That roused the Lover, as it was meant to do.
"I don"t really know what business it is of yours, sir," he said; "but it"s your business to know that they wouldn"t pa.s.s a man with a heart like mine."
"I don"t know. They"re not so particular just now. They want men. I should try it if I were you. If you don"t have a complete change you"ll go all to pieces. That"s all."
The Onlooker got out at the next station. Short of owning to his own lie, he had done what he could to insure its being found out for the lie it was--or, at least, for a mistake. And when he had done what he could, he saw that the Lover might not find it out--might be pa.s.sed for the Army--might go to the Front--might be killed--and then--"Well, I"ve done my best, anyhow," he said to himself--and himself answered him: "Liar--you have not done your best! You will have to eat your lie. Yes--though it will smash your life and ruin you socially and professionally. You will have to tell him you lied--and tell him why. You will never let him go to South Africa without telling him the truth--and you know it."
"Well--you know best, I suppose," he said to himself.
"But are you perfectly certain?"
"Perfectly. I tell you, man, you"re sound"s a bell, and a fine fathom of a young man ye are, too. Certain? Losh, man--ye can call in the whole College of Physeecians in consultation, an" I"ll wager me professional reputation they"ll endorse me opeenion. Yer hairt"s as sound"s a roach. T"other man must ha" been asleep when ye consulted him. Ye"ll mak" a fine soldier, my lad."
"I think not," said the Lover--and he went out from the presence. This time he reeled like a man too drunk to care how drunk he looks.
He drove in cabs from Harley Street to Wimpole Street, and from Wimpole Street to Brooke Street--and he saw Sir William this and Sir Henry that, and Mr. The-other-thing, the great heart specialist.
And then he bought a gardenia, and went home and dressed himself in his most beautiful frock-coat and his softest white silk tie, and put the gardenia in his b.u.t.ton-hole--and went to see the Girl.
"Looks like as if he was going to a wedding," said his landlady.
When he had told the Girl everything, and when she was able to do anything but laugh and cry and cling to him with thin hands, she said-- "Dear--I do so hate to think badly of anyone. But do you really think that man was mistaken? He"s very, very clever."
"My child--Sir Henry--and Sir William and Mr.--"
"Ah! I don"t mean that. I know you"re all right. Thank G.o.d! Oh, thank G.o.d! I mean, don"t you think he may have lied to you to prevent your--marrying me?"
"But why should he?"
"He asked me to marry him three weeks ago. He"s a very old friend of ours. I do hate to be suspicious--but--it is odd. And then his trying to get you to South Africa. I"m certain he wanted you out of the way. He wanted you to get killed. Oh, how can people be so cruel!"
"I believe you"re right," said the Lover thoughtfully; "I couldn"t have believed that a man could be base like that, through and through. But I suppose some people are like that--without a gleam of feeling or remorse or pity."
"You ought to expose him."
"Not I--we"ll just cut him. That"s all I"ll trouble to do. I"ve got you--I"ve got you in spite of him--I can"t waste my time in hunting down vermin."
THE DUEL.
"BUT I wasn"t doing any harm," she urged piteously. She looked like a child just going to cry.
"He was holding your hand."
"He wasn"t--I was holding his. I was telling him his fortune. And, anyhow, it"s not your business."
She had remembered this late and phrased it carelessly.
"It is my Master"s business," said he.
She repressed the retort that touched her lips. After all, there was something fine about this man, who, in the first month of his ministrations as Parish Priest, could actually dare to call on her, the richest and most popular woman in the district, and accuse her of--well, most people would hardly have gone so far as to call it flirting. Propriety only knew what the Reverend Christopher Ca.s.silis might be disposed to call it.
They sat in the pleasant fire-lit drawing-room looking at each other.
"He"s got a glorious face," she thought. "Like a Greek G.o.d--or a Christian martyr! I wonder whether he"s ever been in love?"
He thought: "She is abominably pretty. I suppose beauty is a temptation."
"Well," she said impatiently, "you"ve been very rude indeed, and I"ve listened to you. Is your sermon quite done? Have you any more to say? Or shall I give you some tea?"
"I have more to say," he answered, turning his eyes from hers. "You are beautiful and young and rich--you have a kind heart--oh, yes--I"ve heard little things in the village already. You are a born general. You organise better than any woman I ever knew, though it"s only dances and picnics and theatricals and concerts. You have great gifts. You could do great work in the world, and you throw it all away; you give your life to the devil"s dance you call pleasure. Why do you do it?"
"Is that your business too?" she asked again.
And again he answered-- "It is my Master"s business."
Had she read his words in a novel they would have seemed to her priggish, unnatural, and superlatively impertinent. Spoken by those thin, perfectly curved lips, they were at least interesting.
"That wasn"t what you began about," she said, twisting the rings on her fingers. The catalogue of her gifts and graces was less a novelty to her than the reproaches to her virtue.
"No--am I to repeat what I began about? Ah--but I will. I began by saying what I came here to say: that you, as a married woman, have no right to turn men"s heads and make them long for what can never be."
"But you don"t know," she said. "My husband--"
"I don"t wish to know," he interrupted. "Your husband is alive, and you are bound to be faithful to him, in thought, word, and deed. What I saw and heard in the little copse last night--"
"I do wish you wouldn"t," she said. "You talk as if--"
"No," he said, "I"m willing--even anxious, I think--to believe that you would not--could not--"
"Oh," she cried, jumping up, "this is intolerable! How dare you!"
He had risen too.
"I"m not afraid of you," he said. "I"m not afraid of your anger, nor of your--your other weapons. Think what you are! Think of your great powers--and you are wasting them all in making fools of a pack of young idiots--"
"But what could I do with my gifts--as you call them?"
"Do?--why, you could endow and organise and run any one of a hundred schemes for helping on G.o.d"s work in the world."
"For instance?" Her charming smile enraged him.
"For instance? Well--for instance--you might start a home for those women who began as you have begun, and who have gone down into h.e.l.l, as you will go--unless you let yourself be warned."
She was for the moment literally speechless. Then she remembered how he had said: "I am not afraid of--your weapons." She drew a deep breath and spoke gently-- "I believe you don"t mean to be insulting--I believe you mean kindly to me. Please say no more now. I"ll think over it all. I"m not angry--only--do you really think you understand everything?"
He might have answered that he did not understand her. She did not mean him to understand. She knew well enough that she was giving him something to puzzle over when she smiled that beautiful, troubled, humble, appealing half-smile.
He did not answer at all. He stood a moment twisting his soft hat in his hands: she admired his hands very much.
"Forgive me if I"ve pained you more than was needed," he said at last, "it is only because--" here her smile caught him, and he ended vaguely in a decreasing undertone. She heard the words "king"s jewels," "pearl of great price."
When he was gone she said "Well!" more than once. Then she ran to the low mirror over the mantelpiece, and looked earnestly at herself.
"You do look rather nice to-day," she said. "And so he"s not afraid of any of your weapons! And I"m not afraid of any of his. It"s a fair duel. Only all the provocation came from him--so the choice of weapons is mine. And they shall be my weapons: he has weapons to match them right enough, only the poor dear doesn"t know it." She went away to dress for dinner, humming gaily-- "My love has breath o" roses, O" roses, o" roses; And arms like lily posies To fold a la.s.sie in!"
Not next day--she was far too clever for that, but on the day after that he received a note. Her handwriting was charming; no extravagances, every letter soberly but perfectly formed.
"I have been thinking of all you said the other day. You are quite mistaken about some things--but in some you are right. Will you show me how to work? I will do whatever you tell me."
Then the Reverend Christopher was glad of the courage that had inspired him to denounce to his parishioners all that seemed to him amiss in them.
"I am glad," he said to himself, "that I had the courage to treat her exactly as I have done the others--even if she has beautiful hair, and eyes like--like--"
He stopped the thought before he found the simile--not because he imagined that there could be danger in it, but because he had been trained to stop thoughts of eyes and hair as neatly as a skilful boxer stops a blow.
She had not been so trained, and she admired his eyes and hair quite as much as he might have admired hers if she had not been married.
So now the Reverend Christopher had a helper in his parish work; and he needed help, for his plain-speaking had already offended half his parish. And his helper was, as he had had the sense to know she could be, the most accomplished organiser in the country. She ran the parish library, she arranged the school treat, she started evening cla.s.ses for wood carving and art needlework. She spent money like water, and time as freely as money. Quietly, persistently, relentlessly, she was making herself necessary to the Reverend Christopher. He wrote to her every day--there were so many instructions to give--but he seldom spoke with her. When he called she was never at home. Sometimes they met in the village and exchanged a few sentences. She was always gravely sweet, intensely earnest. There was a certain smile which he remembered--a beautiful, troubled, appealing smile. He wondered why she smiled no more.
Her friends shrugged their shoulders over her new fancy.
"It is odd," her bosom friend said. "It can"t be the parson, though he"s as beautiful as he can possibly be, because she sees next to nothing of him. And yet I can"t think that Betty of all people could really--"
"Oh--I don"t know," said the bosom friend of her bosom friend. "Women often do take to that sort of thing, you know, when they get tired of--"
"Of?"
"The other sort of thing, don"t you know!"
"How horrid you are," said Betty"s bosom friend. "I believe you"re a most dreadful cynic, really."
"Not at all," said the friend, complacently stroking his moustache.
Betty certainly was enjoying herself. She had the great gift of enjoying thoroughly any new game. She enjoyed, first, the newness; and, besides, the hidden lining of her new masquerade dress enchanted her. But as her new industries developed she began to enjoy the things for themselves. It is always delightful to do what we can do well, and the Reverend Christopher had been right when he said she was a born general.
"How easy it all is," she said, "and what a fuss those clergy-hags make about it! What a wife I should be for a bishop!" She smiled and sighed.
It was pleasant, too, to wake in the morning, not to the recollection of the particular stage which yesterday"s flirtation happened to have reached, but to the sense of some difficulty overcome, some object achieved, some rough place made smooth for her Girls" Friendly, or her wood carvers, or her Parish Magazine. And within it all the secret charm of a purpose transfiguring with its magic this eager, strenuous, working life.
Her avoidance of the Reverend Christopher struck him at first as modest, discreet, and in the best possible taste. But presently it seemed to him that she rather overdid it. There were many things he would have liked to discuss with her, but she always evaded talk with him. Why? he began to ask himself why. And the question wormed through his brain more and more searchingly. He had seen her at work now; he knew her powers, and her graces--the powers and the graces that made her the adored of her Friendly girls and her carving boys. He remembered, with hot ears and neck crimson above his clerical collar, that interview. The things he had said to her! How could he have done it? Blind idiot that he had been! And she had taken it all so sweetly, so n.o.bly, so humbly. She had only needed a word to turn her from the frivolities of the world to better things. It need not have been the sort of word he had used. And at a word she had turned. That it should have been at his word was not perhaps a very subtle flattery--but the Reverend Christopher swallowed it and never tasted it. He was not trained to distinguish the flavours of flatteries. He never tasted it, but it worked in his blood, for all that. And why, why, why would she never speak to him? Could it be that she was afraid that he would speak to her now as he had once spoken? He blushed again.
Next time he met her she was coming up to the church with a big basket of flowers for the altar. He took the basket from her and carried it in.
"Let me help you," he said.
"No," she said in that sweet, simple, grave way of hers. "I can do it very well. Indeed, I would rather."
He had to go. The arrangement of the flowers took more than an hour, but when she came out with the empty basket, he was waiting in the porch. Her heart gave a little joyful jump.
"I want to speak to you," said he.
"I"m rather late," she said, as usual; "couldn"t you write?"
"No," he said, "I can"t write this. Sit down a moment in the porch."
She loved the masterfulness of his tone. He stood before her.
"I want you to forgive me for speaking to you as I did--once. I"m afraid you"re afraid that I shall behave like that again. You needn"t be."
"Score number one," she said to herself. Aloud she said-- "I am not afraid," and she said it sweetly, seriously.
"I was wrong," he went on eagerly. "I was terribly wrong. I see it quite plainly now. You do forgive me--don"t you?"
"Yes," said she soberly, and sighed.
There was a little silence. Her serious eyes watched the way of the wind dimpling the tall, feathery gra.s.s that grew above the graves.
"Are you unhappy?" he asked; "you never smile now."
"I am too busy to smile, I suppose!" she said, and smiled the beautiful, humble, appealing smile he had so longed to see again, though he had not known the longing by its right name.
"Can"t we be friends?" he ventured. "You--I am afraid you can never trust me again."
"Yes, I can," she said. "It was very bitter at the time, but I thought it was so brave of you--and kind, too--to care what became of me. If you remember, I did want to trust you, even on that dreadful day, but you wouldn"t let me."
"I was a brute," he said remorsefully.
"I do want to tell you one thing. Even if that boy had been holding my hand I should have thought I had a right to let him, if I liked--just as much as though I were a girl, or a widow."
"I don"t understand. But tell me--please tell me anything you will tell me." His tone was very humble.
"My husband was a beast," she said calmly. "He betrayed me, he beat me, he had every vile quality a man can have. No, I"ll be just to him: he was always good tempered when he was drunk. But when he was sober he used to beat me and pinch me--"
"But--but you could have got a separation, a divorce," he gasped.
"A separation wouldn"t have freed me--really. And the Church doesn"t believe in divorce," she said demurely. "I did, however, and I left him, and instructed a solicitor. But the brute went mad before I could get free from him; and now, I suppose, I"m tied for life to a mad dog."
"Good G.o.d!" said the Reverend Christopher.
"I thought it all out--oh, many, many nights!--and I made up my mind that I would go out and enjoy myself. I never had a good time when I was a girl. And another thing I decided--quite definitely--that if ever I fell in love I would--I should have the right to--I mean that I wouldn"t let a horrible, degraded brute of a lunatic stand between me and the man I loved. And I was quite sure that I was right."