"By heaven!" my heart now cried within me, "I will do it!"
And instantly a perfect seething of the cautions and reserves with which I must do it sprang up in my brain.
But here was Archie patiently waiting for me to speak.
"What"s up? What the d.i.c.kens are you talking about?" he asked once more.
I let my head drop, as a man might who discovers he has said too much.
"Oh, nothing," I replied.
Archie was just as sharp as--neither more nor less than--I wished him to be.
"A lot of fuss about nothing--if it"s really nothing," he said suspiciously.
The next moment he had looked hard into my face, taken a long breath, and, suddenly bringing his hand down on his thigh, broken into loud laughter.
"By Jove! Jeff--I really believe--let"s have a look at you--by Jove! I really do--_I believe you"re in love_! What a----How ripping, I mean!
Best congratulations, old chap--my turn this time--ha ha ha ha!"
I drew myself heavily up. The kind of thing I was doing has to be done rather carefully. "Look here, Archie--" I began, trembling between the wrath I felt and the not-too-much wrath I must appear to display; but he interrupted me:
"Well, that"s a knock-out! Who"d have dreamed----"
"Why not?" I demanded sharply.
"Oh, I didn"t mean that!" he made such haste to say that it was plain as a pikestaff that he had meant precisely "that."
"I only meant, how surprising--how unexpected. I mean----"
I frowned. "_Should_ you find it so--if it _were_ so?"
"Should!" he said, puzzled. "... Isn"t it so, Jeff?"
"No," I replied; but a "No" that so exquisitely contradicted itself that I gave myself nothing less than admiration for the performance.
"No?" he echoed. "You"re lying, Jeff--you _are_!" he broke out triumphantly. "I can tell by the way you say it! So _that"s_ it! Dashed if I didn"t think there was something!... Who is she, Jeff?"
But that, as you may suppose, it was no part of my plan to tell.
Neither was it part of that plan to enjoin either secrecy or the other thing upon him. That, I thought grimly, might quite safely be left to take care of itself. "Mandrill, my dear; you really must take a memory powder!..." I seemed to hear Miss Windus" voice again over the bookshelves. Oh yes, if he would give currency to that Zoo nonsense he could be trusted not to keep the richer joke, of Jeffries in love, to himself!
For that he and not Evie had been responsible for this pleasantry at the expense of my appearance I had concluded by a much sounder process of observation and reasoning than that my love-lorn state predisposed me entirely in her favour. My watching, a failure in other respects, had at least succeeded in this respect. And that I had found had not been without its barb for me. You may remember my former pathetic grat.i.tude that, while others singled me out for marked treatment, she alone had not, in the trifling forms and observances that are the gracious outside of intercourse as distinct from its inner truth, differentiated me from the rest of the world.
Well, I had made a guess at the reason for that. It was, in a word, her upbringing. The aunt with whom she lived in Woburn Place had taught her to "behave nicely," and so on. I could see that education.
Such maxims as that one must not "judge by appearances," that "handsome is that handsome does," and, generally speaking, the unexceptional tradition that the "less fortunately circ.u.mstanced"
have special claims on superior gentleness and pity, form almost the whole of it. I, it appeared, was one of these "less fortunately circ.u.mstanced".... Of course n.o.body was to blame. By-and-by the amiable aunt would probably go a little further, and teach her that it is not enough that these unimpeachable precepts should be merely observed, but that the thought behind them must be concealed as well.
When you treat a poor devil just as if he was anybody else you must not let it be seen that you do so from perception that he is not....
Anyway, there it was, and it rather took the shine out of that "good-night, Mr Jeffries" that had sent me off happy to Archie"s rooms on the evening when I had been so startlingly shaken out of my fool"s paradise.
Thus I was persuaded, and as it turned out quite rightly, that it had been young Merridew, and not she, who had allowed his tongue this licence both on Weston"s physical characteristics and my own.
His cup of tea was still on the floor, and by this time was cold. He hadn"t tasted it, and, his renewed congratulations on what he supposed to be my blissful state of mind over, was once more fidgeting to be off.
But it was quite at my own pleasure whether I released him or not; I had the hateful advantage of my baked potatoes and my poverty; and though he was getting colder moment by moment, being less accustomed to the lack of a fire than I, I did not spare him.
"Yes," I remarked musingly by-and-by, as if I had been thinking over a former remark, "I"d take that Method paper quite seriously if I were you. Save up your little fling till that"s over. Stag-parties and work don"t go together, my son."
He had a little gleam of perspicacity. "What little fling?" he asked.
"Who said I was going to have one?"
("Carefully, Jeffries," I cautioned myself.) Aloud I said cheerfully, "My mistake, Archie--I"m out of the running in these things--I"m rather a Puritan by necessity, you see. Perhaps I was taking it rather for granted----"
He chuckled. "A Puritan by necessity! A Puritan by Miss Whatever-her-name-is, more like! Do at least tell us if it"s anybody we know, Jeff!"
But I ignored the latter part of his remark. "Well done, Archie," I applauded. "I"m glad you see that when a man"s got one woman he"s no need for all the others. Stick to that and you"re all right."
And that clinched it. "Well, you"ve got the pull over me there," he said.
I made no reply.
You need not conclude, unless you wish, that I wanted to start him straight away to the devil. I couldn"t have ensured his arrival at that destination if I had. But I was prepared to go half way with him if by so doing I could keep him from getting into paradise by the means I had reserved for myself. I was doing him no conspicuous harm. He would have to rub shoulders with the world before long--was already doing so; and I said no more to him--nay, I said far less--than he would have picked up for himself in almost any gathering of young men of his own age that he was likely to find himself among.... So presently, when after (how shall I put it?)--after having tapped it home that there _was_ the one woman and also the others, I returned to the examination in Method again, I was talking as easily as if, his betrayals to Miss Windus notwithstanding, we had been the best friends in the world.
"By the way, that"s another thing you"re lucky in, my boy," I said. "The exam"s in the daytime. I suppose that doesn"t convey anything to you."
"How do you mean?"
"Well, it means something to me. I shall have to get a day off."
"Well?" he inquired.
"Well--it doesn"t by any means follow that I shall get it."
He stared. "You don"t mean to say they"d be such skunks as not to let you off for a day!" he exclaimed.
I laughed. "Perhaps they won"t be such skunks," I remarked.
"Oh!" he cried, outraged. "They _couldn"t_!"
He was as ignorant about Rixon Tebb & Masters as he was about everything else in life.
Presently, with a "Brrr!" and a shiver, he got off my bed.
"Well, I"m off," he said. "I didn"t intend to come round, and I"m going back to swot."
I heaved myself up from my chair. "Must you? Well, wait a moment--I"ll come down with you----"
Before I turned down my lamp, filling the room with the red and green again, I noticed his untouched cup of tea on the floor. I made no remark on it, but as I preceded him down the narrow stairs I found myself suddenly filled with a curiosity as to whether I guessed rightly what was pa.s.sing in his mind. I had made my shot, and was as interested to know whether it was a true one as if I had had a bet on it.
Where the great public-house lamp shone brightly through the landing window the stairs branched, one flight descending to the side door by which we had entered and the other leading to the back bar of the public-house. It was as we reached this bifurcation that I found I had guessed rightly.