Romer went back to his hotel that evening feeling happier than he had ever expected to be again. He felt sure now that everything would be perfectly right. He refused to allow himself to dwell for a moment on possibilities, and on what had been, or on what might have been. But he was like a man who had been slightly stunned by a blow on the head and was beginning to feel the pain the next day. Yet the pain was not very acute; he did not quite realise it, but, unconsciously, it made him feverish. And he was still a little stupefied. It did not occur to him to go to the Club, or to look up any friends, and he remained in the little hotel in Jermyn Street, filled at this time of the year principally by Americans, and he dined alone there—dined well, and smoked a long cigar. Then he went for a walk. London at the beginning of August was not empty, but stale, crowded, untidy, hot—unlike itself. He tried not to think of the garden of the Green Gate. Suddenly, with a stab, he imagined Harry andValentia; probably now he was telling her that the engagement was broken off, and she was smiling and happy. Well! it was what he wished. Since what had happened he felt his great love for Valentia was much less vivid than it had been. He cared for her more remotely. She seemed at a great distance. He thought that he felt more to her as if she were a dear sister and living far away. Yes, that was it; he loved her now like a sister.
Surprised at his own calm, and much pleased with his behaviour in the matter, he retired to bed. The instant he had closed his eyes he seemed to see, with the clearness of an hallucination, Harry's head bending low over the writing-table, and, hanging above him on the wall of the studio, the curious dagger; a Japanese weapon that was one of Harry's treasures. And Romer felt again precisely the same horrible longing that he had felt that morning at the studio—the sudden longing to plunge it into Harry's neck. Horrified at the fancy and at himself, he turned up the light and tried to read. He could not fix his attention on a word of the article "Silk and Stuff" in thePall Mall....
Of course he was not angry with Valentia; how could she help it? She must be made happy. But she seemed dim, distant, remote. It was aneffort to recall her face.... Harry—Harry did not seem very real to him either. It was all unreal. But he, Romer, had done the right thing. Harry would never make her cry again.
Everything would go on as before. Andhehad never said a word that it would be painful for them both to remember. There was nothing uncomfortable between them. He felt she would grow tired of Harry of her own accord, and would then return to him, Romer, with no disagreeable recollection of scenes, nor of their having said horrible things to one another. Yes, he had been quite right. Yet she did not seem to him so near as she used to be. He was not angry with her.... No, of course not. He was not jealous. Perhaps she seemed more remote, more distant, because he felt a certain coldness, and—yes—the coldness was there because he was a little hurt perhaps.... And then he tried to go to sleep again. But instantly his insane vision came back, and he got up and walked round the room and tried to banish it.... At last he really went to sleep, and awoke trembling with horror. He had had a horrible dream. He dreamt that Harry was writing a letter, and that he had taken the dagger from the wall of the studio and killed him. This was simply horrible.
Then he began to realise the reason. It wassubconscious jealousy. Then he saw that he had set himself a task too big for him, and that he could not endure to see Harry with Valentia now. It would be impossible to bear it. He would have to tell him to go. He had mistaken his own feelings. What he had heard on the verandah, what he had imagined, could never be obliterated. Indeed, he saw clearly that if he tried to endure it he would break down. The effort would lead to madness.—It was impossible.... He had sent Harry back to her! He had actually sent him; it was unbearable.
He would go back the next day, take Harry aside, and tell him that he had found he couldn't bear it, and that on some pretext he must go away. He would tell him that he had reached the limit of his endurance and could bear no more. He would never speak of it to Valentia. Valentia would be sad—but that could not be helped. He knew, now, that he could not endure the sight of Harry again.
Having made this resolution, he became much calmer. But the dream recurred each time he went to sleep until, in dread of it, he resolved to sleep no more. His nerves felt shattered.
And then, he began to count the minutes till he could be back at the Green Gate. To see Valentia again and to banish Harry for ever! And all the obvious, human feelings that hethought he was free from had come back. He broke down; bitter tears of self-pity, of sentiment, and of heartbroken humiliation fell from his eyes. He remembered their engagement and their honeymoon, and then the eternal and everlasting amusing cousin; Harry, and his sickening good looks and ceaseless chatter. No more of it, by heaven! It would be something worth having lived for to have no more of the brilliant Harry. He saw now that he had always been subconsciously jealous of him—that he had always loathed and hated him. And rightly, by instinct; for not only had he done the most unpardonable injury one friend can do to another, without a scruple and without a hesitation, but he had shown the same baseness to her. He made her unhappy. He made her cry. He wanted to marry for money and come back again, treacherous to every one—hard, heartless, selfish, vulgar in mind and in attitude to life. Romer hated him.
Well! Romer would tell him that very day that he had changed his mind and that he was to go anywhere—anyhow—only to go. Neither he nor Valentia should ever see him again.
Valentia seemed a long way off. She seemed remote and distant. That was because he was still hurt and angry. When Harry had once gone, perhaps she would seem near again.
Romer had made one mistake in his calculations. He had forgotten that Harry was a talker. He fully believed that the young man would go back and get all possible credit from Valentia for breaking off the engagement, and would adhere to the very letter of their strange agreement. This, indeed, Harry fully intended to do. When he first went back he told her, to her immense joy and satisfaction, merely that he had broken it off. But when some people who had come to dinner had gone away and she and Harry could be alone, the habit of confidential gossip, the habit, especially, of impressing and surprising her, and, above all, the inability to keep to himself anything so amazing, was too strong for him.
Picturesquely, vividly, and quite amusingly Harry told her every word of the story; first exacting a solemn promise not to repeat it.
"Isn't heimpayable? Isn't he a marvel?No, Valentia, don't look so grave, or I shall think you've lost your sense of humour."
"But do you believe he really thinks——"
"He doesn't think," said Harry, stopping her. "He won't think. You're faultless in his eyes. He would never allow himself to imagine you anything else. Valentia, this is a wonderful situation—you don't appreciate it! It's unheard of! He particularly wished that everything should go on as before."
He took her hand. She immediately took it away and drew back coldly.
"A wonderful situation! Do you think Van Buren will enjoy it?" she asked satirically.
"Van Buren! What on earth do you mean, Val? Do you suppose for a minute that I'd talk about it?"
"I know you will. You couldn't resist it. It'simpayableyou say.... Oh, but it was mean of you to tell me!"
"Mean!" cried Harry indignantly. "Why, it was very generous! I might easily have pleased you very much more by saying I broke it off quite of my own accord."
"That wasn't why you told me. You wanted me to laugh at Romer and think him ridiculous."
"I don't at all. I was in the ridiculous position. Be a woman of the world, Val. Don't talk bosh! We shall soon forget it happened."
"I shall never forget," she answered. "And thingscan'tgo on as they were, because I think he's behaved magnificently, because I think he's heroic. And if I didn't appreciate the way he spared me I should be.... Why, don't you realise what it must have been for him, Harry, to hear every word we said? And yet he didn't try to make me suffer for it!"
"He complained thatImade you cry!" said Harry with a ghost of a smile.
"Look here, Harry, it's no good. I see I was right about Romer from the first. I married him because I thought there was something remarkable—something finer than other people about him. And I was right."
"If you talk like that, I shall know you're in love with him," said Harry tauntingly and angrily. "Iwas a fool to tell you. You're just upset, my dear," he added, "at the idea of his knowing of the whole thing. By to-morrow, when he comes back, everything will have calmed down."
"I want to be left alone," said Valentia.
Harry was annoyed, for he himself was not just now in the mood for reverie, and even in the smallest things he disliked giving up his own wishes.
"Oh, very well," he said ungraciously; "perhaps it's a pity I wrote the letter."
"Perhaps it is," she answered as she went away and shut the door.
Harry sat up late, swearing at his own indiscretion and the unaccountability of women. But he was not prepared for what followed.
The next morning, as he was dressing, a note was given to him. It said—
"Dear Harry,"After what you told me yesterday, I feel I never wish to see you again. This is not anger; but it's incurable. I can't account for it, but it is there. How you could have been so stupid as to think I could remain with both you and Romer in the house with this knowledge between us, I simply can't understand. How could I help contrasting his generosity with your self-interested selfishness? I am not angry any more about Miss Walmer. I'm quite indifferent. If you married her to-morrow it would give me no pain. The only kind thing you can do for me now, and the one thing I implore, is to go away on any pretext you like and without seeing me again. To put it perfectly plainly, Harry, I have changed entirely since last night. I see everything differently. Everythingisdifferent. Forgive me, but I don't wish to see you any more."Valentia."P.S.—I will send your photographs and other things to the studio. I should like you to burnmine, but do not send them back. I don't want to look at anything that reminds me of you. Do not be angry—I can't help it. I am so unhappy.V."If you don't go I know I shall be seriously ill."
"Dear Harry,
"After what you told me yesterday, I feel I never wish to see you again. This is not anger; but it's incurable. I can't account for it, but it is there. How you could have been so stupid as to think I could remain with both you and Romer in the house with this knowledge between us, I simply can't understand. How could I help contrasting his generosity with your self-interested selfishness? I am not angry any more about Miss Walmer. I'm quite indifferent. If you married her to-morrow it would give me no pain. The only kind thing you can do for me now, and the one thing I implore, is to go away on any pretext you like and without seeing me again. To put it perfectly plainly, Harry, I have changed entirely since last night. I see everything differently. Everythingisdifferent. Forgive me, but I don't wish to see you any more.
"Valentia.
"P.S.—I will send your photographs and other things to the studio. I should like you to burnmine, but do not send them back. I don't want to look at anything that reminds me of you. Do not be angry—I can't help it. I am so unhappy.
V.
"If you don't go I know I shall be seriously ill."
After reading this letter Harry was probably about a thousand times more in love with Valentia than he had ever been in his life. Indeed, he felt that he had never cared for her before. He pretended even to himself to laugh at it, and walked up and down his room, saying to himself: "What a couple! What a woman! What a man! They're unique. No, they're too wonderful!"
But he didn't succeed in deceiving himself. Heknewthat letter was final. He did not give it up at once. He wrote her three letters. The first, one of indignant reproach: "You never really cared for me," and so forth, which she did not answer; the second, witty and trivial, with allusions to mountains and molehills and tragedy queens; the third, desperately imploring her to see him once before he went away. To the third one she sent a reply, simply saying—
"Please, please go as soon as possible."
After all his emotion and passionate correspondence it was by this time only about half-pastten. Harry packed, dressed, and went off to the station, mad with rage. He left no word for Romer at all. He felt he had better leave all that to the wife. He had lost her absolutely and for ever—and Miss Walmer too.
In prompt response to his wire Van Buren met him at the station.
And what a wonderful consolation it was to tell him all about it!
Certainly no man ever had a better audience; no one more impressed, shocked, delighted, horrified, amused, grieved, pleased and sympathetic ever listened to a confidence. For Van Buren it was as good as acause célèbre, a musical comedy, afeuilletonin theDaily Mailand a series of snapshots from the homes of the upper classes—all in one. Never in his life had he heard anything so intensely English. The story gave him the acute, objective, artistic joy that one takes in the best literature, an intellectual pleasure that is usually more or less mingled with the merely spiteful satisfaction that we are accused of taking in the misfortunes of our best friends. And how well Harry told it!
His style was perfect. It was brilliancy, charm, humour, and pathos; he laughed at himself, and yet made himself an object of real sympathy, without losing either his dignity or his dash.
He knew that his confidence aroused enormousinterest, and to him that was a great gratification. And so Harry drowned his sorrows in talk, as other men drown theirs in wine, or in sport, or in taking some violent step. He intoxicated and soothed himself with conversation.
But Harry was not an unpractical man—not one of those for whom words take place of actions—and he could face facts. Valentia was irrevocably lost to him. To attempt to regain Miss Walmer, although it might perhaps not be impossible, would make him ridiculous. The letter he had written at Romer's dictation had been too definite. He would give himself away hopelessly as a fortune-hunter if he tried to go back on that. Besides, he was absolutely sick of it all, and if he was more in love with Valentia than he had ever supposed himself to be because she no longer wanted him, he disliked the thought of Miss Walmer far more than he ever had before, because he was convinced she would forgive him and be devoted to him even now.
Van Buren had taken the knock, as he expressed it, using with relish the English slang phrase, with regard to Daphne, and he had made up his mind to return to New York. Under the circumstances he now had little difficulty in persuading Harry to come out with him right away. He undertook to provide for his friend's future, and that he should make a fortune in theBank, and perhaps when this was agreed upon Van Buren had never been so happy. He was far more genuinely a man's man than was Harry. He regarded women from the point of view of the well-bred American—with deference, a sort of distant tenderness, a most chivalrous and gentle respect. He looked upon them as ornamental and as delightful adjuncts to life, like flowers in a ball-room, but not seriously as part of it. Nor, either, as mere toys. He placed women far more highly than Harry did; he thought everything should be done for them, given to them, that they had a right to any position they were able to hold, that they should be treated with reverence, consideration, liberality ... and even justice; but—he could do without them. Harry couldn't. And so they would always continue to fall in love with Harry, and to find Van Buren a little dull.
When Romer arrived at the Green Gate that afternoon he found Valentia sitting alone in the drawing-room. Her hands were clasped, she had a serious, anxious, thoughtful expression that he had never seen before. He was surprised at the painful start it gave him to see her again, but he came in defying this sensation.
"Hallo!" he said, in what he meant to be a perfectly easy manner.
He glanced round the room.
"Where's Harry?"
"Harry's gone," said Valentia, in a low voice.
"Oh, has he?"
Romer walked to the window. He looked at her dress, a white dress that he liked, but did not meet her eyes. Then he said—
"Oh, he's gone. When is he coming back?"
"Never," she said.
Romer didn't answer, nor ask why.
After a minute he said—
"Where's Daphne?"
"Gone to stay with Mrs. Foster for a week."
"Oh! Who's coming down to-day?"
"Nobody. I thought perhaps you wouldn't mind—being alone, I mean." She spoke without her usual fluency.
He stood staring out of the window into the quiet, damp garden. Then he turned slowly round and looked at her. He looked at her little feet in their little white laced shoes; at the slim, narrow line of the white dress; at the hands clasped in her lap....
And he felt a sudden pang of cruel, realistic jealousy. But he looked at her eyes and saw tears in them, and, pitying her, he crushed it down for ever.
The marvellous instinct with which women are usually credited seems too often to desert them on the only occasions when it would be of any real use. One would say it was there for trivialities only, since in a crisis they are usually dense, fatally doing the wrong thing. It is hardly too much to say that most domestic tragedies are caused by the feminine intuition of men and the want of it in women. Fortunately, Valentia's feeling of remorseful tenderness towards Romer enabled her to read him now. Of course she would have loved to cry, to explain at great length, to beg him to forgive her and have a reconciliation. But something told her that he could not have borne it; that the subject must never be touched; that she must spare him any reference to it—any scene.
So she said nothing.
And, during the curious silence, he gradually and slowly took in the soothing facts. He regained his sense of proportion, of perspective. He saw she was disillusioned about Harry; he felt that the infatuation was over; and, what was more, he realised, to his unutterable relief, that she was not going to talk about it. How he dreaded that terrible explicitness of women, their passion for tidying up, their love of labels! He would not even have to hear it called asealed subject, and he would not have to say anything at all.
He looked out of the window again, began to whistle in a slightly embarrassed way, and then said casually—
"Let's come out, Val. The lawn wants mowing."
THE END
Transcriber's NotesThe original spelling and punctuation were retained, except for a few issues that were believed to be typographical mistakes.The full list of corrections is as follows:pageoriginal textcorrected toexplanation15old-fashonedold-fashioneda misspelling32,old chap''old chap'comma corrected to single quote142of colouroff coloura misspelling144CAPTERCHAPTERa misspelling153darling.darling."double quote added181on the 'thou.'"...on the 'thou.'..."the position of ellipsis was changed201airdresser'shairdresser'sa misspelling220"Ha! musical,"Ha! Musical,lowercase to uppercase was corrected256Dicken'sDickens'sa misspelling273things to you?'things to you?"Single quote corrected to double quote.
The original spelling and punctuation were retained, except for a few issues that were believed to be typographical mistakes.
The full list of corrections is as follows: