“Trender,” said Duke, unexpectedly after a silence the next morning, as we loitered over breakfast, “pay attention to one thing. I don’t ask you for a fragment of your past history and don’t want to hear anything about it. You’ll say, as yet you haven’t offered me your confidence, and quite right, too, on the top of our short acquaintance. But don’t ever offer it to me, you understand? Our friendship starts from sunrise, morning by morning, and lasts the day. I don’t mean it shall be the less true for that; I have a theory, that’s all.”
“What is it, Straw?”
“Sufficient for the day, it’s called. Providence has elected to give us, not one existence, but so many or few, each linked to the next by an insensibility and intercalated as a whole between appropriate limits.”
“I don’t quite understand.”
“Wait a bit. Each of these existences has its birth and death, and should be judged apart from the others; each is pronounced upon in succession by one’s familiar spirit and its minutes pigeon-holed and docketed above there. When the chain of evidence, for or against, is complete, up these links are gathered in a heap and weighed in both sides of the balance.”
“It sounds more plausible than it is, I think,” said I, with frank discourtesy. “The acts of one day may influence those of the next—or interminably.”
“That’s your lookout; but they needn’t necessarily. With each new birth comes a new capacity for looking at things in their right proportions.”
“How far do you push your theory?”
“As far as you like. I’d have, all the world over, a daily revival of systems.”
“Government—law?”
“Certainly. Of everything.”
“Then justice, injustice, vindictiveness, must all revive, too.”
“No. They’re recalled; they don’t revive.”
“But must a criminal, for instance, be allowed to escape because they have failed to catch him the day he did the deed?”
“That’s exactly it. It makes no difference. He couldn’t atone here for an act committed by him during another existence. But that particular minute goes pretty red into its pigeon-hole, you may be sure.”
“Oh, it’s wild nonsense,” I laughed. “You can’t possibly be consistent.”
“Can’t I? Look here, you are my friend yesterday, and to-day, and always, I hope. I judge you daily on your merits, yet, for all I know, you may have committed murder in one of your past existences?”
The blood went back upon my heart. Then a great longing awoke in me to tell all to this self-reliant soul and gain comfort of my sorrow. But where was the good in the broad face of his theory?
“Well,” I said, with a sigh, “I’ve done things at least I bitterly repent of.”
“That’s the conventional way of looking at it. Repentance in this won’t avail a former existence. Past days of mine have had their troubles, no doubt, but this day I have before me unclouded and to do what I like with.”
“Well, what shall we do with it?” said I. “I hand it over to you to make it a happiness for me. I dare say we shall find plenty of sorrows between sunrise and evening to give it a melancholy charm.”
“Rubbish!” cried my friend. “Cant, cant, cant, ever to suppose that sorrow is necessary to happiness! We mortals, I tell you, have an infinite capacity for delight; given health, spiritual and bodily, we could dance in the sunbeams for eternity and never reach a surfeit of pleasure.”
“Duke,” said I—“may I call you Duke?”
“Of course.”
“It puzzles me where you got—I don’t mean offense—only I can’t help wondering——”
“How I came to have original thoughts and a grammatical manner of speech? Look here——” he held up his stained fingers—“aren’t these the hands of a man of letters?”
“And a man of action,” I said, with a laugh. “But——”
“It’s no use, Renny. I can’t look further back than this morning.”
“You can recall, you know. You don’t deny each existence that capacity?”
“Perhaps I could; but to what advantage? To shovel up a whole graveyard of sleeping remembrances to find the seed of one dead nettle that thrusts its head through? No, thank you. Besides, if it comes to that, I might put the same question to you.”
“Oh, I can easily answer it. I get all my way of speaking from my father first, and, secondly, because I love books.”
He looked at me oddly.
“You’re a modest chicken,” he said. “But I should like to meet your father.”
I could not echo his wish.
“Still,” he went on, “I will tell you, there was a little inexperience of mankind in your wonder. I think—I don’t refer to myself, of course—that no man in the world is more interesting to talk with than the skilled mechanic who has an individuality and a power of expressing it in words. He is necessarily a man of cultivation, and an ‘h’ more or less in his vocabulary is purely an accident of his surroundings.”
At this moment Mr. Cringle tapped at the door and walked into the room.
“I hope I see you ro-bust, gentlemen? And how do you like this village of ours, Mr. Trender?”
“It’s dirty after Winton,” said I.
“Ah,” he said, condescendingly; “the centers of such enormous forces must naturally rise some dust. It’s a proud thing, sir, to contribit one’s peck to the total. I feel it in my little corner here.”
“Why,” said I, “you surprise me, Mr. Cringle. I’m only an ignorant country lad, of course; but it seems to me you are quite a remarkable figure.”
He gave an extra twist to his mustache and sniggered comfortably. “Well,” he said, “it is not for me to contradict you—eh, Mr. Straw?”
“Certainly not,” said Duke; “why, you are famous for your deeds.”
“Very good, Mr. Straw, and perhaps, as you kindly mean it in the double sense. You mightn’t think it, but it wants some knowledge of the law’s mazes to turn a rough draft into a hold-fast agreement or indenture.”
“And you can do that?”
“I flatter myself, Mr. Trender, that it’ll want a microscoptic eye to find flaws in my phraseology.”
He thrust back his head and expanded his chest.
“But I’m overlooking my errand,” said he. “The young lady, as has called before, Mr. Straw, rung me down just now for a message to you.”
“Oh, what was it?”
“She wanted to know if you was game for a walk and she’d be waiting under the market till half after nine.”
“Very well,” and Mr. Cringle took himself off.
“It’s Dolly Mellison,” said Duke to me. “We often go for a Sunday tramp together.”
“Well, don’t stop for me, if you want to go.”
“We’ll both go—why not?”
“Oh, not for anything. Fancy my intruding myself on her.”
“I’ll answer she’ll not object,” said my companion, and again I was half conscious of something unusual in his tone.
“But you might,” said I.
“Not a bit of it. Why should I? We’re not betrothed, you know.”
He answered with a laugh, and pointed, or seemed to point at his twisted lower limbs. “You wouldn’t believe me, would you, if I told you she expects you?” he added.
“Oh, very well,” said I, “if you put it in that way.”
We found Dolly standing under the piazza of Covent Garden market. She made no movement toward us until we were close upon her, and then she greeted us with a shy wriggle and a little blush. She was very daintily dressed, with a fur tippet about her throat, and looked as pretty as a young Hebe.
“Oh,” she said, “I didn’t suppose you would come, too, Mr. Trender.”
“There!” I cried to Duke, with perfect good nature. “I told you I should be in the way.”
“Nonsense!” he said. “Miss Mellison didn’t mean it like that, did you, Dolly?”
“Didn’t I? You see how he answers for me, Mr. Trender?” And she turned half from him with a rosy pout.
“Come!” I cried gayly. “I’ll risk it. I do not believe you’ve the heart to be cruel, Miss Mellison.”
“Thank you for the surname, and also for telling me I’m heartless.”
“You can’t be that as long as mine goes a-begging,” I said, impudently.
She peeped up at me roguishly from under her long lashes and shook her head.
“Come,” said Duke, impatiently; “what are we going to do? Don’t let’s stand chattering here all day.”
“I’ll tell you,” I cried in a sudden reckless flush of extravagance. “Aren’t there pretty places on the Thames one can get to from here?”
“Oh, plenty,” said Duke, dryly, “if one goes by train.”
“Then let’s go and make a pleasant water party of it.”
He shook his head with a set of the lips.
“Those are rare treats,” he said. “Our sort can’t afford such jinks except after a deal of saving.”
“I don’t want you to,” said I. “It’s my business and you’re to come as my guests.”
“Oh, nonsense,” he said, sharply; “we can’t do that.”
“Please speak for yourself, Mr. Straw,” said Dolly. I had noticed her eyes shine at the mere prospect. “If Mr. Trender is so kind as to offer, and can afford it, I’m sure, I, for one, don’t intend to disappoint him.”
“Can he afford it?” said Duke, doggedly.
“I shouldn’t propose it if I couldn’t,” said I, very much on the high horse.
“Of course you wouldn’t,” said Dolly. “I wonder at you, Mr. Straw, for being so insulting.”
“Very well,” said Duke, “I meant it for the best; but let’s be off. I’m for a shallop in Arcady, with Pleasure in a pork-pie hat (it’s very pretty, Dolly) at the helm.”
We went down to Richmond by train, and Duke—good fellow that he was—made a merry company of us. If he felt any soreness over his rebuff he hid it out of sight most effectually.
It was early in November—a beautiful, sparkling morning, and the river bore a fairish sprinkling of pleasure craft on its silvery stretches.
We were neither of us great oarsmen and at first made but poor way, owing to a tendency Duke of the iron sinews showed to pulling me completely round. But presently we got into a more presentable swing and fore-reached even upon a skiff or two whose occupants had treated us to some good-humored chaff upon our starting.
“Woa!” cried Duke. “This pulling is harder than pulling proofs, Renny. Let’s stop by the bank and rest a bit.”
We ran the boat’s nose aground, fastened her painter to a stump and settled down for a talk.
“Enjoying yourself, Dolly?” asked Duke, mopping his forehead.
“Yes, of course—thanks to Mr. Trender.”
“This is a fine variety on our walks, isn’t it?”
“Oh, they’re jolly enough when you’re in a good temper.”
“Am I not always?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Sometimes you say things I don’t understand.”
“See there, Renny,” cried Duke. “If I express myself badly she calls me cross.”
“It isn’t that,” said the girl. “I know I’m ignorant and you’re clever, but you seem to read me and then say things out of yourself that have nothing to do with me—just as if I was a book and you a—what do they call it?—cricket or something.”
We both laughed aloud.
“Oh, Dolly,” said Duke, “what pretty imp taught you satire? Are you a book to Mr. Trender?”
“Oh, no! He talks what I can understand.”
“Better and better! But take comfort, Renny; you’re downed in sweet company.”
“Hush,” said Dolly; “it’s Sunday.”
She dabbled her slender hand in the water and drew it out quickly.
“Oh,” she cried, “it’s cold. I hope we shan’t be upset. Can you swim, Mr. Trender?”
“Yes, like a duck.”
“That’s a comfort, if I fall in. Mr. Straw, here, can’t.”
“I’m built top-heavy,” said Duke, “but I’d try to save you, Dolly.”
The girl’s eyes shone with a momentary remorseful pity.
“I know you would,” she said, softly; “you aren’t one to think about yourself, Duke. How I wish I could swim! I don’t believe there can be anything in the world like getting that medal they give you for saving people from drowning. Have you ever saved any one, Mr. Trender?”
Oh, gentle hand to deal so cruel a stroke! For a moment my smoldering sense of guilt flamed up blood-red.
“No, no,” I said, with a forced laugh. “I’m not like Duke. I do think of myself. I’m afraid.”
We lapsed into silence, out of which came Dolly’s voice presently, murmuring a queer little doggerel song that seemed apt to her childish nature:
“‘Who owns that house on yonder hill?’Said the false black knight to the pretty little child on the road.‘It’s my father’s and mine,’Said the pretty little child scarce seven years old.“‘Will you let me in?’Said the false black knight to the pretty little child on the road.‘Oh, no; not a step,’Said the pretty little child scarce seven years old.“‘Then I wish you deaf and dumb,’Said the false black knight to the pretty little child on the road.‘And I wish you the same, with a blister on your tongue!’Said the pretty little child scarce seven years old.”
“‘Who owns that house on yonder hill?’Said the false black knight to the pretty little child on the road.‘It’s my father’s and mine,’Said the pretty little child scarce seven years old.“‘Will you let me in?’Said the false black knight to the pretty little child on the road.‘Oh, no; not a step,’Said the pretty little child scarce seven years old.“‘Then I wish you deaf and dumb,’Said the false black knight to the pretty little child on the road.‘And I wish you the same, with a blister on your tongue!’Said the pretty little child scarce seven years old.”
“‘Who owns that house on yonder hill?’
Said the false black knight to the pretty little child on the road.
‘It’s my father’s and mine,’
Said the pretty little child scarce seven years old.
“‘Will you let me in?’
Said the false black knight to the pretty little child on the road.
‘Oh, no; not a step,’
Said the pretty little child scarce seven years old.
“‘Then I wish you deaf and dumb,’
Said the false black knight to the pretty little child on the road.
‘And I wish you the same, with a blister on your tongue!’
Said the pretty little child scarce seven years old.”
“Where on earth did you learn that?” said Duke, with a laugh, as Dolly ceased, her eyes dreaming out upon the shining river.
“I don’t know. Mother used to sing it, I think, when I was a little girl.”
“We must question her,” said I.
“Mother’s dead,” said Dolly.
I could have bitten out my tongue.
Duke again exerted himself to put matters on a comfortable footing.
“Dolly and I are both orphans,” said he; “babes in old Ripley’s wood.”
“And I am the remorseless ruffian,” I broke in.
“All right. You didn’t know, of course. Look at that girl on the bank, with the crinoline; she might be riding a hobby-horse.”
“Ain’t she a beauty?” said Dolly, enviously. Her own subscribing to the outrageous fashion then fortunately in its decay was limited to her slender means and the necessities of her work.
“You don’t mean to say you admire her?” said I.
“Don’t I, Mr. Trender? Just as she’d admire me if I was dressed like that.”
“Heaven forbid, Dolly. I won’t call you Dolly if you call me Mr. Trender.”
“Won’t you, now? Upon my word, you’ve got the impudence of twenty.”
“Look here,” said Duke, “I’m for paddling on. I don’t know your views as to dinner, Mr. Renalt, but mine are getting pretty vociferous.”
“My idea is to pull on till we sight a likely place, Mr. Duke Straw.”
We rowed up past Kingston, a cockney town we all fought shy of, and on by grassy reaches as far as Hampton bridge, where we disembarked. Here was a pleasant water-side inn, with a lawn sloping down to the embankment, and, sitting in its long coffee-room, we made a hearty dinner and a merry company. Dolly was flushed and happy as a young naiad when we returned to our boat, and she rippled with laughter and sweetness.
We loitered on the river till the short day was threatening dusk, and then we were still no further on our homeward way than a half-mile short of Kingston. A little cold wind, moreover, was beginning to whine and scratch over the surface of the water, and Dolly pulled her tippet closer about her bosom, feeling chilled and inclined to silence.
“Come,” said Duke, “we must put our shoulders to it or we shan’t get into the lock before dark.”
“Oh!” cried the girl, with a half-whimper, “I had forgotten that horrible lock with its hideous weedy doors. Must we go through it?”
“I’m afraid so,” said Duke; “but,” he added cheerily, “don’t you be nervous. We’ll run you down and through before you have time to count a hundred—if you count slowly.”
She sunk back in her seat with a frightened look and grasped the rudder lines, as if by them only could she hold on to safety. The dusk dropped about us as we pulled on, strain as we might, and presently we both started upon hearing a strangled sob break from the girl.
“Oh,” said Duke, pausing for a moment, “this will never do, Dolly. Why, you can’t be afraid with two such knights to protect you?”
“I can’t help it,” said the poor child, fairly crying now. “You don’t know anything about the river, either of you; and—and mayn’t I get out and walk?”
“Very well. One of us will go with you, while the other pulls the boat down. Only we must get across first. Steady, now, Renny; and cheer up, Doll, and put her nose to the shore opposite.”
We had drifted some little distance since we first easy’d, and a dull booming, that was in our ears at the time, had increased to a considerable roar.
“Give way!” cried Duke; “turn her, Dolly!”
The girl tugged at the right line, gave a gasp, dropped everything, scrambled to her feet, and screamed in a dreadful voice: “We are going over the weir!”
“Sit down!” shouted Duke. “Pull, Renny, like a madman!”
He shipped his oar, forced the girl into a sitting posture and clutched the inner line all in a moment. His promptitude saved us. I fought at the water with my teeth set; the boat’s nose plunged into the bank with a shock that sent us two sprawling, and the boat’s stern swung round dizzily. But before she could cast adrift again I was on my knees and had seized at a projecting root with a grasp like Quasimodo’s.
“Hold on!” cried Duke, “till I come to you. It’s all right, Dolly; you’re quite safe now.”
He crawled to me and grasped the root in his more powerful hands.
“Now,” he said, “you take the painter and get out and drag us higher, out of the pull of the water. I’ll help you the best I can.”
I complied, and presently the boat was drawn to a point so far above as to leave a wide margin for safety.
We took our seats to pull across, with a look at one another of conscious guilt. Dolly sat quite silent and pale, though she shivered a little.
“We didn’t know the river, and that’s a fact,” whispered Duke to me. “Of course we ought to have remembered the lock’s the other side.”
We pulled straight across; then Duke said:
“Here’s the shore, Dolly. Now, you and Trender get out, and I’ll take the boat on.”
“By yourself? No, I won’t. I feel safe with you.”
“Very well,” he answered, gently. “We’ll all go on together. There’s really no danger now we know what we’re about.”
She cried, “No, Duke,” in a poor little quaking voice.
We pulled into the lock cutting without further mishap, though the girl shrunk and blenched as we slid past, at a safe distance, the oblique comb of the weir.
It was some minutes before the lock-keeper answered to our ringing calls, and then the sluices had to be raised and the lock filled from our side. The clash and thunder of the hidden water as it fell into the pit below sounded dismal enough in the darkness, and must, I knew, be dinning fresh terror into the heart of our already stricken naiad. But the hollow noise died off in due course, the creaking gate lumbered open and we floated with a sigh of relief into the weltering pool beyond.
The sluices rattled down behind us, the keeper walked round to the further gate, and his figure appeared standing out against the sky, toiling with bent back at the levers. Suddenly I, who had been pulling bow, felt myself tilting over in a curious manner.
“Hullo!” I cried. “What’s up with the boat?”
In one moment I heard a loud shout come from the man at the gates, and saw Dolly, despite her warning, stand hurriedly up and Duke make a wild clutch at her; the next, the skiff reeled under me and I was spun, kicking and struggling, into the water.
An accident, common enough and bad enough to those who know little of Thames craft, had befallen us. We had got the boat’s stern jammed upon a side beam of the lock, so that her nose only dropped with the sinking water.
I rose at once in a black swirl. The skiff, jerked free by our unceremonious exit, floated unharmed in the lock, but she floated empty. Risen to the surface, however, almost with me, Duke’s dark head emerged close by her, so that with one frantic leap upward he was able to reach her thwarts, to which he clung.
“Dolly!” he gasped—“Dolly!”
I had seen her before he could cry out again, had seized and was struggling with her.
“Don’t hold me!” I cried; “let me go, Dolly, and I’ll save you.”
She was quite beyond reason, deaf to anything but the despairing call of life. In another instant, I knew, we should both go under and be dragged into the rush of the sluices. Seeing the uselessness of trying to unclasp her hands, I fought to throw myself and her toward the side of the lock nearest. The water was bubbling in my mouth, when I felt a great iron hook whipped into the collar of my coat and we were both hauled to the side.
“Hold on there, mate!” cried the lock-keeper, “while I get your boat under.”
I had caught at a dangling loop of chain; but even so the weight of my almost senseless burden threatened to drag me down.
“Be quick!” I gasped, “I’m pretty near spent.”
With the same grapnel he caught and towed the boat, Duke still hanging to it, to where I clung, and leaped down himself into it.
“Now,” he said, “get a leg over and you’re right.”
It was a struggle even then, for Dolly would not let me out of her agonized clutch—not till we could lay her, white as a storm-beaten lily, on the bottom boards. Then we turned and seized Duke over the thwarts and he tumbled in and lay in a heap, quite exhausted.
His mind relieved, our preserver took off his cap, scratched his forehead and spat into the water.
“I’ve known a many wanting your luck,” he said, gruffly. “What made you do it, now?”
Judging our ignorance to be by no means common property, I said, “Ah, what?” in the tone that suggests acquiescence, or wonder, and asked him if he had a fire handy.
“There’s a bright one burning inside,” he said. “You’re welcome to it.”
He punted the boat to a shallow flight of steps, oozy with slime, that led to the bank above, where his cottage was.
“We’ll carry the gal to it,” said he. “See if she can move herself.”
I bent down over the prostrate figure. It looked curiously youthful and slender in its soaked and clinging garments.
“Dolly,” I whispered, “there’s a fire above. Will you let me carry you to it?”
I thought my voice might not penetrate to her dulled senses, but to my wonder she put her arms round my neck immediately.
“Yes,” she moaned, “I’m so cold. Take me to the warmth or I shall die.”
We lifted her out between us and carried her into the house kitchen. There a goodly blaze went coiling up the chimney, and the sight was reviving in itself.
“Shall we leave you here alone a bit?” said I, “to rest and recover? There’s to be no more of the river for us. We’ll walk the distance that remains.”
She gave me a quick glance, full of a pathetic gratitude, and whispered, “Yes; I’d better be alone.”
“And if you take my advice,” said our host, “you’ll strip off them drownded petticuts and wrap yourself in a blanket I’ll bring you while they’re a-drying; wait, while I fetch it.”
As he went out Dolly beckoned me quickly to her.
“I heard you tell me to leave go,” she said, hurriedly, in a low voice; “but I couldn’t—Renny, I couldn’t; and you saved my life.”
Her lips were trembling and her eyes full of tears. She clasped her hands and held them entreatingly toward me.
A gust of some strange feeling—some yearning sense of protection toward this pretty, lovable child—flooded my heart.
“You poor little thing,” I whispered, in a pitying voice, and taking her two hands in one of mine I passed my other arm around her.
Then she lifted her face eagerly and I bent and softly dropped a kiss on her warm, wet lips.
The moment I had done it I felt the shame of my action.
“There, dear, forgive me,” I said. “Like you, Dolly, I couldn’t let go at once,” and our friend returning just then with the blanket, we left the girl to herself and stepped outside.
A queer exultant feeling was on me—a sense as of the lightening of some overburdening oppression. “A life for a life.” Why should the words ring stilly, triumphantly in my brain? I might earn for my breast a cuirass of medals such as Dolly had desired, and what would their weight be as set in the scale against the one existence I had terminated?
Perhaps it was not that. Perhaps it was that I felt myself for the first time in close touch with a yearning human sympathy; that its tender neighborhood taught me at a breath to respect and stand by what was noble in myself. The shadow that must, of course, remain with me always, I would not have away, but would only that it ceased to dominate my soul’s birthright of independence.
There was in my heart no love for Dolly—no passion of that affinity that draws atom to atom in the destiny that is human. There was only the pitying protective sense that came to man through the angels, and, in its sensual surrender, marked their fall from divinity. For to the end, without one thought of wavering, Zyp must shine the mirage of my barren waste of love.
Suddenly I remembered, with a remorseful pang, that all this time I had forgotten Duke. I hurried down to the steps, calling him. He was sitting in the boat, his elbows on his knees, his face buried in his hands.
“Duke!” I cried, “come out and let’s see what we can do for a dry. You’ll get the frost in your lungs sitting there.”
He rose at once, staggering a little. I had to run down the steps to help him ashore, where he stood shaken all through with violent shiverings.
“Whisky,” said our host, laconically, watchful of the poor fellow, “and enough of it to make your hair curl.”
Between us we got him into the house, where he was made to swallow at a gulp three finger-breadths in a tumbler of the raw spirit. Then after a time the color came back to his cheeks, the restored nerves to his limbs.
At that our kindly host made us strip, and providing us with what coverings he could produce, set us and our soaked belongings before a second fire in his little parlor, and only left us when summoned outside to his business. As the door closed behind him Duke turned to me. A sort of patient sorrow was on his face—an expression as of renunciation of some favored child of his fancy—I cannot express it better.
“You carried her in?” he said, quietly.
“Dolly? Yes.”
“Where is she?”
“Baking before the kitchen fire. She’ll be ready before we are.”
“Well—I had no right. What a chapter of mishaps.” Then he turned upon me with a sudden clap of fierceness. “Why did you ever propose this trip? I tried to dissuade you, and you might have known I was an idiot on the water.”
“My good Duke,” I answered, with a coolness that covered a fine glow of heat, “that don’t sound very gracious. I meant it for a pleasure party, of course. Accidents aren’t matters under human control, you know.”
He struck his knee savagely.
“No,” he muttered, “or I shouldn’t have these.”
Then in a moment the sweetness came back to his face, and he cried with a smile, half-humorous and all pathetic:
“Here’s the value of my philosophy. I’m no more consistent than a Ripley pamphlet and not a quarter so amusing. But—oh, if I had only learned to swim!”
For nearly four years did I work persistently, striving to redeem my past, at the offices in Great Queen Street. At this period my position was greatly improved, my services estimated at a value that was as honorable to my employer as it was advantageous to me. I had grown to be fairly at peace with myself and more hopeful for the future than I had once deemed it possible that I could ever be.
Not all so, however. The phantom light that had danced before my youthful eyes, danced before them still, no whit subdued in brilliancy. With the change to wider and manlier sentiments that I was conscious of in my own development, I fostered secret hope of a similar growth in Zyp. At 22, I thought, she could hardly remain the irresponsible, bewitching changeling she had been at 17. Womanliness must have blossomed in her, and with it a sense of the right relationship of soul to body. Perhaps even the glamour of mystery that must surround my manner of life had operated as a growing charm with her, and had made me, in her eyes, something of the fascinating figure she always was and would be in mine.
Sometimes now, in thinking of him, I had fear of Jason, but more often not. Zyp’s parting words to me—that were ever in my ears—seemed weighted with the meaning, at least, that had I fought my battle well I should have won.
To think of it—to recall it—always gave me a strange, troubled comfort. In my best moments it returned upon me, crying—crying the assurance that no selfish suit pressed by my brother could ever prevail over the inwarder preference her heart knew for me. In my worst, it did no more than trouble me with a teasing mock at my human passion so persistent in its faith to a will-o’-the-wisp.
I think that all this time I never dared to put bravely to myself the thought—as much part of my being as my eyesight—that not for one true moment had I yielded my hope of Zyp to circumstances. All my diligence, all my labor, all my ambition, were directed to this solitary end—that some day I might lay them at her feet as bribes to her favor. Therefore, till self-convinced of their finished worthiness, I toiled on with dogged perseverance, studying, observing, perfecting, denying myself much rest and pleasure till my heart should assure me that the moment was come.
And what of them at the old haunted mill? News was rare and scanty, yet at intervals it came to link me with their destinies. The first year of my banishment my father wrote to me three times—short, rugged notes, void of information and negatively satisfactory only in the sense that, had anything of importance taken place, he would, I concluded, have acquainted me of it. These little letters were answered by me in epistles of ample length, wherein I touched upon my manner of life and the nature of my successes. The second year, however, the desultory correspondence was taken up by Jason, who wrote, as he talked, in a spirit of boisterous banter, and, under cover of familiar gossip, told me less, if possible, than my father had. Dad, he said in his first, had tired of the effort and had handed the task over to him. Therefore he acquitted himself of it in long leaps over gaps that covered months, and it was now more than four or five since I had received any sort of communication from him.
This did not greatly trouble me. There was that between us, which, it always seemed to me, he sought to give expression to in his letters—a hint secretly conveyed that I must never forget I lived and prospered on sufferance only. Now my own knowledge of the methods of justice, no less than the words Dr. Crackenthorpe had once applied to my case, had long been sufficient to assure me that I had little or nothing to fear from the processes of the law. No less peremptory, however, was the conviction that Jason had it in his power to socially ruin me at a word; and the longer that word was delayed—that is to say, so long as my immunity did not clash with his interests—the better chance I had of testing and retesting my armor of defense. Yet, for all my care, he found out a weak place presently.
In the meantime I lived my life, such as it was, and found a certain manner of pleasure in it. Duke and I, still good friends, changed our lodgings, toward the last quarter of the fourth year, and moved into more commodious ones over an iron-monger’s shop in Holborn. Here we had a sitting-room as well as a bedroom common to both of us, and tasted the joys of independence with a double zest.
Since our river experience it had become a usual thing for me to join my friend and Dolly in their frequent Sunday walks together. This, at first, I deprecated; but Duke would have it so; and finally it lapsed into an institution. Indeed, upon many occasions I was left to escort the girl alone, Duke pleading disinclination or the counter-attraction of some book he professed to be absorbed in.
Was I quite so blind as I appeared to be? I can hardly say myself. That the other entertained a most affectionate regard for the girl was patent. He was always to me, however, such a quaint medley of philosophical resignation and human susceptibility that I truly believe I was more than half inclined to doubt the existence in him of any strong bias toward the attractions of the other sex.
His behavior to Dolly was generally much more that of an elder brother toward a much younger half-sister born into the next generation, than of a lover who seeks no greater favor from a woman than that she shall keep the best secrets of her womanhood for him. He petted, indulged, and playfully analyzed her all in one. Now, thinking of him in the stern knowledge of years, I often marvel over the bitter incapacity of the other sex to choose aright the fathers of its children. How could the frailest, prettiest soul among them turn from such luminous depths as his to the meretricious foppery of emptier Parises?
But then I was greatly to blame. The winning ways of the girl, no less than Duke’s persistent deprecation of any affectation of proprietorship in her, are my one excuse. A poor one, even then, for how may I cry out on simple-hearted Dolly, when I failed to read the little history of sorrow that was daily before my eyes. It was after events only that interpreted to me the pride that would not let the cripple kneel, a suitor to pity.
As to my own feelings toward the pretty soul I had once so basely linked to my own with an impulsive kiss—they were a compound of indulgence and a tenderness that fell altogether short of love. I desired to be on brotherly terms of intimacy with her, indeed, but only in such manner as to preclude thought of any closer tie. When she was shy with me upon our first meeting after that untoward contact in the lock-house, I laughed her into playfulness and would have no sentimental glamour attaching to our bond of sympathy. Alas! I was to learn how reckless a thing it is to seek to extinguish with laughter the fire of a woman’s heart.
One Sunday afternoon in the early autumn of that fourth year, Dolly and I were loitering together about the slopes and byways of Epping forest. There is no season more attuned to the pathetic sympathies of young hearts than that in which the quiet relaxing of green life from its hold on existence speaks only to grayer breasts of premature decay and the vulgar ceremonial of the grave. Youth, however, recognizes none of this morbid aspect. To it the yellowing leaf, if it speaks of desolation, speaks from that “passion of the past” the poets strove to explore. It stands but two-thirds of the way up to the hill of years, and flowering stretches are beneath it to the rear and above, before its eyes, the fathomless sky and the great clouds nozzling the mountain crests like flocks of sheep.
All that afternoon as we wandered we came across lizards sprawling stupefied—as they will in October—on buskets of gorse, too exhausted, apparently, to feel the prick of thorn or fear, and butterflies sitting on blades of grass with folded wings, motionless as those that are wired to bonnets. The air was full of a damp refreshing sweetness, and the long grass about every bush and hedge side began to stir with the movement of secret things, as though preparations for mystic revel were toward and invitations passing. I could almost see the fairy rings forming, noiseless, on the turf, when the lonely moon should hang her lantern out by and by.
Dolly had been unusually silent during the afternoon, and now, as we turned to retrace our steps in the direction of the station from which we were to take train for London, she walked beside me without uttering a word.
Suddenly, however, she put her hand upon my arm and stayed me.
“Renny,” she said, “will you stop a little while? I want to speak to you.”
“All right,” I said; “speak away.”
“Not here—not here. Come off the path; there’s a seat out there.”
Seeing with surprise that her face was pale and drawn with nervousness, and fancying our tramp might have over-tired her, I led her to the place she indicated—a bench set in the deep shadow of a chestnut tree—and we both sat down.
“Now, Doll,” I said, gayly, “what’s the tremendous confidence?”
“Renny,” she said, quietly, “William Reid has asked me to marry him.”
“No! William Reid—the young fellow over at Hansard’s? Well, I can only tell you, Dolly, that I know nothing but what’s good of him for a steady and promising chap, who’s sure to make as fine a husband as he is a workman.”
“Do you advise me to take him, then? Do you want me to?”
“You might do much worse—indeed you might, Dolly. Why, to my knowledge, he’s drawing £3 a week already. Of course I shall be very, very sorry to lose my little chum and companion, but I always foresaw that this would have to be the end of our comradeship some day.”
She sat looking at the ground a little while and adjusting a fallen twig with the point of her parasol. Then she rose and said, in the same quiet tone, “Very well,” and moved a step away.
I rose also and was about to resume the subject, when in a moment, to my horror, she threw herself back on the bench and, flinging her hands up to her face, burst into a passion of tears.
I was so startled and shocked that for the instant I could think of nothing to do or say. Then I bent down and cried:
“Dolly, what is it? What’s the matter? Have I hurt you in any way?”
She struggled with her sobs, but made a brave effort to command herself.
“Oh, don’t look, don’t listen! I shall be all right in a minute.”
I moved away a little space and stood anxiously waiting. When I turned again her face was still buried in her arm, but the keenness of the outburst was subdued.
I approached and leaned over her tenderly, putting a kind hand on her shoulder.
“Now, little woman,” I said, “won’t you tell me what it is? I might comfort and counsel you at least, Dolly, dear.”
She answered so low that I had to stoop further to hear her.
“I only thought, perhaps—perhaps you might care more and not want me to.”
What a simple little sentence, yet how fierce a vision it sprung upon my blindness! I rose and stepped back almost with a cry. Then Dolly sat up and saw my face.
“Renny,” she cried, “I never meant to tell; only—only, I am so miserable.”
I went to her and took her hand and helped her to her feet.
“Dolly,” I said, in a low, hoarse voice, “I have been a selfish brute. I never thought what I was doing, when I should have thought. Now, you must give me time to think.”
“You didn’t know. Renny”—her pretty eyes were struggling with tears again, and her poor face looked up into mine, entreating me not to take base advantage of her surrender—“if I kissed you as you kissed me once do you think it would come?”
“It isn’t right for us to try, dear.”
Thank heaven my manhood stood the test—the inference so pathetic in its childish simplicity.
“Come,” I said, “we will go back now. I want time to think it all over by myself. You mustn’t refer to it again, Dolly, in any way—not till I can see you by and by alone.”
She said, “Yes, Renny,” humbly. Her very manner toward me was marked by a touching obedience.
We caught our train and sped back to London in a crowded compartment, so that the present embarrassment of tete-a-tete was spared us. At the terminus we parted gently and gravely on both sides and went each of us home.
Duke was in bed when I reached our lodgings, and for that I was grateful, for I felt far too upset and confused to relish the idea of a talk with him. Indeed, since the moment Dolly had confessed to me, he had hung strangely in the background of my thoughts. I felt a comfortless dawning of apprehension that all along he had been keen witness of the silent little drama in which unconsciously I was an actor—had sat in the pit and sorrowfully gauged the purport of the part I played.
I went to bed, but never to sleep. All night long I tossed, struggling to unravel the disorder in my brain. I could think out nothing collectively—warp and woof were inextricably confused.
At length, in despair, I rose, redressed and went outside. The church clocks clanged six as I stepped onto the pavement; there was a fresh-blown coolness in the dusky air; the streets stretched emptily to the dawn.
In the very contact with space, the tumult in my head settled down into some manner of order, and I was able to face, after a fashion, the problem before me.
Here, to one side, would I place Zyp; to the other Dolly. Let me plead to each, counseled by heart and conscience. To Zyp: You have and have ever had that of mine to which I can give no name, but which men call “love,” as an expression of what is inexpressible. I know that this gift, this sixth sense, that, like the soul, embraces all the others, once acquired, is indestructible. For joy or evil I am doomed to it, spiritually to profit or be debased by it. You may scorn, but you cannot kill it, and exiled in material form from you here it will make to you in the hereafter as surely as a stone flung from a crater returns to the earth of which it is kin.
Say that the accidents of existence are to keep us here apart; that your heart desires to mate with another more picturesque than mine. It may be so. During these long four years you have never once directly, by word or sign, given proof that my being holds any interest for you. You banished me, I must remember, for all my efforts to torture hope out of them, with words designed to be final. What if I accept the sentence and say: “I yield my material form to one who desires its affections; who will be made most happy by the bestowal of them upon her; who yearns to me, perhaps, as I to you.” I may do so and none the less be sure of you some day.
To Dolly: I have done you a bitter wrong, but one, I think, not irremediable. Perhaps I never thought but that friendship apart from love was possible between man and woman. In any case, I have given far too much consideration to myself and far too little to you. You love me by your own confession, and, in this world of bitter troubles, it is very sweet to be loved, and loved by such as you. I am pledged, it seems, to a hopeless quest. What if I give it up? What if we taste joy in this world—the joy of a partnership that is graced by strong affection and cemented by a respect that shall be mutual? I can atone for my error to you here; my wilder love that is not to be controlled by moral reasoning I consign to futurity.
Thinking these thoughts, a picture rose before me of a restful haven, wherein my storm-beaten life might rock at anchor to the end; of Dolly as my wife, in all the fascination of her pretty, winning personality—her love, her playfulness, her wistful eyes and rosy mouth so responsive to laughter or tears. I felt very tender toward the child, who was glorified into woman by her very succumbing to the passion she had so long concealed. “Why should I struggle any longer?” I cried in my heart, “when an earthly paradise opens its gates to me; when self-sacrifice means peace and content, and to indulge my imagination means misery?”
It was broad daylight by the time I had touched some clew to the problem that so bewildered me, and suddenly I became aware that I was moving in the midst of a great press of people. They were all going in one direction and were generally of the lowest and most degraded classes in London. There was a boisterous and unclean mirth rampant among them. There was a ravenous eagerness of haste, too, that one seemed to associate instinctively with the hideous form of vampire that crouches over fields of slain and often completes what the bullet has but half done. Women were among them in numbers; some carrying infants in their gaunt, ragged arms; some plumed and decked as if for a gala sight.
I was weary with thought; weary with the monotony of introspection. Evidently there was some excitement toward, and to follow it up would take me out of myself.
Toiling up Ludgate hill we went, an army of tramping feet. Then, like a sewer diverted, we wheeled and poured into the noisome alley of the Old Bailey.
In a moment the truth burst upon me with a shock. There was a man to be hanged that morning!
I twisted hurriedly about and strove to force my way out again. I might as easily have stayed the Thames with a finger. I was beaten back with oaths and coarse ribaldry—gathered up and carried ruthlessly in the rush for place—hemmed in, planted like a maggot in one great trunk of bestial and frouzy human flesh. Had I striven again I should have been smashed and pounded underfoot, all semblance of life stamped from me.
I looked about me in agony. Before and around was one huge sea of faces, from the level of which rose a jangling patter of talk and cries, like bubbles bursting on the surface of a seething tank of corruption. And under the grim shadow of Newgate there stood, in full view, a hideous machine. Barriers were about it, and a spruce cordon of officials, who stood out humanly in that garden of squalid refuse. It was black, with a black crossbeam; and from the beam a loop hung motionless, like a collar for death to grin through, and the crowd were already betting on the expression of his face when he should first see it.
I do not know how long or short a time my anguish lasted. It may have been half an hour, when the deep tolling of a bell wrought sudden silence in the fetid air. At its first stroke the roar of voices went off and lessened, rolling like a peal of thunder; at its third the quiet of eternity had fallen and consumed the world.
A mist came before my eyes. When it cleared I was aware of a little group on the platform, and one, with a ghastly white face, the center of it.
“Who is it?” I whispered, in intolerable agony.
“Curse you!” growled my next neighbor. “Can’t you hold your tongue and let a cove look?”
A word marred the full relish of his appetite.
I managed to slew my head away from the direct line of vision. A low babble of voices came from the scaffold. He must be reprieved, I thought, with a leap of the heart. I could not conceive voices sounding natural, otherwise, under such fearful circumstances.
Suddenly, as I was on the point of looking once more to ease my horrible tension of mind, there dropped upon my ears a low rumbling flap, and immediately a hoarse murmur went up from the multitude. Then, giving a cry myself, I turned my face. The rope hung down in a straight line, but loop and man were gone.
From the universal murmur, by claps and starts, the old uproar bubbled forth from the faces, till the pent-up street resounded with it. An after-dinner loquacity was on all and the fellow who had cursed me a minute ago addressed me now with over-brimming geniality of information.
“Who’s him, says you? Why, where’s your wits gone, matey? Him was Mul-ler, the greasy furriner as murdered old Briggs.”
The trial had made sensation enough of late, but the date of the poor wretch’s execution I had had no thought of.
When at last I could force a passage through the press—for they lingered like ghouls over the crumbs of the banquet—I broke into Holborn, with my whole soul panting and crying for fresh air and forgetfulness. It was hideous, it was inhuman, it was debasing, I cried to myself, to launch that quivering mass of terror into eternity in a public shambles! To such as came to see, it must be grossly demoralizing; to those who, like me, were enforced spectators, it was a sickening experience that must leave an impression of morbidity almost indelible.
Suddenly I felt a hand grasp my shoulder and a voice exclaim: “Renny, by all the saints!”
I turned—and it was Jason.
He held me at arm’s length and cried again: “Renny? Really?—and a true sportsman as of old!”
Then he leaned to me and whispered with a grin: “I say, old fellow, if it wasn’t for luck you might be any day where he stood just now.”
At first I hardly grasped the import of my brother’s words, or the fact that here was the old fateful destiny upon me again, so lost were the few faculties I could command in wonder at his unexpected appearance in London.
I stared and stared and had not a word to say.
“Where’s your tongue, old chap?” he cried. “This is an affectionate greeting on your part, upon my word, and after near four years, too.”
I pressed my hand across my forehead and strove to smooth the confusion therefrom.
“You must forgive me,” I said at length; “this sudden meeting has driven me all abroad; and then I got stuck down there by mistake, and the sight has half-turned my brain, I think.”
“By mistake, was it?” he said, with a mocking titter. “Oh, Renny, don’t I know you?—though your looks are changed, too, for the matter of that; more than mine are, I expect.”
I could well believe. Soul and manhood must have wrought new expression in me; but, for Jason, he was the Jason of old—fuller, more set and powerful; yet the same beautiful personality with the uninterpretable eyes.
“Well,” he said, “aren’t you surprised to see me?”
“Surprise isn’t the word.”
“Nor pleasure either, I expect.”
“No. I should be a liar to say it was.”
“Well, you used to be that, you know; though I dare say you’ve found out the better policy now.”
“At any rate, as you’re here, you’ll come home with me, won’t you?”
“Of course. That’s what I intend. I’ve been in London three or four days, and went over to your old place yesterday, but found you had left. I got the new address off a queer old chap there. Why didn’t you tell us you had changed?”
“I did. I wrote to dad about it.”
“Well, anyhow, he never told me.”
“That seems funny. How is he?”
“Oh, the same old besotted curmudgeon as ever.”
“Don’t, Jason. Dad’s dad for all his failings.”
“Yes, and Zyp’s Zyp for all hers.”
It gave me a thrill to hear the old name spoken familiarly, though by such reckless lips.
“Is—is she all right?”
“She’s Zyp, I tell you, and that means anything that’s sprightly and unquenchable. Let her alone for a jade; I’m sick of her name.”
Was it evident from this that his suit had not prospered? I looked at his changing eyes and my heart reeled with a sudden sick intoxication of hope. Was my reasoning to be all gone through with again? “Come,” I said, “let’s make for my place. A fellow-hand lives with me there.”
We walked up Holborn together. He had eyes for every incident, a tongue that seldom ceased wagging. Many a smart and powdered working girl, tripping to her business, nudged her companion and looked after him. He accepted it all with a bold indifference—the masterful condescension that sets tight-laced breasts a-twittering under their twice-turned jackets. He was much better dressed than I was and carried himself with some show of fashion.
Duke had left when we reached home, and his absence I hardly regretted.
“Well,” said my brother, as we entered the sitting-room, “you’ve decent quarters, Renny, and no doubt deserve them for being a good boy. You can give me some breakfast, I suppose?”
“If you don’t mind eating alone,” I said. “I’ve got no appetite.”
“All the worse for you. I never lose mine.” The table was already laid as Duke had left it. I fetched a knuckle of ham from our private store and placed it before my unwelcome guest, who fell to with a healthy vigor of hunger.
“It’s as well, perhaps, I didn’t find you last night,” he said, munching and enjoying himself. “We should have sat up late and then I might have overslept myself and missed the fun. I say, didn’t he go down plump? I hoped the rope would break and that we should have it over again.”
“Jason!” I cried, “drop it, won’t you? I tell you I got caught there by mistake, and that the whole thing was horrible to me!”
“Oh, all right,” he said, with a laugh. “I shouldn’t have thought you’d have cared, but I won’t say anything more about it.”
I would not challenge word or tone in him. To what could I possibly appeal in one so void of the first instincts of humanity?
He pushed his plate away presently and fetched out a little pipe and began to smoke. I had sat all the time by the window, looking vaguely upon the crowded street.
“Now,” I said, turning to him, “let’s hear why you are in London?”
He raised his eyebrows with an affectation of perplexity.
“Didn’t I tell you?” he said. “But there’s nothing to explain. I wanted to come and I came.”
“Four days ago?”
“More or less.”
“But what brought you? Where did you get the money?”
“Never mind. That’s my affair. I did get it, and there’s an end.”
“How long do you intend to stop?”
“It all depends upon circumstances. Maybe I shall get something to do here.”
“Well, you might. I had nothing more to recommend me than you have when I first came.”
“Not so much, my good fellow.”
He threw out his chest and a whiff of smoke together.
“I’ve more about me to take the fancy, I believe, and I’m not handicapped with a depressing secret for the unscrupulous to trade upon. Besides, you forget that I’ve a friend at court, which you never had.”
“Meaning me. It’s no good, I can tell you in the very beginning. I’ve not influence enough with my employer to foist a useless fresh hand upon him.”
“We’ll see, my friend—we’ll see, perhaps, by and by. I’m not in any hurry. I haven’t the slightest intention of working till I’m forced to.”
“I suppose not. But what are you going to do in the meantime?”
“Enjoy life, as I always do.”
“Here, in London?”
“Yes, of course.”
“We can’t put you up at this place. It’s impossible.”
“Wait till you’re asked. I’ve got my own quarters.”
“Where?”
“Find out if you can. I keep my private burrow secret.”
“Well, it’s all very queer, but I suppose you know your own business best.”
“Naturally,” he said, and sat frowning at me a little while.
Then presently he rose and came and looked down upon me.
“Renny,” he said, quietly, “I’m going now, but I shall look you up from time to time. I just want to say a thing first, though. You haven’t received me very well, and I shan’t forget it. There’s a new manner about you that’s prettier than it’s quite safe. You seem to have thought matters over and to have come to the conclusion that this lapse of years has tided you over a little difficulty we remember. I only want to suggest that you don’t presume upon that too far. Grant it to be true, as old Crackenthorpe said, that that fellow Muller’s fate isn’t likely to be yours. I can make things pretty hot for you, nevertheless.”
He nodded at me once or twice, with his lips set, and so walked from the room.
For an hour after he had gone, regardless of the calls of business, I sat on by the window pondering the meaning of this down-swoop and its likely influence on my fortunes.
The nervous apprehension of boyhood had left me; I had carved out an independent path for myself and had prospered. Was it likely that, thus restored, as it were, to manliness, I could weakly succumb to a sense of fatality? I was stronger by nature and experience than this blackest of blackmailers. He who takes his moral fiber from humanity must necessarily surpass the egotist who habitually drains upon himself.
As to the mere fact of my brother’s journey hither, and his acquirement of the means which enabled him to do so and to present a becoming appearance, I cared to speculate but little. London was the natural goal of his kind, and when the migratory fit came he was bound by hook or by crook to gather the wherewith for his flight.
It was the immediate presence of his blackrent mood that I had to combat, and I found myself strong to do so. I would not own his mastery; I would anticipate him and force the crisis he wished to postpone for his own gain and my torment. That very evening would I tell Duke all and abide by his judgment.
And Dolly? Here on the instant I compromised with manliness and so admitted a weak place in my armor. Viewed through the dizzy mist of my own past and haunted suffering, this sweet and natural child stood out, such a tender vision of innocence that I dared not arrogate to myself the right of informing it with an evil that must be negative only in the first instance. How can I imperil her soul, I thought, by shattering at a blow the image, my image, that enlightens it? Sophistry—sophistry; for what true woman is the worse for learning that her idol is poor humanity after all—not a thing to worship, but a soul to help and protect—a soul thirsting for the deep wells of sympathy?
Had I been wise to forestall my brother with all whose influence was upon my life a great misery might have been averted. In this instance I temporized, and the fatal cloud of calamity rose above the horizon.
Why was it that, at the first, Dolly was much more in my mind than Zyp? That I cannot answer altogether, but so it was. The balance of my feelings was set no differently; yet, while it seemed quite right and proper that Zyp should estimate me at my dual personality, I shrunk with shuddering from the thought of Dolly knowing me as I knew myself. Perhaps it was that, for all my sense of passionate affinity to the wild creature once so part of my destinies, I recognized in the other the purer soul; that it was the love of the first I desired, the good will of the second. Perhaps, also, the recognition of this drove me on again to abide by my decision of the morning. It is useless to speculate now; for the little unhappy tale ended otherwise than as I had prefigured it. My day had begun with an omen as ghastly as its sequel was to be.
That evening, in the luminous dusk of our sitting-room, I sat up and gave Duke my history. He would have stopped me at the outset, but I would brook no eccentric philosophy in the imperious fever of insistence that was my mood. I told him of all that related personally to me—my deed, my repentance—my brother’s exposure and renewed menaces; but to Zyp I only referred in such manner as to convey the impression that whatever influence she had once exerted over me was dead with boyhood and scarcely to be resurrected.
That here I intentionally told a half-truth only, cowardly in the suspicion that the whole would be resented by my hearer on Dolly’s behalf, I cannot deny. I dared not commit myself to a policy of absolute confidence.
When I had finished there was a silence, which I myself was forced to at length break.
“Duke,” I said, “haven’t you a remark to make—no word of advice or rebuke?”
“Not one, Renny. What concern have we with that past existence of yours?”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake drop that nonsense for once in a way. It’s a very real trouble to me, whatever it is to you.”
“Old man, you did and you repented in one day. The account up there must balance.”
“You think it must?”
“We are masters of our acts—not of our impulses. You strike a bell and it clangs. You strike a man and the devil leaps out at his eyes. It’s in the rebound that the thought comes that decides the act. In this case yours was natural to yourself, for you are a good fellow.”
“And so are you, a hundred times over, to take it so. You don’t know the terror it has been to me—that it must be to me still in a measure. The account may balance; but still——”
“Well?”
“The boy—my brother—died.”
“Yes—after you had tried to save him.”
“Duke—Duke, you can’t hold me not to blame.”
“I don’t, indeed. You were very much to blame for not retreating when your better angel gave you the chance. It’s for that you’ll be called to account some day—not the other.”
“Well, I’ll stand up and cry ‘peccavi!’” I said, sadly.
“Renny,” said Duke, from the shadow of his side of the room, “what’s this elder brother of yours like?”
I explained Jason’s appearance to the best of my power.
“Ah,” he said, quietly, “I thought so.”
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing. Only I saw him this afternoon taking the bearings of the office from t’other side the street.”
“Very likely. He mentioned something about using my influence with Ripley to give him a berth later on. Probably he was debating his ground.”
“You haven’t given your confidence to any one but me in this matter?”
“No.”
“Do you intend to?”
“If you think it right. Shall I tell Ripley?”
“It’s my opinion you should. Forestall your brother in every direction.”
“Well, yours and his are the only two that concerns me.”
“One other, Renny.”
“Who?”
“Dolly.”
He leaned forward and looked at me with such intensity of earnestness that his black eyes seemed to pierce to my very soul.
“Shall I,” he said—and his gaze never left my face—“shall I acknowledge your confidence with another?”
“It shall be sacred, Duke,” I answered low, “if it refers to past or present.”
He threw himself back with a sudden wail.
“To both!” he cried; “to both!”
He was himself again directly.
“Bah!” he cried; “what a woman I am! Renny, you shall for once find me sick of philosophy and human.”
I resumed my seat, fairly dumfounded at this revelation of unwonted depths in my friend, and stared at him in silence; once more he leaned forward and seemed to read me through.
“Renny, tell me—do you wish to make Dolly your wife?”
“Duke, upon my soul I don’t know.”
“Do you love her?”
“If I thought I did, as you meant it, I could answer your first question.”
“And you can’t?”
“No, I can’t.”
“Renny, make her happy. She loves you with all her heart.”
“Would that be fair to her, Duke? Let me know my own mind first.”
“Ah, I am afraid you don’t care to know it; that you are playing with a pleasurable emotion. Take care—oh, take care, I tell you! The halt and maimed see further in the dark than the vigorous. Renny, there is trouble ahead. I know more of women than you do, perhaps, because, cut off from manly exercises, I can gauge their temptations and their weaknesses. I see a way of striking at you that you don’t dream of. Be great with resolve! Save my little book-sewer, I implore you.”