Chris was watching him with angry mystification.
"I don"t know what you"re driving at," he said shortly. "But I"m much obliged to you for the compliment, I"m sure. Marie hadn"t a farthing when I married her--but I settled half of everything on her on our wedding day."
Feathers turned his white face.
"Why didn"t you tell her the truth?" he asked with difficulty. "No good ever comes of lying and subterfuge and deceit ..." He laughed grimly at his own words! He was a fine one to get up in the pulpit and preach when in another twenty-four hours he would have broken every code of honor and friendship.
It was trembling on his lips to tell Chris the whole truth, to keep back nothing from that first moment in the hotel lounge, when his too-ready tongue had started all the mischief.
But for him and his blundering, Chris and his wife would have been happy enough now. He seemed to see it all as plainly as if it were a picture unraveled before his eyes.
Marie had turned against Chris from the moment when she had overheard what he had said to Atkins. All her pride had been up in arms and had gone on increasing from that day until to-night, when in her desperation and unhappiness she had come to him.
"I don"t know that it matters about not telling her," Chris said wretchedly. "She told me afterwards that she had known all the time, though G.o.d alone knows who told her."
There was a little silence; then:
"I did," said Feathers quietly.
"You!" The blood rushed to Chris" face. He swung round and stared at his friend with hot eyes.
"You!" he said again.
"Yes; I was talking to Atkins in the lounge the first night you were married. I repeated to him what Aston Knight had told me--that you had married your wife for her money ... and she overheard."
He looked at Chris" incredulous face.
"It"s the truth," he said. "I never knew until weeks afterwards that she had overheard, until she told me herself, and even then I believed that I had only repeated what was true."
He smiled painfully. "Go on, curse me to all eternity; I deserve it; I"ve been at the bottom of all the mischief."
There was a terrible silence. Chris understood well enough now without further explanations, and for a moment he saw the world red. He broke out savagely:
"Then it"s you I"ve got to thank! You, with your d.a.m.ned humbugging pretense of friendship trying to steal my wife---"
He raised his fist in blind pa.s.sion, and Feathers broke out in an agony:
"Chris! for G.o.d"s sake ..."
There was something so tragic in his ugly face, that Chris" hand fell limply, and he turned away, leaning his arms on the mantelshelf and hiding his face.
"It"s absurd to say I"m sorry," Feathers said after a moment dully.
"One can"t find adequate words for--for a thing like this ...
There"s only one reparation I can make, Chris ... to tell--your wife."
Chris did not answer, and he went on. "I should like to feel that you still trust me sufficiently to--to allow me to tell her."
Chris flung up his head.
"Nothing will do any good. She hates the sight of me--and I don"t wonder--if that is what she thought." There was something like a sob in his voice, and Feathers winced.
The delirium of that hour with Marie seemed like a dream. What madness had possessed him? Her love had been given to Chris and no one else. It was only in her unhappiness that she had turned to him, as a sick child will often turn to a stranger away from the one it really loves best in all the world.
The thought hurt unbearably, but he knew it was the truth--knew that his only reparation was to give her back to Chris.
Chris turned suddenly, his young face aged by pain and despair.
"She told me that she hated me." he said again. It seemed as if the fact was engraved on his heart and mind, to the exclusion of everything else. He broke off, breathing hard, as if he were choking. "She told me that she loved you--you who ruined my happiness and set her against me ... Curse you, I say! Curse you to all eternity ..."
"Chris, for G.o.d"s sake!"
Chris turned away. He was shaking with pa.s.sion, and for a long time neither of them spoke.
Then Feathers got up from the table and laid a hand on his friend"s shoulder.
"Marie has never loved anyone but you," he said slowly. "She"s been desperately unhappy, and when--when a woman is unhappy, she turns to the first friend who will listen to her! ... Your wife turned to me ... If I had been any other man, she would have done just the same. Will you believe me when I tell you that I know things are going to be all right? ... Chris, for G.o.d"s sake, believe me."
Chris shook his hand off impatiently.
"But when? How? You can"t take away hatred with words." he said.
"And she meant what she said ... She"s never looked at me like that in her life before ..."
Feathers walked over to the window and looked out into the darkness. The stars seemed to be watching him with sympathetic eyes--the stars that were as far removed from him as was the woman he loved.
Chris spoke again presently:
"I"ll get off. If I talk till Doomsday nothing can be done." He turned to the door. "Good-night." he said gruffly.
Feathers held out his hand, but Chris would not see it, and he went out, shutting the door hard behind him.
Feathers stood at the window and listened to his steps dying away down the street. It was the end of their friendship, he knew, and the knowledge cut him to the heart.
He sat up all night, trying to make some sort of order out of his tangled thoughts. He would never see Marie again! He would write to her and explain.
But he knew she would be unconvinced by a letter, and, after all, what could he say that he would give her back her lost happiness, poor child!
He waited till ten o"clock the following morning and rang Chris on the "phone.
The servant who answered it said that Mr. Lawless had gone out.
"And--Mrs. Lawless?" Feathers asked.
"She has gone out, too--for the day," she said.
"With--with her husband?"
"Oh, no, sir!"
The surprise in the girl"s voice was like a knife in his heart. So the servants knew how seldom Chris and his wife went about together; and it was all his doing!