But suddenly he stopped his rapid flow. He made a slight movement with his finger, and stood listening. I heard nothing except the voices lower down the stairs and the general hum in the room we had just left. But Mackie did.
"Hear that?" he said.
"What?" I asked.
"Sssh!..."
I told you how the wooden part.i.tion at the head of the stairs, that with the small window high up, separated the landing on which we stood from the old ledger-room. The window was worked with cords on a horizontal pivot, and was swung partly open. Whether Mackie heard whatever he did hear through this window or through the boards themselves I do not know, but a smile came over his face.
"It"s that young devil," he whispered.
"Who?"
"Why, young Merridew. He"s in there with somebody...."
I invite you to notice that I was improving. I was not eavesdropping this time--I was merely letting Mackie do my eavesdropping for me. He glanced round to see whether the women below were watching, and then set his ear against the part.i.tion.
"Yes, it"s Merridew," he chuckled. "Nice father"s hope and mother"s joy _that_ young man"s getting! I don"t suppose he"s gone in there to talk to the secretary bird!..."
I found myself suddenly reminded of what I had noticed for the first time only an hour or two before--that the room beyond the part.i.tion was practically unlighted.
Then Mackie dropped again into the "bright" style affected by the singers of comic songs at smoking concerts.
"Ahem--good-hevening, ladies and gen"lmen! How am I? Very well, thank me! Ahem! I will now, with your kind permission, endeavour to entertain you with a few of my well-known impersonations on a subject that will appeal to all of you, no matter what your age, s.e.x, condition, vaccination marks or the number of your dog licence--_London"s Lovers_."
"Oh, Mr Mackie"s going to recite for us!" I heard Miss Windus" cry of juvenile delight from down the stairs. "Please be quick, Mr Mackie--we shall have to go in in ten minutes!"
And those below pressed up the stairs to hear Mackie.
But I did not stay to hear the "impersonation." I walked back into the general room, and, with a violently throbbing heart, sought the seat where I had written my examination paper.
Do you realise what I had just seen? Do you see what had set my heart so thumping? If Mackie was right, and he had really got the cue for his "impersonation" from something that was going on in the ledger-room, young Merridew and Evie were alone in there together.
All that I had hitherto known of apprehension and despair and jealousy of Archie"s luck and chances and juniority was eclipsed by the emotion that now flowed over me like a wave. The revelation swept me entirely off my balance. It seemed to me that once more I awoke as if out of a dream. I seemed to be standing as it were a little way off from my own baseless hopes and illusions of the past weeks and coldly contemplating my own egregiousness. I actually gave out loud a low laugh that harrowed myself. What! To suppose that all, all I could do, would prevent youth from coming together at the last!
So I made myself a spectacle of ridicule for myself.
Then, as the minutes pa.s.sed, that which at first had seemed a pure and perfect whole of hopelessness changed subtly and began to separate into parts. And that brought such a change in me that I trembled to recognise it. The shock of those first moments had stunned me, but I was now coming out of my stupor. My first swift conclusion had been wrong. These were _not_ young lovers whom mountains could not sunder. She, my sleeping beauty, who had but now opened her eyes, no doubt thought I was that; her soul was over-br.i.m.m.i.n.g; and I remembered her look of wonder and reproach when, after she had congratulated me on that love-rise that is the most wondrous of earthly dawnings I had given a puzzled "on what?" When hearts can no longer contain that with which they ache to bursting, lucky is the one who stands nearest to hand. His it is to have, for the lifting of his finger, what else would spill. He may not be athirst for the draught; a muddier liquor might quench his fire as well; but this dew and ichor is his, though another parch for it.
For I needed no pointers from Mackie to know young Archie now. This was his ignored and heaven-high luck, and he did not even want it. If their being together in that unlighted room--their being together even as I sat with my head between my hands staring blankly at the yellow deal screen--if this meant anything at all it meant one thing and one thing only, that she must give because it was her nature to give, and the cub was philandering with her.
At that thought my despair gave place to something else. It was eaten up in the white flame of wrath that flashed like a brand in my brain.
"Oh!" I thought. "So _that"s_ it, my Archie?..."
I need not tell you again how I always have made my angers serviceable to me. Five minutes later--though my will was well-nigh deracinated in the process--I was its master again. It still struggled like a beast in my hold, nor did I know whence the help could come without which it would presently have me in its power again, but I still retained my throttling hold on it. One last wild struggle the beast made; this was when beyond the end of my screen-enclosed compartment, I saw them issue, with an interval of half-a-minute between their coming out of the library doorway. He was pink and triumphant; at her I forbore to look. A minute later Mackie pa.s.sed and gave an infinitesimally small jerk of his head and a wink; but by that time I was holding my savage beast down again.
Then a bell rang; there was a buzz and movement the candidates were making ready again. Once more attendants read the caution, and then the second paper was distributed. Mechanically I turned over the gelatine-copied leaves that had been handed to me.
But I pushed them away again. A man who is engaged as I still was--a luckless hunter who has missed his shot and is struggling desperately body to body with his intended prey--has little time for anything but the business in hand. True, I did draw the paper to me again and tick off the questions that would be productive of the highest marks, but it was long before I got any further. There would come between me and my page Archie Merridew"s pink and boastful face as I had seen him issue from the library door.
I do not know how long I sat thus.
Draggingly at last I settled to work. But it was well-nigh hopeless. I came to myself after a long interval to find that I was staring blankly before me and muttering softly to myself. I had not written more than half-a-page. Wearily I tried again.
The next external thing that I was fully awake to was that from the typewriting-room there came the single "Ting" of the small clock on the mantelpiece. I started. That single "Ting" always meant one of two things--one o"clock or a half-hour. I had no watch.
I tried for a moment to persuade myself that the clock had just struck half-past two.
Then I heard the attendant"s voice: "You have one hour left."
"Good heavens!" I groaned.
I drew my paper to me again.
For a time I was not conscious of anything but the questions that must be answered by half-past four. Indeed, so feverishly did I work that I did not hear the attendants announce that we had only half-an-hour longer. The next announcement I heard was that fifteen minutes only remained.
Swiftly and flurriedly I turned over what I had written. I was just half-way through the paper.
Wildly alarmed, I broke into rapid shorthand--the shorthand in which I am writing this now. I did not know whether the shorthand would be accepted; I only knew that in its larger aspect the object of the examination was to determine whether I was master of my subject. I was master of my subject. Those already diluted tests of capacity, the questions, dictated their own replies: I put on top speed.
"You have five minutes more," sounded the relentless voice.
But I could have sworn that not one minute elapsed before, much louder and more peremptory, came the final call:
"You must now cease writing!"
As I mingled with my fellow-candidates again I heard Mackie crying joyously, "Oh, we got medals for this in Paris!" But I pa.s.sed him by without a glance. Nor had I any desire to linger about those premises my first sight of which in the daytime had cost me three shillings in cash, and a murderous rage that might indeed have closed the gates of heaven in my face. I went quickly for my hat and coat, almost colliding with Miss Causton as I turned a corner and muttering I know not what as she shrank back and gave me a look that I could hardly reconcile with her usually ironical and ruminating eyes. I merely wanted to get out of the place....
But I did not escape so quickly but that I saw Archie and Evie following me down the stairs. No doubt they were going together to her aunt"s to tea.
A week later I learned that I had pa.s.sed with distinction in the Theory part of the paper, but had failed in the Practice portion. The examiners made a joke about "Paper Number Two," saying they had decided to hold it over for next year"s shorthand examination. Everybody knew whose paper Number Two was....
Mackie had pa.s.sed in both portions.
PART II
WOBURN PLACE
I
Some time or other during the period of my engagement to Miss Windus (an episode of my history I am now approaching), I happened to remark on the pleasant arrangement that had removed many of the temptations of London from Archie Merridew"s path by giving him a "home from home"--the wholesome influence of the Soames" house in Woburn Place. My charmer agreed with me that no arrangement could have been happier. It is of that arrangement that I must now speak. But first I must tell you as much as I can recollect of the party with which the Christmas term closed.