"I think," he said, "that if it had been any other man--but listen. The photograph which I took from the mantelpiece and threw into the fire was the photograph of my own cousin. His father and my father were brought up together. My father chose the Church, his founded the factory in which most of the people in Detton Magna were employed. When my grandfather died, it was found that he was penniless. The whole of his money had gone towards founding the Douglas Romilly Shoe Company. I won"t weary with the details. The business prospered, but we remained in poverty. When my mother died I was left with nothing. My uncle made promises and never kept them. He, too, died. My cousin and I quarrelled. He and his father both held that the money advanced by my grandfather had been a gift and not a loan. They offered me a pittance. Well, I refused anything. I spoke plain words, and that was an end of it. And then I came back and I saw his picture, my cousin"s picture, upon the mantelpiece. I can see it now and it looks hateful to me. All the old fires burned up in me. I remembered my father"s death--a pauper he was. I remembered how near I had been to starvation. I remembered the years I had spent in a garret whilst Douglas had idled time away at Oxford, had left there to trifle with the business his father had founded, had his West End club, hunters, and shooting. It was a vicious, mad, jealous hatred, perhaps, but I claim that it was human. I went out of that little house and it seemed to me that there was a new l.u.s.t in my heart, a new, craving desire. If I had thrown myself into that ca.n.a.l, they might well have called it temporary insanity. I didn"t, but I was mad all the same. Anything else I did--was temporary insanity!"
Her hand suddenly came back again and she leaned towards him through the darkness.
"You poor child," she whispered. "Stop there, please. Don"t be afraid to think you"ve told me this. You see, I am of the world, and I know that we are all only human. Now, twice up and down the deck, and not a word. Then I shall ask you something."
So they pa.s.sed on, side by side, the touch of her fingers keeping this new courage alive in his heart, his head uplifted even to the stars towards which their rolling mast pointed. It was wonderful, this--to tell the truth, to open the door of his heart!
"Now I am going to ask you something," she said, when they turned for the third time. "You may think it a strange question, but you must please answer it. To me it is rather important. Just what were your feelings for Beatrice?"
"I think I was fond of her," he answered thoughtfully. "I know that I hated her when she came in from the schoolhouse--when I understood. Both of us, in the days of our joint poverty, had scoffed at principles, had spoken boldly enough of sin, but I can only say that when she came, when I looked into her eyes, I seemed to have discovered a new horror in life.
I can"t a.n.a.lyse it. I am not sure, even now, that I was not more of a beast that I had thought myself. I am not sure that part of my rage was not because she had escaped and I couldn"t."
"But your personal feelings--that is what I want to know about?" she persisted.
He dug down into his consciousness to satisfy her.
"Think of what my life in London had been," he reminded her. "There wasn"t a single woman I knew, with whom I could exchange a word. All the time I loved beautiful things, and beautiful women, and the thought of them. I have gone out into the streets at nights sometimes and hung around the entrances to theatres and restaurants just for the pleasure of looking at them with other men. It didn"t do me any good, you know, but the desire was there. I wanted a companion like those other men had.
Beatrice was the only woman I knew. I didn"t choose her. It wasn"t the selective instinct that made her attractive to me. It was because she was the only one. I never felt anything great when I was with her," he went on hoa.r.s.ely. "I knew very well that ours were ordinary feelings. She was in the same position that I was. There was no one else for her, either.
Do you want me to go on?"
She hesitated.
"Don"t be afraid--I am not quite mad," he continued, "only I"ll answer for you the part of your question you don"t put into words. Beatrice was nothing to me but an interpretress of her s.e.x. I never loved her. If I had, we might in our misery have done the wildest, the most foolish things. I will tell you why I know so clearly that I never loved her. I have known it since you have been kind to me, since I have realised what a wonderful thing a woman can be, what a world she can make for the man who cares, whom she cares for."
Her fingers gripped his tightly.
"And now," she said, "I know all that I want to know and all that it is well for us to speak of just now. Dear friend, will you remember that you are sharing your burden with me, and that I, who am accounted something in the world and who know life pretty thoroughly, believe in you and hope for you."
They paused for a moment by the side of the steamer rail. She understood so well his speechlessness. She drew her hand away from his and held it to his lips.
"Please kiss my fingers," she begged. "That is just the seal of our friendship in these days. See how quickly we seem to plough our way through the water. Listen to the throbbing of that engine, always towards a new world for you, my friend. It is to be an undiscovered country. Be brave, keep on being brave, and remember--"
The words seemed to die away upon her lips. A shower of spray came glittering into the dim light, like flakes of snow falling with unexpected violence close to them. He drew her cloak around her and moved back.
"Now," she said, "I think we will smoke, and perhaps, if you made yourself very agreeable to the steward in the smoking room, you could get some coffee."
"One moment," he pleaded. "Remember what? Don"t you realise that there is just one word I still need, one little word to crown all that you have said?"
She turned her head towards him. The trouble and brooding melancholy seemed to have fallen from his face. She realised more fully its sensitive lines, its poetic, almost pa.s.sionate charm. She was carried suddenly away upon a wave of the emotion which she herself had created.
"Oh, but you know!" she faltered. "You see, I trust you even to know when ... Now your arm, please, until we reach the smoking room, and mind--I must have coffee."
CHAPTER IX
Philip Romilly, on the last day of the voyage, experienced to the full that peculiar sensation of unrest which seems inevitably to prevail when an oceangoing steamer is being slowly towed into port. The winds of the ocean had been left behind. There was a new but pleasant chill in the frosty, sunlit air. The great buildings of New York, at which he had been gazing for hours, were standing, heterogeneous but magnificent, clear-cut against an azure sky. The ferry boats, with their amazing human cargo, seemed to be screeching a welcome as they churned their way across the busy river. Wherever he looked, there was something novel and interesting, yet nothing sufficiently arresting to enable him to forget that he was face to face now with the first crisis of his new life. Since that brief wireless message on the first day out, there had been nothing disquieting in the daily bulletins of news, and he had been able to appreciate to the full the soothing sense of detachment, the friendliness of his fellow voyagers, immeasurably above all the daily a.s.sociation with Elizabeth. He felt like one awaking from a dream as he realised that these things were over. At the first sight of land, it was as though a magician"s wand had been waved, a charm broken. His fellow pa.s.sengers, in unfamiliar costumes, were standing about with their eyes glued upon the distant docks. A queer sense of ostracism possessed him. Perhaps, after all, it had been a dream from which he was now slowly awaking.
He wandered into the lounge to find Elizabeth surrounded by a little group of journalists. She nodded to him pleasantly and waved a great bunch of long-stemmed pink roses which one of them had brought to her.
Her greeting saved him from despair. She, at least, was unchanged.
"See how my friends are beginning to spoil me!" she cried out. "Really, I can"t tell any of you a thing more," she went on, turning back to them, "only this, and I am sure it ought to be interesting. I have discovered a new dramatist, and I am going to produce a play of his within three months, I hope. I shan"t tell you his name and I shan"t tell you anything about the play, except that I find more promise in it than anything I have seen or read for months. Mr. Romilly, please wait for me," she called after him. "I want to point out some of the buildings to you."
A dark young man, wearing eyegla.s.ses, with a notebook and pencil in his hand, swung around.
"Is this Mr. Douglas Romilly," he enquired, "of the Romilly Shoe Company?
I am from the _New York Star_. Pleased to meet you, Mr. Romilly. You are over here on business, we understand?"
Philip was taken aback and for the moment remained speechless.
"We"d like to know your reason, Mr. Romilly, for paying us a visit," the young man continued, "in your own words. How long a trip do you intend to make, anyway? What might your output be in England per week? Women"s shoes and misses", isn"t it?"
Elizabeth intervened swiftly, shaking her finger at the journalist.
"Mr. Harris," she said, "Mr. Romilly is my friend, and I am not going to have him spend these few impressive moments, when he ought to be looking about him at the harbour, telling you silly details about his business.
You can call upon him at his hotel, if you like--the Waldorf he is going to, I believe--and I am sure he will tell you anything you want to know."
"That"s all right, Miss Dalstan," the young man declared soothingly. "See you later, Mr. Romilly," he added. "Maybe you"ll let us have a few of your impressions to work in with the other stuff."
Romilly made light of the matter, but there was a slight frown upon his forehead as they pa.s.sed along the curiously stationary deck.
"I am afraid," he observed, "that this is going to be a terribly hard country to disappear in."
"Don"t you believe it," she replied cheerfully. "You arrive here to-day and you are in request everywhere. To-morrow you are forgotten--some one else arrives. That newspaper man scarcely remembers your existence at the present moment. He has discovered Mr. Raymond Greene.... Tell me, why do you look so white and unhappy?"
"I am sorry the voyage is over," he confessed.
"So am I, for that matter," she a.s.sented. "I have loved every minute of the last few days, but then we knew all the time, didn"t we, that it was just an interlude? The things which lie before us are so full of interest."
"It is the next few hours which I fear," he muttered gloomily.
She laughed at him.
"Foolish! If there had been any one on this side who wanted to ask you disagreeable questions, they wouldn"t have waited to meet you on the quay. They"d have come down the harbour and held us up. Don"t think about that for a moment. Think instead of all the wonderful things we are going to do. You will be occupied every minute of the time until I come back to New York, and I shall be so anxious to see the result. You won"t disappoint me, will you?"
"I will not," he promised. "It was only for just a moment that I felt an idiot. It"s exciting, you know, this new atmosphere, and the voyage was so wonderful, such a perfect rest. It"s like waking up, and the daylight seems a little crude."
She held out her hand.
"You see, the gangways are going down," she pointed out. "I can see many of my friends waiting. Remember, with your new life begins our new alliance. Good luck to you, dear friend!"
Their fingers were locked for a moment together. He looked earnestly into her eyes.
"Whatever the new life may mean for me," he said fervently, "I shall owe to you."
A little rush of people came up the gangway, and Elizabeth was speedily surrounded and carried off. They came across one another several times in the Custom House, and she waved her hand to him gaily. Philip went through the usual formalities, superintended the hoisting of his trunks upon a clumsy motor truck, and was himself driven without question from the covered shed adjoining the quay. He looked back at the huge side of the steamer, the floor of the Custom House, about which were still dotted little crowds of his fellow pa.s.sengers. It was the disintegration of a wonderful memory--his farewell....