to forgetting poor Evan's existence.
"Evan came in while I was at the Seminghams'. He looked so dull, poor fellow. I—I asked him to dinner, Marjory. He hasn't been here for a long while. We haven't seen nearly as much of him since we knew Mr. Ruston. I don't think they like one another."
"You know why he hasn't come here," said Marjory softly.
"He spent a week with me while you were at Dieppe. He seemed to like to hear about you."
A smile of sad patience appeared on Marjory's face.
"Oh, my dear, you are such a bad hinter," she half laughed, half moaned.
"Poor Evan! I'm very sorry for him; but I can't help it, can I?"
"It would have been so nice."
"And you used to be such a mercenary creature!"
"Ah, well, my dear, I want to keep one of my children with me. But, if it can't be, it can't."
Marjory bent down and whispered in her mother's ear, "I'm not going to Omofaga, dear."
"Well, I used to be half afraid of it," admitted Lady Valentine (she forgot that she had half hoped it also); "but you never seem to be interested in him now. Do you mind Evan coming to dinner?"
"Oh, no," said Marjory.
Since her return from Dieppe she had seemed to "mind" nothing. Relaxation of the strain under which her days passed there had left her numbed. She was conscious only of a passionate shrinking from the sight or company of the two people who had there filled her life. To meet them again forced her back in thought to that dreary mysterious night with its unsolved riddle, that she feared seeking to answer.
Her mother had called on Maggie Dennison, and came back with a flow of kindly lamentations over Maggie's white cheeks and listless weary air. Her brother was constantly with Ruston, and tried to persuade her to join parties of which he was to be one. She fenced with both of them, escaping on one plea and another; and Maggie's acquiescence in her absence, no less than Ruston's failure to make a chance of meeting her, strengthened her resolve to remain aloof.
Young Sir Walter also came to dinner that night; he was very gay and chatty, full of Omofaga and his fast-approaching expedition. He greeted Evan Haselden with a manner that claimed at least equality; nay, he lectured him a little on the ignorant interferenceof a stay-at-home House of Commons with the work of the men on the spot, in South Africa and elsewhere; people on this side would not give a man a free hand, he complained, and exhorted Evan to take no part in such ill-advised meddling.
Hence he was led on to the topic he was never now far away from—Willie Ruston—and he reproached his mother and sister for their want of attention to the hero.
This was the first gleam of light for poor Evan Haselden, for it told him that Willie Ruston was not, as he had feared, a successful rival. He rejoiced at Lady Valentine's hinted dislike of Ruston, and anxiously studied Marjory's face in hope of detecting a like disposition. But his vanity led him to return Walter's lecture, and he added an innuendo concerning the unscrupulousness of adventurers who cloaked money-making under specious pretences. Walter flared up in a moment, and the dinner ended in something like a dispute between the two young men.
"Well, Dennison's found him out, anyhow," said Evan bitterly. "He's cut the whole concern."
"We can do without Dennison," said young Sir Walter scornfully.
When the meal was finished, young Sir Walter, treating his friend without ceremony, carelessly pleaded an engagement, and went out. Lady Valentine, interpreting Evan's glances, and hoping against hope,seized the chance of leaving him alone with her daughter. Marjory watched the manœuvre without thwarting it. Her heart was more dead to Evan than it had ever been. Her experiences at Dieppe had aged her mind, and she found him less capable of stirring any feeling in her than even in the days when she had half made a hero out of Willie Ruston.
She waited for his words in resignation; and he, acute enough to mark her moods, began as a man begins who rushes on anticipated defeat. What is unintelligible seems most irresistible, and he knew not at what point to attack her indifference. He saw the change in her; he could have dated its beginning. The cause he found somehow in Ruston, but yet it was clear to him that she did not think of Ruston as a suitor—almost clear that she heard his name and thought of him with repulsion—and that the attraction he had once exercised over her was gone.
The weary talk wore to its close, ending with angry petulance on his side, and, at last, on hers with a grief that was half anger. He could not believe in her decision, unless there were one who had displaced him; and, seeing none save Ruston, in spite of his own convictions, he broke at last into a demand to be told whether she thought of him. Marjory started in horror, crying, "No, no," and, for all Evan's preoccupation, her vehemence amazed him.
"Oh, you've found him out too, perhaps," hesneered. "You've found him out by now. All the same, it was his fault that you didn't care for me before."
"Evan," she implored, "do, pray, not talk like that. There's not a man in the whole world that I would not have for my husband rather than him."
"Now," he repeated; "but I'm speaking of before."
Half angry again at that he should allow himself such an insinuation, she yet liked him too well, and felt too unhappy to be insincere.
"Well," she said with a troubled smile, "if you like, I've found him out."
"Then, Marjory," cried Evan, in a spasm of reviving hope, "if that fellow's out of the way——"
But she would not hear him, and he flung himself out of the house with a rudeness that his love pardoned.
She heard him go, in aching sorrow that he, who felt few things deeply, should feel this one so deeply. Then, following the calls of society, which are followed in spite of most troubles, she, pale-faced and sad, and her mother, almost weeping in motherly distress, dressed themselves to go to a party. Lady Semingham was at home that night.
At the party all was gay and bright. Lady Semingham was chattering to Mr. Otto Heather. Semingham was trying to make Mr. Foster Belford understandthe story of the Baron and Willie Ruston, Lord Detchmore, who had come in from a public dinner, was conspicuous in his blue riband, and was listening to Adela Ferrars with a smile on his face. Marjory sat down in a corner, hoping to escape introductions, and, when an old friend carried her mother off to eat an ice, she kept her place. Presently she heard cried, "Mrs. Dennison," and Maggie came in with her usual grace. It seemed as though the last few months were blotted out, and they were all again at that first party at Mrs. Dennison's where Willie Ruston had made hisentrée. The illusion was not to lack confirmation, for, a moment later, Ruston himself was announced, and the sound of his name made Adela turn her head for one swift moment from her distinguished companion.
"Ah!" said Lord Detchmore, "then I must go. If I talk to him any more I'm a lost man."
"There's Mr. Loring in the corner—no, not that corner; that's Marjory Valentine. He will take your side."
"Why are they all in corners?" asked Detchmore.
"They don't want to be trodden on," said Adela, with a grimace. "You'd better take one too."
"There's Mrs. Dennison in a third corner. Shall I take that one, or should I get trodden on there?"
Adela looked up swiftly. His remark hinted at gossip afloat.
"Take one for yourself," she began, with an uneasylaugh. But the laugh suddenly became genuine for the very absurdity of the thing. "We'll go and join Mr. Loring, shall we?" she proposed.
Lord Detchmore acquiesced, and they walked over to where Tom stood. On their way, to their consternation, they encountered Willie Ruston.
"Now we're in for it," breathed Detchmore in low tones. But Ruston, with a bow, passed on, going straight as an arrow towards where Maggie Dennison sat. Lord Detchmore raised his eyebrows, Adela shut her fan with a click, Tom Loring, when they reached him, was frowning. Away across the room sat Marjory alone.
"Good heavens! he let me alone!" exclaimed Lord Detchmore.
"Perhaps I was your shield," said Adela. "He doesn't like me."
"Nor you, Loring, I expect?"
Presently Lord Detchmore moved away, leaving Adela and Tom together. They had been together a good deal lately, and their tones showed the intimacy of friendship.
"That man," said Adela quickly, "suspects something. He's a terrible old gossip, although he is a great statesman, of course. Can't you prevent them talking there together?"
"No," said Tom composedly, "I can't; she'd send me away if I went."
"Then I shall go. Why isn't Harry here?"
"He wouldn't come. I've been dining with him at the club."
"He ought to have come."
"I don't believe it would have made any difference."
Adela looked at him for a moment; then she walked swiftly across the room to Maggie Dennison, and held out her hand.
"Maggie, I haven't had a talk with you for ever so long. How do you do, Mr. Ruston?"
Ruston shook hands but did not move. He stood silently through two or three moments of Adela's forced chatter. Mrs. Dennison was sitting on a small couch, which would just hold two people; but she sat in the middle of it, and did not offer to make room for Adela. When Adela paused for want of anything to say, there was silence. She looked from the one to the other. Ruston smiled the smile that always exasperated her on his face—the smile of possession she called it in an attempt at definition.
"Look at Marjory!" said Mrs. Dennison. "How solitary she looks! Poor girl! Do go and talk to her, Adela."
"I came to talk to you," said Adela, in fiery temper.
"Well, I'll come and talk to you both directly," said Maggie.
"We're talking business," added Willie Ruston, still smiling.
"Oh, if you don't want me!" cried Adela, and she turned away, declaring in her heart that she had made the last effort of friendship.
With her going went Ruston's smile. He bent his head, and said in a low voice,
"You are the only woman whom I could have left like that, and the only one whom I could have found it hard to leave. Was it very hard for you?"
"It was just the truth for me," she answered.
"Of course you were angry and hurt. I was afraid you would be," he said.
She looked at him with a curious smile.
"But then," he continued, "you saw how I was placed. Do you think I didn't suffer in going? I've never had such a wrench in my life. Won't you forgive me, Maggie?"
"Forgive! What's the use of talking like that? What's the use of my 'forgiving' you for being what you are?"
"You talk as if you'd found me out in something."
She turned to him, saying very low,
"And haven't you found me out, too? We are face to face now, Willie."
He did not fully understand her. Half in justification, half in apology, he said doggedly,
"I simply had to go."
"Yes, you simply had to go. There was the railway. Oh, what's the use of talking about it?"
"I was afraid you meant to have nothing more to do with me."
"Or you wished it?" she asked quickly.
He started. She had discerned the thoughts that came into his mind in his solitary walks.
"Don't be afraid. I've wished it," she added.
There was a pause; then he, not denying her charge, whispered,
"I can't wish it now—not when I'm with you."
"To have nothing more to do with you! Ah, Willie, I have nothing to do with anything but you."
A swift glance from him told her that her appeal touched him.
"What else is left me? Can I live as I am living?"
"What are we to do?" he asked. "We shall see one another sometimes now. I can't come to your house, you know. But sometimes——"
"At a party—here and there! And the rest of the time I must live at—at home! Home!"
He bent to her, whispering,
"We must arrange——"
"No, no," she replied, passionately. "Don't you see?"
"What?" he asked, puzzled.
"Oh, you don't understand! It's not that. It's not that I can't live without you."
"I never said that," he interposed quickly.
"And yet I suppose it is that. But it's something more. Willie, I can't live with him."
"Does he suspect?" he asked in an eager whisper.
"I don't know. I really don't know. It's worse if he doesn't. Oh, if you knew what I feel when he looks at me and asks——"
"Asks what?"
"Nothing—nothing in words; but, Willie, everything, everything. I shall go mad, if I stay. And then don't you see——?" She stopped, going on again a moment later. "I've borne it till I could see you. But I can't go on bearing it."
He glanced at her.
"We can't talk about it here," he said. "Everybody will see how agitated you are."
For answer she schooled her face to rigidity, and her hands to motionlessness.
"You must talk about it—here and now," she said. "It's the only time I've seen you since—Dieppe. What are you going to do, Willie?"
He looked round. Then, with a smile, he offered his arm.
"I must take you to have something," he said. "Come, we must walk through the room."
She rose and took his arm. Bowing and smiling,she turned to greet her acquaintances. She stopped to speak to Lord Detchmore, and exchanged a word with her host.
"Yes. What are you going to do?" she asked again, aloud.
They had reached the room where thebuffetstood. Mrs. Dennison, after a few words to Lady Valentine, who was still there, sat down on a chair a little remote from the crowd. Ruston brought her a cup of coffee, and stood in front of her, with the half-conscious intention of shielding her from notice. She drank the coffee hastily; its heat brought a slight glow to her face.
"You're going as you planned?" she asked.
He answered in low, dry tones, emptied of all emotion.
"Yes," said he, "I'm going."
She stretched out her hand towards him imploringly.
"Willie, you must take me with you," she said.
He looked down with startled face.
"My God, Maggie!" he exclaimed.
"I can't stay here. I can't stay with him."
Her lips quivered; he took her cup from her (he feared that she would let it fall), and set it on the table. Behind them he heard merry voices; Semingham's was loud among them. The voices were coming near them.
"I must think," he whispered. "We can't talk now. I must see you again."
"Where?" she asked helplessly.
"Carlin's. Come up to-morrow. I can arrange it. For heaven's sake, begin to talk about something."
She looked up in his face.
"I could stand here and tell it to the room," she said, "sooner than live as I live now."
He had no time to answer. Semingham's arm was on his shoulder. Lord Detchmore stood by his side.
"I want," said Semingham, "to introduce Lord Detchmore to you, Mrs. Dennison. It's not at all disinterested of me. You must persuade him—you know what about."
"No, no," laughed the Minister, "I mustn't be talked to; it's highly improper, and I distrust my virtue."
"I'll be bound now that you were talking about Omofaga this very minute," pursued Semingham.
"Of course we were," said Ruston.
"You're a great enthusiast, Mrs. Dennison," smiled Detchmore. "You ought to go out, you know. Can't you persuade your husband to lend you to the expedition?"
Ruston could have killed the man for hismalaproposjesting. Maggie Dennison seemed unable to answer it. Semingham broke in lightly,
"It would be a fine chance for proving the quality—and the equality—of women," said he. "I always told Mrs. Dennison that she ought to be Queen of Omofaga."
"And I hope," said Detchmore, with a significant smile, "that there'll soon be a railway to take you there."
Even at that moment, the light of triumph came suddenly gleaming into Ruston's eyes. He looked at Detchmore, who laughed and nodded.
"I think so. I think I shall be able to manage it," he said.
"That's an end to all our troubles," said Semingham. "Come, we'll drink to it."
He signed to a waiter, who brought champagne. Lord Detchmore gallantly pressed a glass on Mrs. Dennison. She shook her head, but took it.
"Long life to Omofaga, and death to its enemies!" cried Semingham in burlesque heroics, and, with a laugh—that was, as his laughs so often were, as much at himself as at the rest of the world—he made a mock obeisance to Willie Ruston, adding, "Moriamur pro rege nostro!" and draining the glass.
Maggie Dennison's eyes sparkled. Behind the mockery in Semingham's jest, behind the only half make-believe homage which Detchmore's humorous glance at Ruston showed, she saw the reality of deference, the acknowledgment of power in the man sheloved. For a brief moment she tasted the troubled joy which she had paid so high to win. For a moment her eyes rested on Willie Ruston as a woman's eyes rest on a man who is the world's as well as hers, but also hers as he is not the world's. She sipped the champagne, echoing in her low rich voice, so that the men but just caught the words, "Moriamur pro rege nostro" and gave the glass into Ruston's hand.
A sudden seriousness fell upon them. Detchmore glanced at Semingham, and thence, curiously, at Willie Ruston, whose face was pale and marked with a deep-lined frown. Mrs. Dennison had sunk back in her chair, and her heart rose and fell in agitated breathings. Then Willie Ruston spoke in cool deliberate tones.
"The King there was a Queen," he said. "You've drunk to the wrong person, Semingham. I'll drink it right," and, bowing to Maggie Dennison, he drained his glass. Looking up, he found Detchmore's eyes on him in overpowering wonder.
"If I tell you a story, Lord Detchmore," said he, "you'll understand," and, yielding his place by Maggie Dennison, he took Detchmore with him, and they walked away in talk.
It was an hour later when Lord Detchmore took leave of his host.
"Well, did you hear the story?" asked Semingham.
"Yes; I heard it," said Detchmore, "about the telegram, wasn't it?"
"Yes, and of course, you see, it explains the toast."
"That sounds like a question, Semingham."
"Oh, no. The note of interrogation was—a printer's error."
"It's a remarkable story."
"It really is," said Semingham.
"And—is it the whole story?"
"Well, isn't it enough to justify the toast?"
"It—and she—are enough," said Detchmore. "But, Semingham——"
Lord Semingham, however, took him by the arm, walked him into the hall, got his hat and coat for him, helped him on with them, and wished him good-night. Detchmore submitted without resistance. Just at the last, however, as he fitted his hat on his head, he said,
"You're unusually explicit, Semingham. He goes to Omofaga soon, don't he?"
"Yes, thank God," said Semingham, almost cheerfully.
"You can manage it for me?" asked Willie Ruston.
"I suppose I can," answered Carlin; "but it's rather queer, isn't it, Willie?"
"I don't know whether it's queer or not; but I must talk to her for half-an-hour."
"Why not at Curzon Street?"
Ruston laughed a short little laugh.
"Do you really want the reason stated?" he inquired.
Carlin shook his head gloomily, but he attempted no remonstrance. He confined himself to saying,
"I hope the deuce you're not getting yourself into a mess!"
"She'll be here about five. You must be here, you know, and you must leave me with her. Look here, Carlin, I only want a word with her."
"But my wife——"
"Send your wife somewhere—to the theatre withthe children, or somewhere. Mind you're here to receive her."
He issued his orders and walked away. He hated making arrangements of this sort, but there was (he told himself) no help for it. Anything was better than talking to Maggie Dennison before the world in a drawing-room. And it was for the last time. Removed from her presence, he felt clear about that. The knot must be cut; the thing must be finished. His approaching departure made a natural and inevitable end to it; and her mad suggestion of coming with him shewed in its real enormity as he mused on it in his solitary thoughts. For a moment she had carried him away. The picture of her pale eloquent face, and the gleam of her eager eyes had almost led him to self-betrayal; the idea of her in such a mood beside him in his work and his triumphs had seemed for the moment irresistible. She could double his strength and make joy of his toil. But it could not be so; and for it to be so, if it could be, he must stand revealed as a traitor to his friend, and be banned for an outlaw by his acquaintance. He had been a traitor, of course, but he need not persist. They—she and he—must not stereotype a passing madness, nor refuse the rescue chance had given them. There was time to draw back, to set matters right again—at least, to trammel up the consequence of wrong.
When she came, and Carlin, frowning perplexedly,had, with awkward excuses, taken himself away, he said all this to her in stumbling speech. From the exaltation of the evening before they fell pitiably. They had soared then in vaulting imagination over the bristling barriers; to-day they could rise to no such height. Reality pressed hard upon them, crushing their romance into crime, their passion to the vulgarity of an everyday intrigue. This secret backstairs meeting seemed to stamp all that passed at it with its own degrading sign; their high-wrought defiance of the world and the right dwindled before their eyes to a mean and sly evasiveness. So felt Willie Ruston; and Maggie Dennison sat silent while he painted for her what he felt. She did not interrupt him; now and again a shiver or a quick motion shewed that she heard him. At last he had said his say, and stood, leaning against the mantelpiece, looking down on her. Then, without glancing up, she asked,
"And what's to become of me, Willie?"
The sudden simple question revealed him to himself. Put in plain English, his rigmarole meant, "Go your way and I'll go mine." What he had said might be right—might be best—might be duty—might be religion—might be anything you would. But a man may forfeit the right to do right.
"Of you?" he stammered.
"I can't live as I am," she said.
He began to pace up and down the room. Shesat almost listlessly in her chair. There was an air of helplessness about her. But she was slowly thinking over what he had said and realising its purport.
"You mean we're never to meet again?" she asked.
"Not that!" he cried, with a sudden heat that amazed himself. "Not that, Maggie. Why that?"
"Why that?" she repeated in wondering tones. "What else do you mean? You don't mean we should go on like this?"
He did not dare to answer either way. The one was now impossible—had swiftly, as he looked at her, come to seem impossible; the other was to treat her as not even he could treat her. She was not of the stuff to live a life like that.
There was silence while he waged with himself that strange preposterous struggle, where evil seemed good, and good a treachery not to be committed; wherein his brain seemed to invite to meanness, and his passion, for once, to point the better way.
"I wish to God we had never——" he began; but her despairing eyes stifled the feeble useless sentence on his lips.
At last he came near to her; the lines were deep on his forehead, and his mouth quivered under a forced smile. He laid his hand on her shoulder. She looked up questioningly.
"You know what you're asking?" he said.
She nodded her head.
"Then so be it," said he; and he went again and leant against the mantelpiece.
He felt that he had paid a debt with his life, but knew not whether the payment were too high.
It seemed to him long before she spoke—long enough for him to repeat again to himself what he had done—how that he, of all men, had made a burden that would break his shoulders, and had fettered his limbs for all his life's race—yet to be glad, too, that he had not shrunk from carrying what he had made, and had escaped coupling the craven with his other part.
"What do you mean?" she asked at last; and there was surprise in her tone.
"It shall be as you wish," he answered. "We'll go through with it together."
Though he was giving what she asked, she seemed hardly to understand.
"I can't let you go," he said; "and I suppose you can't let me go."
"But—but what'll happen?"
"God knows," said he. "We shall be a long way off, anyhow."
"In Omofaga, Willie?"
"Yes."
After a pause she rose and moved a step towards him.
"Why are you doing it?" she asked, searching his eyes with hers. "Is it just because I ask? Because you're sorry for me?"
She was standing near him, and he looked on her face. Then he sprang forward, catching her hands.
"It's because you're more to me than I ever thought any woman could be."
She let her hands lie in his.
"But you came here," she said, "meaning to send me away."
"I was a fool," he said, grimly, between his teeth.
She drew her hands away, and then whispered,
"And, Willie—Harry?"
Again he had nothing to answer. She stood looking at him with a wistful longing for a word of comfort. He gave none. She passed her hand across her eyes, and burst into sudden sobs.
"How miserable I am!" she sobbed. "I wish I was dead!"
He made as though to take her hand again, but she shrank, and he fell back. With one hand over her eyes, she felt her way back to her chair.
For five minutes or more she sat crying. Ruston did not move. He had nothing wherewith to console her, and he dared not touch her. Then she looked up.
"If I were dead?" she said.
"Hush! hush! You'd break my heart," he answered in low tones.
In the midst of her weeping, for an instant she smiled.
"Ah, Willie, Willie!" she said; and he knew that she read him through and through, so that he was ashamed to protest again.
She did not believe in that from him.
Presently her sobs ceased, and she crushed her handkerchief into a ball in her hand.
"Well, Maggie?" said he in hard even tones.
She rose again to her feet and came to him.
"Kiss me, Willie," she said; "I'm going back home."
He took her in his arms and kissed her. She released herself, and gazed long in his face.
"Why?" he asked. "You can't bear it; you know you can't. Come with me, Maggie. I don't understand you."
"No; I don't understand myself. I came here meaning to go with you. I came here thinking I could never bear to go back. Ah, you don't know what it is to live there now. But I must go back. Ah, how I hate it!"
She laid her hand on his arm.