This did not prevent him from feeling furiously jealous of Litvinoff, to whom he seemed to have transferred all the anger that had burned in him against his brother, intensified by a galling consciousness of the complete success which Litvinoff had achieved in his attempt to deceive and mislead him. There should be a reckoning for that, Richard thought. Hefelt glad he had always mistrusted the man. It showed that his judgment was worth something sometimes, and this pleased his self-love.
On the third day came a telegram from Matlock, which said that Roland would be at home that evening. Richard roamed about the house in restless impatience all day. How should they meet? He should not dare to go to the door to greet his brother lest he should imagine that it was a renewal of hostilities, not a welcome home, that was intended. Richard had no eye for dramatic effects, nor any leaning thereto, but he charged the old people to say nothing of his presence, and to leave him to announce himself to his brother when he should think well.
His brother would have done exactly the same thing from absolutely opposite motives.
So when Roland walked up to his home in the teeth of the wild March wind the only welcome that met him was that of the old woman in charge, and this seemed to him to be so inconsequently effusive, and the good lady herself seemed so unreasonably radiant, that he was quite flattered. It was pleasant to him to be appreciated and admired, even by a 'person in charge.'
'The fire's i' the dining-room, Mr Roland,' she said; 'an' I'll dish ye up the supper in less nor half a minute, sir. It's a glad day for Thornsett as sees yer back agen.'
Mrs Brock's son had worked in the mill—a fact which made the anticipated reconciliation peculiarly interesting to her.
Richard from his ambush in his own room heard the greeting, heard the well-known voice giving orders about rugs and hat-boxes in the well-known tones. Then he heard doors open and close. After a while a savoury smell from the hot supper that was being carried in rose to his altitude. Thedining-room door was opened, and shut several times. At last it was closed with a more decided touch, and in the noise of its closing was a settled sound as of a door that did not mean to open again just yet. Richard knew that the supper had been cleared away, and that Roland was most likely assisting digestion with tobacco and grog. This would be the time, he decided, to put in an appearance and to get through his proposed reconciliation. He went softly downstairs, and paused a moment with his hand on the dining-room door. The house was very still. As he stood there he heard a cinder fall from the fire in the dining-room, and the great hall clock at the foot of the stairs ticked louder than usual, as it seemed. He turned the handle and went in. Roland was sitting in the big arm-chair by the fire where their father had been used to sit. As the door opened he looked up with a sort of displeased curiosity to see who it was that had the assurance to enter unannounced. When he saw who it was he gave a start, and the expression of his face changed to something deeper and sterner.
He got up.
'I understood from Gates,' he said, 'that you renounced all claim to be in this house so long as half the possible rent was paid you. I mean to pay you your half. May I ask, then, what you want here?'
'I want to beg your pardon,' began Richard, his hand still on the lock—when his brother interrupted him with,—
'Hadn't you better close the door? I suppose you don't want all the world to hear anything you may have to say.'
His tone was so icily cold that the other found it hard to go on as he had intended. He did his best, however.
'I am very sorry for all that happened in the autumn. I was quite deceived and misled, and I beg your pardon. I can't say more, and I hope you'll let bygones be bygones.'
He held out his hand. At this point in the scene Dick had fancied that his brother would clasp his hand with reciprocating affection, and all would be forgiven and forgotten. But the other actor evidently intended a different 'reading' of the part assigned him. He made no movement to meet the outstretched hand. On the contrary, he put his hands in his pockets with a too expressive gesture, and was silent.
'Come, Roland,' said Dick, who, knowing himself to have been in the wrong, displayed a patience which surprised himself; 'make it up, old man.'
'I am not sure,' said the other slowly, 'that I care to make it up, as you call it. No "making-up" can alter all that has gone wrong through your foolishness. I've gone through the worst of the trouble now, and, to tell you the truth, I'm not inclined to lay myself open to any more experiences of this kind. You might be "deceived and misled" again.'
Richard, who had remained standing, gave the slightest possible stamp of impatience, which his brother did not observe.
'And as for the money,' he went on, 'I dare say I can do as well without it as with it.'
'Look here,' said Dick, his face flushing hotly; 'if you suppose I care a straw about the dirty money, you're mistaken; only one of us can't have any without the other now. Come, Roland, be friends, if it's only for the old dad's sake.'
Roland seemed to have what the children call the 'black dog on his shoulder,' but this appeal was not lost. He made an effort to overcome the resentment and bitterness that filled him, and after a moment held out his hand, saying,—
'Very well, I'll shake hands. I suppose we shall manage to scrape along together as well as a good many brothers.'
And this was the reconciliation that Richard had had his heart full of for the last three or four days. It was piteously unlike his dreams of it.
When they had shaken hands, Dick sat down. There was a silence—a very awkward silence. Roland passed the whisky along the table, and the other mechanically helped himself.
'I think,' Roland said presently, 'that you owe me an explanation of all this.'
'Of course I do,' assented Richard eagerly; 'but you are so—well, unapproachable; but I'll tell you every word about it,' which he did, omitting no particulars which bore on the case.
'So he called her Mrs Litvinoff, did he?' was Roland's comment on the Petrovitch-Ferrier episode at London Bridge. 'I should think she had just taken the name by chance, but for one thing.'
'And that is?'
'You say she lived in that house I saw Litvinoff go into the day we split. It must have been Litvinoff, and he must have been going to her; but it's very strange how he ever knew her. And was this reallyallthe ground you had for doing what you did?' There was contempt in his tone.
'No,' said Richard. 'You went away on a "mysterious holiday" just when she disappeared, and that set all the village tongues wagging, and first made me wonder and suspect. Now IknowI was wrong; but if you don't mind, Roland, I wish you'd tell mewhyyou went just then. I've told you everything.'
'The whole thing is over and done with now,' he answered; 'and after to-night I don't want to ever speak about it; but I will tell you if you like. I went away because I saw you were beginning to care for Clare Stanley, and I was beginning to care too, and I thought that if I went away I could pull through it, and that you would make the running and be happy with her, but I found I couldn't do it, and I came back and did my best to cut you out, as you did by me.'
'Oh, Roland, what a good fellow you were to think of such a thing!' said Dick, to whom a generous action like this, eventhough only attempted, could not fail to appeal most strongly. 'But how is it now?' he went on, stung by a host of conflicting feelings. 'Haveyoumade the running? Have you won her?'
'No!' he answered bitterly. 'The closing of the mill settled that for me as well as for you. Some one else has had as good a chance as ours, though, and has made a better use of it. Count Litvinoff is a constant visitor at the house where she is, and I don't doubt she will marry him; unless, indeed, he is married already. I think we ought to try and find that out.'
'Married or not, he is a damned scoundrel!' cried Richard; 'and he shall not marry her. She would never look at me again, I know; but I hope you may win her yet, Roland.'
'My chance is gone for ever. I wish I'd never had that Litvinoff down here. But who could have foreseen this?'
'We've both been fools.'
Roland did not seem to relish this broad statement.
'I can't think how,' he was beginning, when Mrs Brock came in with coals, and almost purred with pleasure at seeing the two amicably drinking their whisky at the same hearth. When she had left the room Richard rose.
'Look here, old man,' he said; 'I'm as sorry as a fellow can be about all this, and I can't think how I could have been such a fool. That's what you were going to say, wasn't it? But since we're agreed on that, don't let's say any more about it. Forgive and forget, and I hope you will be happy yet—with Miss Stanley. Let's agree to let this subject alone for a bit. I think I'll have a run round the garden before I turn in. Good-night.'
'Good-night,' Roland answered, but in a manner whose evident effort after cordiality made the failure of that effort the more painful. 'I shall go to bed; I'm dead beat—been knocking about all day.' Then they shook hands again, and Richard went out.
He had thought that Roland would have met his apologies with ready acceptance—his revived brotherly love with equal enthusiasm—and the nature of the reconciliation jarred upon him. And yet, as he told himself, he thoroughly deserved it all. No doubt time would soften his brother's sense of injury, and some day they might be as good friends again as they had been before Clare Stanley's prettiness had come, like a will-o'-the-wisp, to lead them into all sorts of follies. He tried to think he would be glad if she married Roland. Anything, he thought, rather than that she should marry Litvinoff. He passed the limits of the garden and strolled down the road, deep in thought. It was only when he had nearly reached the mill that he remembered with a start that he had told his brother nothing about John Hatfield and his revengeful projects. However, Roland could come to no harm now—he was probably safe in bed—and he could tell him in the morning. So he strolled on, smoking reflectively, and with a heart not light.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
VENGEANCE ASTRAY.
JOHN HATFIELD had left Dartford, his wife, and his work, driven by an impulse as vague as it was irresistible. He did not know what he meant to do; his one idea was that he must face his daughter's betrayer, and tax him with his crime. He did not very much care what came after. But the long tramp through England, broken though it was by many a lift from good-natured waggoners, had given him time for thinking. Reflection did not soften his resentment. On the contrary, the more he thought, the harder his heart felt, and each new hour of solitary musing left him more bitter, more vindictive, more angered than he had been the hour before. His wife's story convicted him of the one fault from which he had always believed himself to be free—blind stupidity. The loss of his daughter had never been out of his mind for half an hour at a time since she had gone away, and he had thought and thought, till his brain had seemed to spin round, over every least detail of her flight, and of the time just before it, in the hope of finding out who was her betrayer. And yet in all his thinking he had never come anywhere near the truth. Other people had, though; he knew that, as he remembered hints he had sneered at from some of the least brilliant of the hands—fools he had often called them. Yet, fools as they were, they had been able to see more clearly than he, the father, whosebrain sharpest love and sorrow ought surely to have had power to quicken.
Added to all this, the thought that he had gone on working for, taking the money of, and, to a certain extent, living in a condition of dependence on, the man who had wronged him, and then had turned him out on to the world, stung his spirit almost to madness.
The spring woke early that year, and the weather was bright and glad, the air clear and sweet and joyous with a thousand bird-voices. The Midland woods and hedges that he passed were beginning to deck themselves in the fresh greenness of their new spring garments. Their beauty brought no peace to him. He but noticed them to curse their monotony and apparent endlessness. The only things he did notice with anything like satisfaction were the milestones and fingerposts, which told him that so much more ground had been got over. He put up at night at the cheapest and poorest-looking inns he could find. They were good enough to lie awake in, for his feverish longing and impatience to reach his end almost consumed him and made sleep an impossibility. Eager as he was to get on, he had self-restraint enough to spend none of his store of money—such a little store as it was—on travelling. Roland Ferrier might not be at Thornsett after all, and he might have to follow him, or mayhap return to Dartford and bide his time; and so, though his progress was straight and steady it was slow, and he did not reach Thornsett until the night that had witnessed the explanations between the brothers.
He had done more than twenty-five miles that day, and he was footsore and tired out when, as night was falling, he reached the top of the hill at whose foot lay the village which had been his home for thirty years. All along he had been determined to make straight for Thornsett Edge, and to confront Roland at once. He felt that the young man might be surprised intomore admissions than he would choose to make if he were prepared. But physical fatigue is wonderfully effective in upsetting mental decision. Hatfield felt that neither in body nor in mind was he fit to go through at once with the part he had chosen. He must rest—sleep, if possible. He threw himself down on the heather by the pathside, and leaned his head on his arm, while he debated what to do. Nature decided for him, and he fell asleep.
When he woke, a young moon was shining coldly down upon him. He felt stiff, and not rested. The heather was wet with night-dew. How late was it? He thought by the moon about eight o'clock.
He would go down to the village and see who was left in the old place; perhaps he might get a lodging there. The Spotted Cow was closed, he had heard. He limped down the steep stony street. There were no lights to be seen. As he reached the house that had been his, he saw that it was empty, and a longing came over him to get inside it. Why not sleep there? So, turning aside, he went up the three stone steps and along the narrow paved pathway that ran under the windows separating the house from the tiny front garden. His hand fell on the latch of the door quite naturally, and it never occurred to him that it would not yield to his touch as it had been wont to do. But it did not yield. He was in that frame of mind when any resistance is intolerable. He drew back and then threw himself against the door with all his weight. It gave way noisily and he went in. He passed round the wooden screen, and stood in the middle of the flagged floor.
To return to a house where we have been happy, even if we have left it for greater happiness, is always sad if not painful; but to go back to a house that seems to hold within its desolate walls, not only all our memories butall our possibilities of happiness—when we have left it in sorrow, to take back to it an added load of new, unexpected, intolerable trouble—this, let us be thankful, is not given to many of us.
John Hatfield could not bear it. He cast one look round at the dark, fireless hearth, the uncurtained window, turned, and came out. Sleep there? He would rather sleep on the bare hillside, or in the churchyard itself, for that matter.
The rush of memories drove him before it. He could not stay in the village. Every other house in it had been a home too, and was crowded with recollections almost as maddening as those that peopled his own home, in which—bitterest thought of all—Roland Ferrier had lisped out childish prattle, and climbed on his knee to share his caresses with baby Alice. And at the remembrance his resolution came back. He would go to Thornsett Edge then and there, let come what might. Weak as he was, he was strong enough to make his tired feet carry him so far, and once there his passion could be trusted to give him strength to say and do all that needed to be said and done. He clenched his nerves, as though the pain of his bruised feet would grow less by being despised, and he walked on. But when he reached the turn in the road that brought the mill in sight his mood altered again, and almost before he knew that his intention had changed he found himself limping painfully down the stone steps into the little hollow. As he caught sight of the door where Litvinoff had stood on the night of the fire he muttered a curse on the man who had stood between the 'hands' and their purpose that night. He felt faint and giddy. The many square windows of the mill seemed to look on him like eyes, and the broken panes in them lent them a sinister expression. The few past months had changed the face of the mill wonderfully. No one had repaired the damage done by the rioters, and the wind andrain had had their will of the place. It looked now, Hatfield thought, as though it had been deserted for years instead of months.
Everything was deadly still. The only sounds were the trickling of the stream as it flowed past, and his own heavy breathing. He was becoming unaccountably sleepy. Why should he not sleep here? He would go on to Thornsett in the morning. He stumbled downward till he reached the wall of the mill. He soon found a window that could be unfastened by passing his hand through one of its broken panes and turning round the primitive hasp. It was rusty, and moved, as it were, reluctantly. Still, it did move, and he opened the window and crept through it. He found himself on the edge of a huge stone tank, or vat. One more forward movement and he would have been plunged in the dark-looking water that half filled it. He shuddered. How could he have been such a fool as to forget the position of that tank? He crept round the edge of it, and reached the stone-paved floor of the basement. There lay a mass of something dark. It was the great stone that had thundered through the roof of the mill just after young Roland Ferrier had given the deputation their answer. Hatfield looked up at the ugly hole in the ceiling, a hole that repeated itself in the two upper floors and the roof, through which he could see the sky. The moon was shining brightly by this time, and the many-windowed building was lighted well enough for the man to find his way about. Had it been dark, he thought he should not have had much difficulty. He went up the stairs, and made his way to a room on the second storey, where he fancied there would be some soft rubbish he could lie down on. He was not disappointed, and, yielding to the utter weariness that had come to him, he lay down, and in a moment slept.
He had not been asleep three minutes when he awoke witha start to find himself sitting up and listening. What had he heard? The click of a door and a footstep. He was widely, nervously, intensely awake now. Had it been fancy, born of the utter desolation and loneliness of the place where he was? He listened strainedly. No. This at least was no fancy. There was a footstep resounding hollowly through the great empty rooms.
Some watcher, perhaps, from whom he ought to keep himself hidden if he did not want to be handed over to the constable as a vagrant. What an ending, that, to his journey! Yes, he must lie quiet, and yet, how could he? Suppose—and at the thought his blood ran coldly through his veins—suppose old Richard Ferrier had got up from under that white stone in Thornsett churchyard, and had come down to keep watch over what his sons had so little regarded. The footsteps came nearer, and Hatfield sprang to his feet and walked not away from, but towards, the sound. The impulse of a naturally brave man when heisfrightened is to face the fearsome thing as speedily as may be. Hatfield opened the door. Then he sprang forward, for he saw no ghost, but, as it seemed to him, the object of his search—not old Richard, but young Roland, standing with his back to him. The bright moonlight lighting up the figure left no room in his mind for a doubt. At the sight, all his ideas of asking for explanation vanished in an instant, and left him with no impulse but to catch the young man by the throat and to squeeze the life out of him.
As the other turned at the sound of the opening door he gave a cry of horror at the sight of the wild, haggard figure springing at him—the white, angry, maddened face close to his own.
'Keep back!' he almost screamed, as Hatfield rushed upon him, but even as he spoke the man's hands fastened on his throat, and the two closed in a silent, deadly struggle. Theyhad hardly grasped each other when both remembered the danger that lay behind them—that black gap in the floor—and each tried to edge away from it without loosening his hold. Too late, though. The strain of the strong men wrestling was too much for the splintered boards already rotted through by the rain and snow of the past months. Crash went the flooring beneath their feet, and as the two went through, fast locked in each other's arms, Hatfield, above his adversary, saw, in a flash of intensest horror, that the face below him was not that of Roland, but of Richard.
It was the last thing he ever saw in this world. In another moment he was lying, a dead man, at the bottom of the great tank. Again the stillness of the empty mill was undisturbed, and the only movement in it was that of the heavy-coloured water as it settled down again into stagnation over him.
Roland went to bed that night without troubling himself much about his brother. He had been deeply wronged, and he was a man who, not easily offended, was, when once alienated, implacable. He did not find it easy to forgive. Though he had shaken hands with his brother he had not forgiven him, and he came down to breakfast the next morning quite prepared to keep up hisrôleof injured innocence, and to prevent his brother from experiencing much satisfaction in the reconciliation. Richard had always been an early riser, and Roland quite expected to find him in the dining-room waiting, but he was not there. He waited some little time, and then desired Mrs Brock to see if Mr Ferrier was in his room, and it was not till she returned with the intelligence that he was not and that his bed had not been slept in, that Roland began to wonder in anxious earnest where his brother could be.
A very short search showed that he was not in the house or grounds. Could he have gone to the churchyard? No, thoughtRoland; Dick wasn't that sort of fellow. Perhaps he had gone over to Gates, and had stayed all night. In a very short time Roland was at The Hollies questioning eagerly, and, with an inexplicable feeling of dread and anxiety growing stronger upon him with each moment, he learned that Dick had not been there. He would go down to the village, and Mr Gates volunteered to come with him, though he laughed cheerfully at the idea of there being anything to worry about in Dick's non-appearance. 'He's playing off some trick on you,' he said. 'However, come along, and we'll soon find him.' So they walked together towards the village.
'Hullo,' said Mr Gates, as they passed the mill, 'that door's no business open! Perhaps Dick's up to some games in there.'
The door he pointed at was one opening from the mill on to a flight of stone steps that ran sideways outside the building from the second storey to the ground.
'Whether he's there or not,' the lawyer went on, 'some one has been there, and we'd better see who it is.'
So they went down, and, crossing the courtyard, between whose stones the grass was springing already, ran up the steps and passed through the open door.
The whole place was flooded with the brilliant morning sunlight.
The two made a few steps forward. They saw the hole in the floor, and paused. Then Roland's heart seemed to stand still, for he saw on the board at the edge of the gap a hat, and his brother's silver-headed walking stick, and he knew what had happened. With an exceeding bitter cry he turned from Gates and sprang down an inner staircase, glancing at each floor as he passed it, and on the stones at the bottom he found what he sought—Dick. Or was it Dick? Could this mangled, twisted, bloody mass be his brother? The pitilesslight came through the cobwebbed windows, and showed plainly enough that it was Dick, or Dick's body.
'Run for Bailey,' he shouted to Gates, who had followed him; and he went.
Then Roland lifted Richard's head. Was he alive? Yes. At the movement a spasm of agony contracted his face, and his eyes opened. A look of relief came into them when he saw his brother.
'Don't move me, old man,' he whispered; and the other knelt beside him, his arms under the poor head. He could not speak, for he saw that his brother was dying.
After a moment Richard spoke again, very faintly.
'I'm glad you've come.' He could only say a few words at a time, and between the sentences came long pauses, in each of which Roland fancied the last silence had come.
'I wanted you, old fellow. It's nearly over now. It's been like hell lying here. I know he's somewhere near, and I couldn't help him. It was Hatfield, and he mistook me for you. It was through me he believed you had wronged Alice. He was hiding here, and attacked me. We struggled and fell. I'm afraid he's dead. You'll see presently.'
Then came a longer pause than any that had gone before, and still Roland could not speak.
Gates had sent down a man from the cottage above, but when he came Richard made impatient signs, and he went and stood outside.
'You didn't care about making it up, Rowley; but it's all right between us now, isn't it?'
Roland's tears were falling over his brother's face.
'Oh, Dick, Dick, Dick!' He could say nothing else.
'It's hard lines,' Richard said; 'but it's all my own fault. Never mind, old chap. Water!'
Roland called to the labourer, and when the water had been brought Dick seemed to gather his strength together.
'Since I've been lying here, I've wished I could believe I was going to see father again, and I half believe it's possible. I shouldn't care if I was going to the old dad again.'
'Oh, Dick! Can I do nothing for you?'
'No, old chap; only tellherI sent her my love. She has it, and she won't mind now.'
Then he lay silent, with closed eyes. Presently he made a movement. Roland interpreted it, and kissed his face.
'I'm going, old man!' he said. 'Good-bye. Clare! Clare! Clare!' He murmured her name over and over again, more and more faintly.
Roland put the water to his lips again, but it was too late. He had drunk of the Nepenthe of Death.
CHAPTER XXIX.
BACK FROM THE DEAD.
THE Clare Stanley who studied Bakounin and quoted Matthew Arnold was a very different girl from the Clare Stanley who had in the autumn entertained the reprehensible idea of bringing to her feet the interesting stranger at Morley's Hotel. In looking back on that time, which she did with hot cheeks and uncomfortable self-condemnation, it really seemed to her that she had changed into another being—development, when it is rapid, being always bewildering. It would be interesting to know with what emotions the rose remembers being a green bud. Pleasanter ones perhaps than those of the woman whose new earnest sense of the intense seriousness of life leads her to look back—not with indulgent eyes—on the follies of her unawakened girlhood. The story of the sleeping beauty is an allegory with a very real meaning. Every woman's mind has its time of slumber, when the creed of the day is truth and the convention of the day is morality. The fairy prince's awakening kiss may come in the pages of a book, in the words of a speaker, through love, through suffering, through sorrow, through a thousand things glad or sad, and to some it never comes, and that is the saddest thing of all. Clare had slept, and now was well awake, and it was no word of Count Litvinoff's that had broken the slumbrous spell.
Sometimes she almost wished it had been, for she could not conceal from herself the fact that she had succeeded indoing what she had desired to do, and that Count Litvinoffwasat her feet. The position became him, certainly, but she felt a perverse objection to being placed on a pedestal, and a new conviction that she would rather look up to a lover than down at one. And yet why should she look down on him? He was cleverer than she, with a larger knowledge of life—had done incomparably more for the cause she had espoused. He was brave, handsome, and, to some extent, a martyr, and he loved her, or she thought so, which came to the same thing. Verily, a man with all these qualifications was hardly the sort of lover for a girl under the twenties to look down upon. But could she help looking down on him, for was he not at her feet? And that was not the place, she thought, for a man who had drawn the sword in such a war as she and he had entered upon. What right had a man who had taken up arms inthatcause to lay them down, even at her feet? No, no. Her lover, if she had one, must be at her side—not there.
This reaction to the Count's detriment had set in on New Year's Day, when he had told her that he held no cause sacred enough to give her even inconvenience for the sake of it, and the tide was still ebbing. Litvinoff appeared quite unconscious of that fact though, for he continued to call on Mrs Quaid with a persistence which quite justified all Cora's animadversions. Miss Quaid's penetration was at fault, but the Count's was not. He was perfectly conscious of the change in her state of mind, and knew that his chance of being master of the Stanley money-bags was far less than he had thought shortly after their late master's death.
Suspense was the one thing Count Litvinoff could not bear—at least, he could bear it when the balance of probabilities was in his favour; but when the chances did not seem to be on his side—no. He knew perfectly well that it is hardly 'correct' to ask a girl to marry one three months after herfather's death; but he was not an enthusiastic devotee of 'correctness.' He habitually posed as a despiser of conventions, and this attitude very often stood him in good stead, even with people who preferred the stereotypedrôlesof life for themselves. Avowed unconventionality serves as a splendid excuse for doing all sorts of pleasant things which conventional people daren't do; hence perhaps its growing popularity.
'He either fears his fate too much,Or his deserts are small,Who dares not put it to the touch,To gain or lose it all.'
The lines ran in Count Litvinoff's head persistently one spring morning while he sat at his late breakfast. As he despatched his last mouthful of grilled sardine and looked round for the marmalade, the servant came in with a letter.
'It really is time I struck for fortune. I do hope this is not a bill,' he said to himself as he took it. 'I retrench and retrench, and still they come.'
He tore it open. It was not a bill. It ran thus:—
'I shall call upon you between four and five this afternoon; I wish to see you on an important matter.—Petrovitch.'
'I shall call upon you between four and five this afternoon; I wish to see you on an important matter.—Petrovitch.'
'The mysterious stranger doesn't waste his words. He's almost as careful of them as the fellow with the dirty collar—Bursch, or Kirsch, or Hirsch, or whatever it was. The best of being mixed up with the revolutionary party is that such beautifully unexpected things are always befalling one. I wonder why he couldn't have waited till to-morrow night. It lends a spice to an important matter to discuss it at forbidden times and in a secret manner at the houses of friends. That's another of our characteristics—to plot when we're supposed to be talking frivol only, and to play cards or go to sleep when we're supposedto be plotting. Wonder what the important matter is. The distressed lady friend again, perhaps. Well, before I commit myself on that matter, I'd better settle things one way or the other withla belleClare. Upon my soul, I don't much care which way they are settled. If I'm not to shine as the county magnate and the married man at Aspinshaw, by Heaven, I'll find out my own little girl, and go in for virtuous retirement in theQuartier Latin. When I do swallow my principles they go down whole, like oysters; and if Miss Stanley doesn't care to add the title of "countess" to her other endowments, some one will be glad to take that and me, even with nothing a year to keep state upon.'
He pushed his chair back, and sat biting his moustache irresolutely, and frowning heavily at the breakfast-table.
'Yes,' he said at last, rising; 'I'll have a shot for it now, as I've gone so far, and I'll shoot as straight and as steady as I can. As for the other matter—well, Aspinshaw and the fruits thereof would not be a bad drug for inconvenient memories. I wonder if this is one of my good-looking days?' he added, moving towards the looking-glass, and scrutinising his reflection therein. He seemed satisfied, lighted the inevitable cigarette, and half an hour after noon was in Mrs Quaid's library, alone with Clare Stanley.
Mrs Quaid, he had known, would be absent on some educational errand, and Cora would be at the National Gallery. He knew that Miss Stanley was not averse to a quiet morning spent in uninterrupted reading and copying, and he had rightly thought that he should have a very fair chance of finding her alone. The resolution of his, which had faltered before the remembrance of that other face, grew strong again as he saw her, for she looked charming, and it was not in his nature to be indifferent to the charms of any woman, even if she were notthewoman.
Miss Stanley had been making notes in a MS. book, andLitvinoff noticed with a feeling not altogether pleasurable that 'The Prophetic Vision' and the 'Ethics of Revolution' both lay open on the writing-table, and that she seemed to have been comparing them one with the other.
'I am afraid you will hate me for interrupting your studies,' he began, apparently ignorant of the direction those studies had been taking, 'but when the servant told me you were alone in the library, I could not resist the temptation of coming in.'
'I don't at all mind being interrupted,' she answered, when he had settled himself down in a chair opposite to her with the air of a man who, having come in, meant to stay. 'I was just looking through two of your books. One of them, indeed, I almost know by heart.'
'And that is?'—carelessly, as one who is sure of the answer—
'"The Prophetic Vision."'
Somehow Count Litvinoff did not look delighted. Perhaps he wanted to talk about something else.
'But, oh,' she went on, 'what a long way off it all seems!'
'Yes, it does; I was an enthusiastic young rebel when I first put on the Prophet's Mantle.' Then, as a faint change in her face showed him that he had made a false move, he hastened to add, 'But it will all happen some day, you know. It is a true vision, but knocking about in the world has taught me that the immediately practicable is the thing to aim for.'
'Oh, no, no, no,' she said. 'Never let us lower our standard. We shall not do less noble work in the present for having the noblest of all goals before us.'
Then she looked at him, at his handsome,insouciantface, at the half-cynical droop of his mouth, at the look in his eyes—the sort of look an old cardinal who knew the Church and the world might turn on an enthusiastic young monk—and shefelt a sudden regret for that heart-warm speech of hers. What had she in common with this perfectly-dressed, orchid-button-holed young man? Why should she expect him to understand her? And yet had he not written "The Prophetic Vision"? She went on, smiling a little,—
'You must make allowances for the hopeful faith of a new convert. Perhaps when I've held my new belief a little longer I shall be lessen l'air. But I must say I hope not.'
'Your new beliefs make you very happy, then?'
'They make me want very much to live to see what will happen. It would be terrible to die now before anything is accomplished. You see, I can't help believing that we shall accomplish something, although I know you think me very high-flown and absurd.'
'You know I think you perfect,' he said, in a very low voice, and went on hurriedly: 'But, for Heaven's sake, don't talk about dying; the idea is too horrible. Can't you guess why I have seemed not sympathetic with your new religion? I have known what it is to believe strongly, to work unceasingly, never to leave off hoping, and trying to show others my hope. I have known what it is to have no life but the life of the cause; to go through year after year still hoping and striving. I have known all this, and more. I have known the heart-sickness of waiting for a dawn that never comes. I know how one may strain every nerve, tax every power, kill one's body, wear out one's brain, break one's heart against the iron of things as they are, and when all is sacrificed, all is gone, all is suffered, have achievednothing. It is from this I would save you. That you should suffer is a worse evil than any your suffering could remedy. The cause will have martyrs enough without you.'
'Martyrs, yes; but how can it have too many workers?' she asked, not looking at him.
'To be a worker is to be a martyr,' he answered, rising and standing near her; 'and that is the reason why you are the only convert I have never rejoiced over.'
'I don't know,' she was beginning when he interrupted her.
'Don't say that,' he said. 'Don't say you don't know why I can't endure the thought of your ever knowing anything but peace and happiness. You know it is because I love you, and my love for you has eaten up all my other loves. Freedom, the Revolution, my country, my own ambition, are all nothing to me. But ifyoucare for the cause I can still work in it, and with a thousand times more enthusiasm than it ever inspired me with before, foryou. That can be your way of helping it. Use me as your instrument. Make any use you will of me, if only you are safe and happy, andmine.'
His voice was low with the passion which for the moment thrilling through him made him quite believe his own words.
Clare had listened silently, her eyes cast down, and her nervous fingers diligently tearing an envelope into little bits, and when he had ended she still did not speak, but her breath came and went quickly.
'You,' he was beginning again, when she stretched out her hand to silence him.
'No, no,' she said; 'don't say any more—I can't bear it.'
'Does that mean that you care?'
'It means that this seems the most terrible thing that could have happened to me. That it should be through me that you give up the right.'
'But through you, for you, I will become anything you choose.'
'And that is the worst of all,' she said, with very real distress. 'I can ask you to do nothing for my sake.'
'You cannot love me, then?' he asked, as earnestly as though his happiness hung on her answer.
'No,' she said steadily, 'I cannot love you. I am very, very sorry—'
'Spare me your pity, at least,' he said. 'But one thing I must ask. Why did you let me see you again after New Year's Day? For I told you the same thing then, and you knew then that I loved you.'
It was true—but Clare hated him for saying it.
'I have changed so much since then,' she said slowly.
Several things both bitter and true rose to his lips. He did not give them voice, however. He had never in his life said an unkind thing to a woman. It occurred to him that he was accepting his defeat rather easily, and he looked at her to measure the chances for and against the possible success of another appeal. But in her face was a decision against which he knew there could be no appeal. He felt angry with her for refusing him—angry and unreasonably surprised; and then, in one of the flashes of light that made it so hard for him to understand himself, he saw that if she was to blame for refusing his love, he was ten thousand times more to blame for having sought hers, and this truth brought others with it. His real feeling, he knew, was not anger but relief. He made a step forward.
'You are right,' he said. 'I congratulate you on your decision. You were talking of dying just now. You will live long enough to know how much congratulation you merit for having to-day refused to give yourself to a traitor and a villain.'
'A traitor—no, no,' she said, holding out her hand.
'No,' he said, 'I am not worthy. Some day you will know that I ought never to have touched that hand of yours. Good-bye.'
And the door shut behind him, and Clare was left standing in the middle of the room with her eyes widely opened, andher hand still outstretched. She stood there till she heard the front door closed, and then sank into a chair. She didn't want to go on making notes about 'The Prophetic Vision' any more.
The interview had not been a pleasant one, and it was not pleasant to think over. One of the least pleasant things in this world is a granted wish, granted after it has ceased to be wished. And Clare could not forget that shehaddesired to win this man's admiration, at least. She could not forget that he had saved her father's life—that he had been the first to speak to her of many things once unknown or unconsidered, but now a part of her very life—and she could not forget that when she had first thought of the possibility of his asking her to marry him she hadnotmeant to refuse him. There had been much about him to attract her, and if she had never met Petrovitch she might have given Litvinoff, even now, a different answer. But in Petrovitch she found all the qualities that had fascinated her in Litvinoff, and all on a larger scale, and with a finer development. Litvinoff now seemed to her like a dissolving view of Petrovitch seen through the wrong end of a telescope. He lacked the definiteness of outline, the depth of tone, the intense reality of the other man. Perhaps he seemed more brilliant and dashing; but Hirsch's story had shown what Petrovitch was. Added to all this was one significant fact. She had admired in Litvinoff one quality or another, and had desired to attract him. To Petrovitch she herself had been attracted, not by any specific quality or qualities, but by himself—by the man as he was—and this attraction grew stronger with each meeting.
A fortnight had now passed since the second time she had seen him, and somehow or other she had seen him very often in that time. She knew well enough that neither Litvinoff nor Petrovitch had come to Marlborough Villa to see its mistress.And she had been sufficiently certain about the Count's motives for his visit, but could she be certain about the motive which brought the elder man there so constantly? Of any effort to make him care for her she was not guilty. In her new frame of mind she would have felt any such attempt to be degrading, alike to herself and to him. And though she knew he came to see her, she could not be sure why he came. Was his evident interest in her only the interest of an apostle in a convert? A certain humility had sprung up in her, along with many other flowers of the heart, and she did not admit to herself that there was a chance of his interest being of another nature. Only, she thought, it would be the highest honour in the world and the deepest happiness to be the woman whom he loved. Not the less because she knew well enough that the woman he loved would hold the second place in his heart, and that he would not wish to hold the first place in hers. That, for both of them, must be filled by the goddess whom Litvinoff had once said he worshipped, and whom he had abjured and abandoned for her sake. She thought of this without a single thrill of gratified pride.
Miss Stanley sat silent for half an hour, and in that time got through more thinking than we could record if we wrote steadily for half a year. At the end of that time Miss Quaid came home.
'I hear Count Litvinoff has been here,' she said, when she entered the study. 'What is it to be? Am I to have a Countess Litvinoff for a friend?'
'No,' said Clare, rising and shaking off her reverie; I shall never be anything to Count Litvinoff.'
Which was, perhaps, a too hasty conclusion.
To the reader who has followed the fortunes of Count Litvinoff so far we need hardly mention the fact that as soonas he was clear of Marlborough Villa he pulled out his cigar-case. It had always been a favourite theory of his that a cigar and not a mill-pond was the appropriate sequel to an unsuccessful love affair. Not that it had ever occurred to him as even remotely possible that such an experience could ever be his. Here it was, however, and he had one of those opportunities which always charm the thinker—that of being able to apply to his own case a theory invented for other people. He took a meditative turn round Regent's Park. It is a strange fact which we do not remember to have seen commented on by any other writer—that when a man comes away from an interview with a girl to whom he has been making love he is inevitably driven to think, not of her alone, but also of one, two, three or more of the other girls to whom he has from time to time made love in the remote or recent past. Such is the depravity of the 'natural man' that these thoughts are not generally sad ones. But Litvinoff's thoughts were genuinely sad. He had said to Miss Stanley that he was a traitor and a villain, and it had not been said for dramatic effect. He meant it. He would have given a good many years of any life that might lie before him to undo a few of the years that lay behind.
'I am not consistent enough for a villain,' he said to himself. 'I have failed in that part, and now I will go in for my naturalrôleof a fool, and I've a sort of idea that I shall get on better. And the first thing to be done is to find my little one. Fool as I am, I've generally been able to do anything I've really set my mind on. The reason I've failed in my "deep-laid schemes" has been that I didn't always care whether I won or not. I can be in the same mind about this matter, however, for a long enough time to achieve what I want. As for principles, they bore me. If it hadn't been for my principles I shouldn't have got into half this trouble. What shall I do with myself till my mysterious friend turns up?'
After a minute's hesitation he turned into the Zoological Gardens, where he spent some thought on the wasting of an hour or so among the beasts, incurred the undying hatred of an alligator by stirring him up with the ferule of his stick, irritated the llama to the point of expectoration, and grossly insulted the oldest inhabitant of the monkey-house.
His luncheon was a bath bun and a glass of milk.
'A fourpenny luncheon,' he said to himself, 'is the first step in the path of virtue.'
At half-past three he got back to his lodgings, and sat down with the resolution of going thoroughly into his financial affairs. To that he thought he would devote an hour or two, and in the evening he would try to find the lost clue in Spray's Buildings. This looking into his finances struck him as being a business-like sort of thing to do, and quite in harmony with his present frame of mind.
He was soon busy at his light writing-table. Presently he drew from a drawer his banker's pass-book, made bulky with cancelled cheques. He groaned earnestly.
'Alas!' he said to himself, 'how sadly simple and easy it is to sign one's name on this nice smooth coloured paper. I suppose it's best to check these off—bankers' clerks are so dreadfully careless.'
A most unfounded statement, born of ignorance of business, and a desire to seem to himself as one who understood it. Suddenly he started, and singled out the cheque he had given to Hirsch in the autumn. It bore on it, as endorsement, in a bold, free handwriting, the name, 'Michael Petrovitch.'
'Hola!' he said; 'a namesake of mine. Stay, though. This apostle of our cause does not keep to one handwriting.'
He walked to the mantelpiece, and taking thence the letter he had received in the morning, he compared the writing.
'H'm—wonder whatthismeans?' he said, returning to hisseat. 'The two writings are not the same, and yet there is something in this writing on the cheque which I seem to have seen before. We'll try for an explanation before he leaves this room.'
He went on steadily with his self-imposed task of comparing each cheque with the entry in the book. He had half done them when a ring at the front door bell made him look up.
'Aha! the mysterious Petrovitch is punctual,' he said to himself.
It was Petrovitch, though perhaps those who had seen most of him in the last few months would have failed to recognise him. He looked at least ten years younger. The handsome long light beard was gone, and he was close shaved save for a heavy drooping blond moustache.
As Count Litvinoff heard his visitor's steps upon the stairs he settled himself back in his chair, with an assumption of a business air, much like that of a very young lawyer about to receive a new client.
There was a sharp rap at the room door.
'Come in,' he said.
The door opened. He sprang to his feet, stood one moment clutching at the table before him, his eyes wide with something that seemed almost terror, and his whole frame rigid with astonishment. Then his expression changed to one of deepest love and delight. There was a crash of furniture, as he flung the little writing-table from him, and it fell shattered against the opposite wall. With a hysterical cry of 'Ah, ah, ah, Litvinoff! back from the dead!' he sprang across the room, threw his arms round the other's neck, and fell sobbing on his breast.
CHAPTER XXX.
TALKING THINGS OVER.
BEFORE the echo of that cry had died away, the man who had uttered it swayed sideways, his face grew deadly white, the clasp of his arms loosened, and only the sudden firm grip of the other saved him from falling. Petrovitch laid him on the sofa. Then he passed into the adjoining bedroom, and came back with a wet sponge.
'What a fellow it is,' he said to himself, as he applied it to the hands and face of the insensible man. 'As brave as a lion, and as hysterical as a schoolgirl.' But he looked very kindly on the pale face as he administered his remedies.
In a little while the eyes opened, and the younger man struggled into a sitting position, and looked into the face that bent over him.
'Litvinoff, itisyou, then?' he said in a low voice, and covered his face with his hands. The joy of seeing once more the man he had loved seemed to be swallowed up in the shame of meeting the man he had wronged.
'Yes, Percival, it is I,' said Petrovitch; 'but let this be the last time you call me Litvinoff, and I must not call you Percival either. I think I have a right to ask that. You have chosen to put on the Prophet's Mantle, and for all our sakes you must wear it a little longer.'
'What do you mean?'
'I mean simply that you must still be Count Litvinoff, and I must still be Petrovitch.'
'Thenyouare Petrovitch! Why did you take a false name to mislead me?' he groaned. 'Why did you let me go on wearing your name, and spending your money? Why not have let me know at once, when every day made things worse? I would have gone out of life long ago rather than face this meeting.'
'And yet you seemed glad to see me, too?' said Petrovitch, looking at him curiously. 'But I took no false name; my name is really Petrovitch. My father's name was Peter, you know. You ought to remember that. You have heard me called by it often enough.'
'I never thought of you by it, though; and besides, I thought you were dead. You know that I thought you were dead?' with a sudden, quick doubt in his voice.
'Of course!'
'You know, don't you,' he went on eagerly, 'that I would gladly have given my life for yours, and that I never hoped for anything so good in this world as to see you alive? Yes, in spite of everything, though I can't expect you to believe it,' he ended bitterly.
'I have never doubted it,' Petrovitch answered; and with a sudden thrill of pity for the despair, the remorse, the longing, and the wretchedness in the other's face, he added, 'Come, old friend, don't take this so much to heart. It is nothing that cannot be put right. You will see when we come to talk it over quietly. Can't we have some tea?'
Petrovitch knew well enough that when the heart's cords are stretched almost unbearably by the strain of an intense emotion, it sometimes stems as though they could only be saved from giving way altogether by the direction of the mind to some utterly trivial detail of everyday life. Many a woman's heart has been saved from breaking by the necessity of getting thechildren's dinner, and many a tragedy has been averted by the chief actor's having to take in the afternoon's milk.
Petrovitch repeated the question, 'Can't we have some tea?'
The other rose mechanically, went to a cupboard, and brought out a plated kettle and spirit-lamp, a small china tea set, and a plate of lemons, with a silver knife. He put these appliances on the table in an unmethodical, untidy sort of way, and was proceeding to light the spirit-lamp, when Petrovitch, who had been watching him with a smile, took the match-box out of his hand.
'Here, let me make tea. I see you are just as unsystematic as ever.' He lighted the lamp, and with a few deft touches put the rest of the tea-things in order, as the other, leaving the matter in his hands, strode up and down the room.
'Oh, what is to be the end of all this?' he said at length; 'how long am I to go on bearing your name?'
'All this will soon be at an end, as far as I am concerned. I have nearly completed my arrangements for getting back to Russia, and when I'm there you may guess it won't matter to me who bears my name. I shall not wish to use it. But while I am here I wish to be Petrovitch. Indeed, you can serve me best by letting it be as widely known as possible that Count Litvinoff is—well, where you are and not where I am, and after all it's nobody's business but yours and mine.'
'Does no one else know of it at all?'
'Only two men in St Petersburg, and one in London.'
'And he is?'
'Hirsch, whom you've seen, I think.'
'Why the devil didn't he tell every one then?'
'Because I asked him not to, and he considers himself under some sort of obligation to me.'
'Like everyone else you come across. But how cameheto know it?'
'He had to be told when I came here. There was certain work I had to do; I can tell you about it another time, and he was the only man who could put me in the way of it. Now Count Litvinoff, the tea is ready.'
The other stopped in his walk.
'Curse it!' he said passionately. 'Call me a villain or a forger, or any other pretty name you like; I can stand that, but not your lips calling me by your name. It's a cruel revenge.'
'Ah, we owe too much to our enemies for there to be any thought of revenge between friends, and I must teach myself to call you that. Besides, what is there to revenge? You have only used the name I did not need.'
'No, I forged your name as well as stole it. You don't know all.'
'Yes, I do, or pretty nearly all. As far as your taking my name goes, that has done no harm; rather good; and as for the money, that would have gone to you. You know, if I had had the giving of it, it would have gone to you. And I know you would never have touched it if you had not thought I was dead.'
'I wish I had never left you, though I did think it, and at the mercy of those curs. If only I had died by you!'
'You know well enough our rule is that none should be sacrificed without reason. Why should you have given those hounds two lives instead of one?'
'I wish I had died that night under the orange trees at Monte Carlo. You did yourself a bad turn when you saved my life. I have done no good with it. I have only weighted myself with unpardonable sins.'
'As far as I am concerned,' Petrovitch said, 'if there is anything to forgive, it is freely forgiven—freely and fully; and now let us shake hands after your English fashion, and offorgiveness let us talk no more. We arefriends, and between such it is no question of pardon. And there are many other things we must speak of.'
He held his hand out, and the younger man grasped it. There was a moment's pause. Then,—
'Let me give you some fresh tea—that is cold,' said Petrovitch cheerfully, pouring out another cup; 'don't you want to hear what happened to me after I was killed?'
'I can hardly realise yet that you arenotkilled.'
'Well, I'll tell you about it. The officer of that troop added medicine to his other accomplishments, besides which he was a distant relation of my mother's, and he insisted on seeing whether I could not be conjured back to life. I believe I gave them a good deal of trouble, but I seem to be a die-hard. My capture was kept very quiet, thanks to my family name, for the Government didn't care about having it known that the head of the Litvinoffs had tried to atone for the crimes of his family by taking the side of the people. My wound was a bad one, and even now troubles me sometimes. I used sometimes almost to wish it had settled me. Fancy being in prison, and a Russian prison, with a wound like that.'
'But how did you get away?'
For answer Petrovitch told him the story of his escape as he had told it to Hirsch and to his other friends, intentionally making the recital a long one, so that his companion might have time to get used to the new situation before they began to talk of the future.
'And now,' he said, when he had ended, 'tell me how it fared with the Secretary.'
'I hate to think of it,' said the man who had borne the Litvinoff name for three years, and who, it seemed, was to bear it a little while longer. 'Whenever I think of that night, I see nothing but your face—dead, as I thought—turned upfrom the snow in the hateful dawn. Oh, my friend!' his voice faltered, and he held his hand out to Petrovitch again. After a pause, he resumed, 'I tried all I knew to revive you, but you were as cold as ice, and your heart did not beat. I stayed by you a long, long time. It did not occur to me to leave you, but at last, in a flash, I realised that you weregone—that I was there in the snowalone. And then I thought of escape. I said good-bye to your body. I felt as if your self was far away somewhere, and then I sprang up and dashed off in the direction we had been taking. It was broad daylight then, but I saw nothing of the soldiers, though I knew afterwards they must have found you, because when we sent, your body was gone. I must have kept pretty straight, for I came to a house at last, and I went straight up to it. I thought it must be Teliaboff's, and if it wasn't I felt I didn't much care. I went right in, asked for the master of the house, and when he came to me I told him all. It was Teliaboff. He was very good to me, and kept me there nearly a fortnight. We could hear nothing of you—nothing at all. By the way, it was he who first, unconsciously, gave me the idea of personating you, for when I entered his house on that horrible morning he greeted me by your name. I undeceived him at once, but the idea took root and bore fruit later. He was kindness itself, and his little daughter—she was only twelve, I think—took a fancy to me. I believe that child's companionship saved me from going mad.
'Then he got me a passport, and gave me money enough to get to Vienna. When I got there I was penniless, and I knew you had had money there. I did not feel somehow that I was robbingyouwhen I forged your name—Heaven knows that was easily done, I knew your signature so well—and went on to Paris with your money as Count Michael Litvinoff. When I took your money I meant honestly to spend it all in the causeyou had worked for, and for a time I did. But—I don't know how to explain it—I suppose the Revolution had not really taken hold of me. It wasyouI had cared for, and your creed I had held, not for itself, but because it wasyours. And when your personal influence was not near me I grew careless and idle, and worked for Liberty only by fits and starts. It used to seem too much trouble to do things for the cause. It had been your approval I cared for, I think. You are so strong, I can't expect you to understand the imbecilities of such a weak fool as I am. From the moment when I ceased to spend all my time and all your money on your work, I seemed utterly degraded in my own eyes, and it did not seem to matter what I did, so I have gone on from bad to worse, and the principlesyouwould die for, have only been will-o'-the-wisp lights to lead me into direr troubles than I should ever have known without them. I have not kept Michael Litvinoff's name clean. And the evil I have done is nothing to what I have tried to do. I sent Teliaboff his money back, but I have never heard from him. Have you? Do you know whether he is all right?'
'Haven't you heard?' Petrovitch asked gravely.
'Heard? No! What? Anything wrong?'
'Hanged,' was the brief reply.
'Hanged!'
'Yes, and his little daughter—she was fourteen, then, I think—was hanged with him.'
'For—for helping me?' gasped Litvinoff.
'No, for having "The Prophetic Vision" in her room.'
'My God!' cried Litvinoff, springing up. 'How long will men bear it? Let us go back this very day, and kill and kill and kill these fiends as long as we have an arm to strike or a finger to pull a trigger.'
'We are going back,' Petrovitch said quietly. 'As for that deed, it is avenged. The man who was responsible for thatmurder got his sentence of death and his notice of it two days later. He lived through three months of terror, and then shot himself, to escape execution at the hands of some of us. Don't talk more of him.'
The two men sat silent for a little while, but Litvinoff's eyes still blazed with excitement. Petrovitch smoked quietly.
'How was it,' Litvinoff asked presently, turning from the other subject with evident effort, 'that you did not let me know directly you came over?'
'I did not see any good to be gained by it,' answered Petrovitch, who did not choose to tell his friend that he had waited to see with what grace the Prophet's Mantle was worn. 'I heard you speak at the Agora. I read your writings. You seemed to be doing good. Besides, it made concealment of my purposes more easy not to be known as Litvinoff.'
'Then what made you decide to tell me now?' was the very natural question.
Petrovitch hesitated, but only for a moment. Then he said,—
'Frankly, because I thought you were meditating an action that would afterwards cause you more regret than anything else you have done, and I wished to prevent it.'
'And that action was?'
'Taking another wife while your first wife still lived and still loved you.'
Petrovitch spoke slowly and distinctly.
Litvinoff leaned forward in his chair and looked at him amazedly.
'By Heaven!' he said, leaning back with a sort of sigh, 'you seem to know everything.'
'I have made it my business to know.'
'Not quite everything in this case, though,' Litvinoff added, correcting himself, 'for I have no wife.'
Petrovitch's eyes flashed angrily.
'I was not speaking in the phrase of your London society. I did not suppose that you were going to commit an illegal act. I merely imagined that you had intended to commit a crime. I am not mistaken in supposing that you always led the woman in question to believe that you looked upon her as your wife?'
'You are not mistaken—you are right. I did contemplate a crime,' he said, walking over to the bookcase, and standing so that his face was not to be seen. 'I have no defence to offer; but at the time I first contemplated it I deceived myself with the idea that I had. But my wife left me. I did not leave her. I never could have left her; and if she had not left me that vile idea of marrying another woman would never have entered my head. However, that's all at an end now, I'm thankful to say, and I mean to find my wife'—there was no hesitation in his voice this time—'and legalise her position with bell, book, and candle, and any other rites that may seem to her desirable.'
'Regardless of principles?' said Petrovitch, with the faintest possible sneer.
'Damn principles!' Litvinoff cried, turning round, stung by the tone. 'I would have sacrificed them for a woman I merely admired, and they sha'n't stand between me and the woman I love.'
'How do you propose to find her?'
'I haven't the slightest idea. Do you know where she is?' he added sharply.
'Do you remember giving £10 to a man named Hirsch in the autumn?' was the counter-question.
'I do?' with an inquiring look.
'That was for your wife!'
Litvinoff drew a long breath. 'Go on!' he said, simply.