To the right lay the riverside garden, a bright patch of delicate spring colouring and green verdure, bounded by the slow-moving grey waters of the Thames; and Dering"s eager eyes travelled on till he saw, detaching itself against an April afternoon horizon, the irregular ma.s.s of building formed by Lambeth Palace and the Lollards" Tower.
"I say," he exclaimed, rather suddenly, "this is better than Bedford Park, eh? I suppose a floor in one of these houses would cost us a tremendous lot; even beyond _our_ means, Wingfield?" and again a happy smile came over the tense, clear-cut face, still full of youthful glow and enthusiasm.
"You wish everything to go to Louise? All right, I"ll make a note of that."
The speaker, a round-faced, slightly bald, shrewd-looking lawyer, took no notice of the, to him, absurd question concerning the rent of floors in Abingdon Street. Still, he looked indulgently at his friend, as he added:
"But wait a bit,--I promise that yours shall be a model will,--only you seem to have forgotten, my dear fellow, that you may out-live your wife.
Now, should you have the misfortune to lose Louise, to whom would you wish to devise this fifteen thousand pounds? It"s possible, too, though not very probable, I admit, that you may both die at the same time--both be killed in a railway accident for instance."
"Such good fortune may befall us----" Dering spoke quite simply, and accepted the other"s short laugh with great good-humour. "Oh! you know what I mean; I always _have_ thought husbands and wives--who care, I mean--ought to die on the same day. That they don"t do so is one of the many strange mysteries which complicate life. But I say, Wingfield----"
The speaker had turned away from the window. He had again taken up his stand opposite the other"s broad writing table, and not even the cheap, ill-made clothes could hide the graceful lines of the tall, active figure, not even the turned-down collar and orange silk tie could destroy the young man"s look of rather subtle distinction.
"Failing Louise, I should like this money, at my death, to be divided equally between the young Hintons and your kids," and as the other made a gesture of protest, Dering added quickly:
"What better could I do? Louise is devoted to Jack Hinton"s children, and I"ve always regarded you--I have indeed, old man,--as my one real friend. Of course it"s possible now,"--an awkward shy break came into his voice--"it"s possible now, I say, that we may have children of our own; I don"t suppose you"ve ever realised how poor, how horribly poor, we"ve been all these years."
He looked away, avoiding the other man"s eyes; then, picking up his hat and stick with a quick, nervous gesture, was gone.
After the door had shut on his friend, Wingfield went on still standing for awhile. His hands mechanically sorted the papers and letters lying on his table into neat little heaps, but his thoughts were travelling backward, through his and Dering"s past lives.
The friends had first met at the City of London school, for they were much of an age, though the lawyer looked the elder of the two. Then Dering had gone to Cambridge, and Wingfield, more humbly, to take up life as an articled clerk to a good firm of old-established attorneys.
Again, later, they had come together once more, sharing a modest lodging, while Dering earned a small uncertain income by contributing to the literary weeklies, by "ghosting" writers more fortunate than himself, by tutoring whenever he got the chance,--in a word, by resorting to the few expedients open to the honest educated Londoner lacking a definite profession.
The two men had not parted company till Dering, enabled to do so with the help of a small legacy, had chosen to marry a Danish girl, as good-looking, as high-minded, as unpractical as himself.
But stay, had Louise Dering proved herself so unpractical during the early years of her married life?
Wingfield, standing there, his mind steeped in memories, compared her, with an unconscious critical sigh, with his own stolid, unimaginative wife, Kate. As he did so he wondered whether, after all, Dering had not known how to make the best of both worlds; and yet he and his Louise had gone through some bad times together.
Wingfield had been the one intimate of the young couple when they began their married life in a three-roomed flat in Gray"s Inn; and he had been aware, painfully so, of the incessant watchful struggle with money difficulties, never mentioned while the struggle was in being, for only the rich can afford to complain of poverty. He had admired, it might almost be said he had reverenced with all his heart, the high courage then shown by his friend"s wife.
During those first difficult years, when he, Wingfield, could do nothing for them, Louise had gone without the help of even the least adequate servant. The women of her nation are taught housewifery as an indispensable feminine accomplishment, and so she had scrubbed and sung, cooked and read, made and mended, for Philip and herself.
Wingfield was glad to remember that it was he who had at last found Dering regular employment; he who had so far thrown prudence aside as to persuade one of his first and most valuable clients to appoint his clever if eccentric friend secretary to a company formed to exploit a new invention. The work had proved congenial; Dering had done admirably well, and now, when his salary had just been raised to four hundred a year, a distant, almost unknown, cousin of his dead mother"s had left him fifteen thousand pounds!
At last James Wingfield sat down. He began making notes of the instructions he had just received, though as he did so he knew well enough that he could not bring himself to draw up a will by which his own children might so greatly benefit.
Then, as he sat, pen in hand, wondering with a certain discomfort as to what ought to be the practical effect of the conversation, there suddenly came a sound of hurrying feet up the shallow oak staircase, and through the door, flung open quickly and unceremoniously, strode once more Philip Dering.
"I say, I"ve forgotten something!" he exclaimed, and then, as Wingfield instinctively looked round the bare s.p.a.cious room--"No, I didn"t leave anything behind me. I simply forgot to ask you one very important question----"
He took off his hat, put it down with a certain deliberation, then drew up a chair, and placed himself astride on it, an action which to the other suddenly seemed to blot out the years which had gone by since they had been housemates together.
"As I went down your jolly old staircase, Wingfield, it suddenly occurred to me that making a will may not be quite so simple a matter as I once thought it----"
He hesitated a moment, then went on:--"So I"ve come back to ask you the meaning of the term "proving a will." What I really want to get at, old man, is whether my wife, if she became a widow, would have to give any actual legal proof of our marriage? Would she be compelled, I mean, to show her "marriage lines"?"
Wingfield hesitated. The question took him by surprise.
"I fancy that would depend," he said, "on the actual wording of the will, but all that sort of thing is a mere formality, and of course any solicitor employed by her would see to it. By the way, I suppose you were married in Denmark?" He frowned, annoyed with himself for having forgotten a fact with which he must have been once well acquainted. "If you had asked me to be your best man," he added with a vexed laugh, "I shouldn"t have forgotten the circ.u.mstances."
Dering tipped the chair which he was bestriding a little nearer to the edge of the table which stood between himself and Wingfield; a curious look, a look half humorous, half deprecating, but in no sense ashamed, came over his sensitive, mobile face.
"No," he said, at length, "we were not married in Denmark. Neither were we married in England. In fact, there was no ceremony at all."
The eyes of the two men, of the speaker and of his listener, met for a moment; but Wingfield, to the other"s sudden uneasy surprise, made no comment on what he had just heard.
Dering sprang up, and during the rest of their talk he walked, with short, quick strides, from the door to the window, from the window to the door.
"I wanted to tell you at the time, but Louise would not have it; though I told her that in principle--not, of course, in practice--you thoroughly agreed with me--I mean with us. Nay, more, that you, with your clear, legal mind, had always realised, even more than I could do, the utter absurdity of making such a contract as that of marriage--which of all contracts is the most intimately personal, and which least affects the interests of those outside the contracting parties--the only legal contract which can"t be rescinded or dissolved by mutual agreement! Then again, you must admit that there was one really good reason why we should not tell you the truth; you already liked Kate, and Louise, don"t you remember, used to play chaperon. Now, Kate"s people, you know----!"
All the humour had gone out of Dering"s face, but the deprecating look had deepened.
The lawyer made a strong effort over himself. He had felt for a moment keenly hurt, and not a little angry.
"I don"t think," he said quietly, "that there is any need of explanations or apologies between us. Of course, I can"t help feeling very much surprised, and that in spite of our old theoretical talks and discussions, concerning--well, this subject. But I don"t doubt that in the circ.u.mstances you did quite right. Mind you, I don"t mean about the marriage," he quickly corrected himself, "but only as to the concealment from me."
He waited a moment, and then went on, hesitatingly: "But even now I don"t really understand what happened--I should like to know a little more----"
Dering stayed his walk across the room, and stood opposite his friend.
He felt a great wish to justify himself, and to win Wingfield"s retrospective sympathy.
"I will tell you everything there is to tell!" he cried eagerly; "indeed, it can all be told in a moment. My wife and I entered into a personal contract together, which we arranged, provisionally, of course, should last ten years. Louise was quite willing, absolutely willing...."
For the first time there came a defensive note in the eager voice. "You see the idea--that of leasehold marriage? We used to talk about it, you and I, of course only as a Utopian possibility. All I can say is that I had the good fortune to meet with a woman with whom I was able to try the experiment; and all I can tell you is--well, I need not tell _you_, Wingfield, that there has never been a happier marriage than ours."
Again Dering started pacing up and down the room. "Louise has been everything--everything--everything--that such a man as myself could have looked for in a wife!"
"And has no one ever guessed--has no one ever known?" asked the other, rather sternly.
"Absolutely no one! Yes, wait a moment--there has been one exception.
Louise told Gerda Hinton. You know they became very intimate after we went to Bedford Park, and Louise thought Gerda ought to know. But it made no difference--no difference at all!" he added, emphatically; "for in fact poor Gerda practically left her baby to Louise"s care."
"And that worthless creature, Jack Hinton--does he know too?"
"No, I don"t think so; in fact I may say most decidedly not--but of course Gerda may have told him, though for my part I don"t believe that husbands and wives share their friends" secrets. Still, you are quite at liberty to tell Kate."
"No," said Wingfield, "I don"t intend to tell Kate, and there will be no reason for doing so if you will take my advice--which is, I need hardly tell you, to go and get married at once. Now that you have come into this money, your marrying becomes a positive duty. Are you aware that if you were run over and killed on your way home to-day Louise would have no standing? that she would not have a right to a penny of this money, or even to any of the furniture which is in your house? Let me see, how long is it that you have been"--he hesitated awkwardly--"together?"
Dering looked round at him rather fiercely. "We have been _married_ nine years and a half," he said. "Our wedding day was the first of September.
We spent our honeymoon in Denmark. You remember my little legacy?"