If ever a girl was made for the wife of such a man as I hope to be some day, that girl, Maxwell, is your sister."
"But, Ernshaw, that is impossible. It may be only your good nature that prompted you to say this, or it may be that, without intention, I have somehow led you to look upon her as part of my destiny; but you forget, or perhaps, I have not told you that we have lost her utterly for the time being at least, she disappeared quite suddenly. My father and I have made every effort to trace her, but without the slightest success."
"Then try again," replied Ernshaw, "and I will help in the search. At any rate, when we do find her, as I am sure we shall some day, if she will have me, I will ask her to be my wife."
CHAPTER VII.
It was the morning of Commemoration Day and Vane was dressing for the great ceremony in the Sheldonian Theatre, the conferring of honours and degrees, the placing of the Hall-mark of the University upon those who had pa.s.sed its tests and proved themselves to be worthy metal. Over the end of the bed hung the brand-new bachelor"s gown and silken hood, which, to-day, for the first time, he would be ent.i.tled to wear. They were the outward material symbols of the victory which he had won against all compet.i.tors.
He was looking far back into his school-boy days and recalling the dreams he had dreamt of the time when, if the Fates were very kind to him, he would have taken his degree and would be able to walk about in all the glory of cap and gown and hood as the masters did on Sundays and Saints" days.
And now it had come to pa.s.s. He had taken as good a degree as the best of them. In an hour or two he would appear capped and gowned and hooded on the closing scene of his University career. On one side of him would be the Chancellor and all the great dignitaries of the University; on the other the great audience--the undergraduates in the upper galleries; graduates, tutors and fellows, proud fathers and mothers, delighted sisters and other feminine relatives, including cousins and others, together with desperately envious younger brothers making the most earnest resolves to henceforth eschew all youthful dissipations, to foreswear idleness for ever, and to "swat" day and night until they too had achieved this glorious consummation--vows, alas! to be broken ere the next school term was many days old, and yet, with not a few of them, to be renewed later on and honestly kept.
He knew that, to use a not altogether inappropriate theatrical simile, he would be playing a princ.i.p.al part that day. The cheers and the plaudits which would burst out from the throats of his fellow-students, and, indeed, from the whole audience, when he came on to doff his cap and kneel before the Chancellor to take from his hands the honours he had won, would be given in recognition of the most brilliant degree of the year.
And _she_, too, would be there with her father and mother, and his father, all sharing in his triumph, all glorying in his success, in this splendid fruition of the labours, which, for so many years, they had watched with such intensely sympathetic interest.
Under any other circ.u.mstances this would have meant to him even more than the mere formal triumph; for though he had worked honestly and single-heartedly for the prizes of his academic career, he had also worked for them as an athlete might have striven for his laurels in the Olympian Games, or a knight of the Age of Chivalry might have fought for his laurels to lay them at the feet of his lady-love.
Now he had won them--and after all what were they worth? This was not only to be a day of triumph for him. It was to be a day of hardest trial and most bitter sacrifice as well; a trial which, as he knew even now, would strain his moral fibre very nearly to the breaking point. It was a struggle for which he had been bracing himself ever since that last conversation which he had had with Enid. From that day to this he had never clasped her hand or looked into her eyes.
That had been the agreement between them, and also between his father and her parents. They were not to meet again until he had finished his university career and taken his degree. That, as they thought, would give them both time enough to think--to remain faithful, or to think better of it, as the case might be--and, most important of all for Vane, to determine by the help of more deliberate thought and added experience, and by converse with minds older and more deeply versed in the laws of human nature than his own, whether or not that resolve, which he had taken when he first discovered that there was a taint of poison in his blood, should be kept or not.
But now it was all over--although it ought only to have been just beginning. This day, which ought to have been the brightest of his life, was, in reality, to be the darkest. The golden gates of the Eden of Love lay open before him, but, instead of entering them, he must pa.s.s by with eyes averted, and enter instead the sombre portals of his life"s Gethsemane; there to take up his cross and to bear it until the time came to lay it down by the side of the grave.
He had thought it all out long and earnestly in solitary communion with his own soul, and during many long and closely-reasoned conversations with Ernshaw, and the one of the night before had decided him--or it might be more correct to say that it had completed the sum of the convictions which had been acc.u.mulating in his soul for the last two years.
The path of duty--duty to her, to himself and to Humanity--lay straight and plain before him. He had nothing to do with the world now. He had come to look upon that taint in his blood as a taint akin to that of leprosy; an inherited curse which forbade him to mix with his kind as other men did. He must stand aloof, crying "unclean" in his soul if not with his voice. Henceforth he must be in the world and not of it--and this, as he thought, he had already proved by his resolve to renounce definitely and for ever the greatest treasure which the world could give him, a treasure which had been his so long, that giving it up was like tearing a part of his own being away with his own hands.
Still, it was all very hard and very bitter. Despite his two years"
preparation, the stress of that last struggle all through the long hours of the night which should have been filled with brightest dreams of the morrow, had left him, not only mentally worn out, but even physically sick. He felt as though the scene which would mark the culminating triumph of his academic career, the end of his youth and the beginning of his manhood, was really an ordeal too great, too agonising, to be faced.
His scout had brought up an ample breakfast, with, of course, many congratulations on the coming honours of the day; but he had only drunk some of the coffee and left the food untouched. As he stood in front of the gla.s.s, putting on his collar, his face looked to him more like that of a man going to execution, than to take the public reward of many a silent hour of hard study. His hands trembled so that he could hardly get his necktie into decent shape.
His coffee on the dressing-table. Would a teaspoonful of brandy in it do him any harm? For two years he had not tasted alcohol in any shape, though he had kept it in his rooms for his friends. He and Ernshaw, who was also a rigid teetotaler, had sat with them and seen them drink. He had smelt the fumes of it in the atmosphere of the room, first with temptation which he had fought against and overcome in the strength of the memory of that terrible night in Warwick Gardens. Then the subtle aroma had become merely a matter of interest to him, a thing to be studied as a physician might study the symptoms of a disease for which he has found the cure.
He had seen his friends leave his rooms somewhat the worse for liquor, and he had reasoned with them afterwards, not priggishly or sanctimoniously, but just as a man who had had the same weakness and had overcome it because he thought it necessary to do so, and they had taken it all very good-humoredly and gone away and done the same thing again a few nights afterwards, seeming none the worst for it.
But surely now he had conquered the deadly craving. Surely two years of hard mental study and healthy physical exercise--two years, during which not a drop of alcohol had pa.s.sed his lips--must have worked the poison out of his blood. Henceforth he was ent.i.tled to look upon alcohol as a servant, as a minister to his wants, and not as a master of his weaknesses.
His mental struggle had so exhausted him that his physical nature craved for a stimulant, cried out for some support, some new life, new energy, if even for an hour or so, so imperiously, that his enfeebled mental stamina had not strength enough left to say "no."
He had got his collar on and his tie tied, and his hands and fingers were trembling as though he were just recovering from an attack of malarial fever.
"It can"t possibly do me any harm now," he said, as he moved away from the gla.s.s towards the door of his sitting-room. "I"ve conquered all that. I haven"t the slightest desire for it as drink--I haven"t had for over a year now--I only want it as medicine, as a patient has it from a doctor. I can"t go on without it, I must have something or I shall faint in the Theatre or do something ridiculous of that sort, and as for meeting Enid--good heavens, how am I to do that at all! Yes, I think a couple of teaspoonsful in that coffee will do me far more good than harm."
He went towards the sideboard on which stood his spirit-case. He unlocked it and took out the brandy decanter. As he did so the memory of that other night came back to him, and he smiled. He had conquered now, and he could afford to smile at those old fears. He took the stopper out of the decanter and deliberately raised it to his nostrils. No, it was powerless. The aroma had no more effect upon him than the scent of, say, _eau de Cologne_ would have had. That night in Warwick Gardens, it had been like the touch of some evil magician"s wand. Then, in an instant, it had transformed his whole nature; but now his brain remained cool and calm, and his senses absolutely unmoved. Yes, he had conquered. He needed a stimulant, merely as an invalid might need a tonic, and he could take it with just as much safety.
He took the decanter into his bedroom and poured a couple of teaspoonsful into his coffee, stirred it, lifted the cup, and, after one single priceless moment"s hesitation, put it to his lips and drank it off.
"Ah, that"s better!" he said, as he put the cup down and felt the subtle glow run like lightning through his veins. "Hallo, who"s that? Confound it, I hope it isn"t Ernshaw. I don"t want to begin the day with a lecture on backsliding."
He put the stopper back, went into the sitting-room, and replaced the decanter in the stand before he said in answer to a knock at his door:
"Come in! Is that you Ernshaw?"
The door opened, and Reginald Garthorne came in.
"No, it"s me. That"s not quite grammatical, I believe, but it"s usual.
Good-morning, Maxwell," he went on, holding out his hand. "I"ve come round early for two reasons. In the first place I want to be the first to congratulate you, and in the second place I want you to give me a brandy and soda. I got here rather late last night with one or two other Cambridge men, and one of them took us to a man"s rooms in Brazenose, and we had a rather wet night of it. Not the proper thing, of course, but excusable just now."
"As for the congratulations, old man," said Maxwell, "thanks for yours and accept mine for what you"ve done in the Tripos, and as for the brandy and soda, well, here you are. Open that cupboard, and you"ll find some soda and gla.s.ses."
As he said this, he unlocked the spirit case again, and put the brandy decanter on the table.
"I"ve just been having a spoonful myself in my coffee," he went on, with just a little flash of wonder why he should have said this. "The fact is, I suppose, I"ve been overdoing it a bit lately, and that, and the anxiety of the thing, has rather knocked me up. I felt as nervous as a freshman going in for his first _viva voce_, when I got up this morning."
"I don"t wonder at it," said Garthorne, helping himself. "You must have been grinding infernally hard. So have I, for the matter of that, although, I didn"t aspire to a double first. You really do look quite knocked up. By the way," he continued, looking at Vane with a smile whose significance he might have seen had it not been for those two spoonsful of brandy, "I suppose you"ve quite got over that--well, if you"ll excuse me saying so--that foolishness about inherited alcoholism and that sort of stuff, and therefore you"ll lay all your laurels at the feet of the fair Enid without a scruple? Of course, you remember that juvenile hiding you gave me on the "Orient"? Quite romantic, wasn"t it?
Well, I must admit that you proved yourself the better boy then, and as you"ve taken a double first and I have only got a single, you"ve proved yourself the better man as well. Here"s to you, Maxwell, won"t you join me? You know you have quite an ordeal to go through to-day, and just one won"t hurt you--do you good, in fact. You look as if you wanted a bracer."
Vane listened to the tempting words, so kindly and frankly spoken, as he might have listened to words heard in a dream. All the high resolves which had shaped themselves with such infinite labour during the past two years, seemed already to have been made by someone else--a someone else who was yet himself. He had made them and he was proud of them, and, of course, he meant to hold to them; but he had conquered that deadly fear which had held him in chains so long. He was a free man now, and could do as he liked with his destiny.
His long probation was over, and he had come through it triumphant. He was to see Enid again that day for the first time for two years. He would hear her voice offering him the sweetest of all congratulations, and when it was all over, there would be a little family gathering in his rooms, just their fathers and themselves, and he would tell them everything frankly, and they should help him to choose--for after all, it was only their right, and she, surely, had the best right of all to be consulted. Meanwhile, now that he had fought and conquered that old craving for alcohol, there would be no harm, especially on such a morning as this, in joining Garthorne in just one brandy and soda.
It never struck him how strangely inverted these thoughts were; what an utter negation of his waking thoughts, as they flashed through his mind while Garthorne was speaking. They seemed perfectly reasonable to him, and--so subtle was the miracle wrought by those two spoonsful of brandy--perfectly honest.
"Well, really, I don"t see why I shouldn"t," he said, taking up the decanter and pulling one of the two gla.s.ses which Garthorne had put on the table towards him. "I think I have got over that little weakness now. At any rate, for the last two years I haven"t touched a drop of anything stronger than coffee, and I"ve sat here and in other men"s rooms with fellows drinking in an atmosphere, as one might say, full of drink and tobacco smoke; and except for the smoking--of course I haven"t dropped that--I"ve never felt the slightest inclination to join them, at least, after the first month or so--so I think I"m pretty safe now."
"Oh, of course you are!" said Garthorne. "As a matter of fact, you know, I never thought that there was anything serious in that idea of yours that you"d inherited the taint from some ancestor of yours. You got screwed one night for the first time in your life, and it gave you a fright. But the fact that you"ve been able to swear off absolutely for two years, is perfectly clear proof that the craving really existed only in your own imagination. If it had been real, you couldn"t possibly have done it. Well, here"s to us, old man, and to someone else who shall be nameless just now!"
Vane, in the recklessness of his new confidence, had mixed himself a pretty stiff dose. As he raised his gla.s.s with Garthorne"s, something seemed to drag upon his arm, and something in his soul rose in revolt; but the old lurking poison was already aflame in his blood. He nodded to Garthorne and said:
"Thanks, old man. Here"s to us and her!"
A few minutes before the words would have seemed blasphemy to him, now they sounded like an ordinary commonplace. He put the gla.s.s to his lips and emptied it in quick, hungry gulps.
CHAPTER VIII.
"By Jove, that"s good," he said, as he put the empty gla.s.s down and drew a long, deep breath. "You only really appreciate that sort of thing after a long abstinence like mine."
"I should think so," laughed Garthorne, putting down his own empty gla.s.s; "although good and all as a brandy and soda is, especially after a rather hot night, I should hardly think it was worth while to be T.T.