A few days later Barrett came to my rooms. We knocked on the floor for Parker, and he came up.
Then he put down a letter on the table and we read it in silence.
It was just what we expected, an enigmatic, self-protecting effusion.
Maitland was hedging. He had evidently been put off by Maud"s illness, and talked a great deal about friendship being the crown of life, and how she must think of nothing but the care of her health, etc., etc.; and he on his side must not be selfish and trouble her with too many letters, etc.
"Brute," said Parker.
"There"s another," said Barrett.
"You don"t mean to say you wrote again. There"s not been time."
"No. _He_ wrote again. He doesn"t seem to have been perfectly satisfied with the chivalry of the letter you"ve just read. He"s always great on chivalry, you know. And it certainly would be hard to make that last letter dovetail in with his previous utterances on a man"s instinct to guard and protect the opposite s.e.x."
Barrett threw down a bulky letter and--may G.o.d forgive us--Parker and I read it together under the lamp.
"I can"t go on," said Parker after a few minutes.
"You must," said Barrett savagely.
We read it through from the first word to the last, and as we read Parker"s face became as grave as Barrett"s.
It is an awful thing when a poseur ceases to pose, when an egoist becomes a human being. But this is what had befallen Maitland. The thing had happened which one would have thought could not possibly happen. He had fallen in love.
I can"t put in the whole of his letter here. Indeed, I don"t remember it very clearly. But I shall not forget the gist of it while I live.
After he had despatched his other letter he told her the scales of egotism had suddenly dropped from his eyes, and he had realised that he loved for the first time, and that he could not face life without her, and that the thought that he might lose her, had possibly already lost her by his own fault, was unendurable to him. For in the new light in which now all was bathed he realised the meanness of his previous letter, of his whole intercourse with her: that he had never for a moment been truthful with her: that he had att.i.tudinised before her in order to impress her: that he had always taken the ground that he was difficult to please, and that many women had paid court to him, but that it was all chimerical. No woman had ever cared for him except his mother, and a little nursery governess when he was a lad. During the last twenty years he had made faint, half-hearted attempts to ingratiate himself with attractive women: and when the attempts failed, as they always had failed, he had had the meanness to revenge himself by implying that his withdrawal had been caused by their wish to give him more than the friendship he craved. He had said over and over again that he valued his independence too much to marry, but it was not true. He did not value it a bit. He had been pining to get married for years and years. He saw now that to say that kind of thing was only to say in other words that he had never lived. He had not. He had only talked about living. He abased himself before her with a kind of pa.s.sion. He told her that he did not see how any woman, and she least of all, could bring herself to care for a man of his age and appearance, even if he had been simple and humble and sincere, much less one who had taken trouble to show himself so ign.o.ble, so petty, so self-engrossed, so arrogant. But the fact remained that he loved her; she had unconsciously taught him to abhor himself, and he only loved her the more, he worshipped her, well or ill, kind or unkind, whether she could return it or not.
We stared at each other in a ghastly silence. I expected some ribald remark from Barrett, but he made none.
"What"s to be done?" said Parker at last.
"There"s one thing that can"t be done," said Barrett, and I was astonished to see him so changed, "and that is to show the thing up.
It"s not to be thought of."
We both nodded.
"I said it would make a man of him, but I never in my wildest moments thought it really would," continued Barrett. "It"s my fault. You two fellows said I should go too far."
We a.s.sured him that we were all three equally guilty.
"The point is, what"s to be done?" repeated Parker.
"I"ve thought it over," said Barrett, putting the letter carefully in his pocket, "and I"ve come to the conclusion it _must_ go on. I have not the heart to undeceive him. And I don"t suppose you two will want to be more down on him than I am."
"If it goes on he"ll find out," I groaned.
"He mustn"t be allowed to find out," said Barrett. "He simply mustn"t.
I"ve got to insure that. I dragged the poor devil in, and I"ve got to get him out."
"How will you do it?"
"Kill her. There"s nothing for it but that. Fortunately she was ill in the vacation. He"s uneasy about her health now. I put her in a rest cure, if you remember, when he became too pertinacious, and I was yachting."
"He"ll feel her death," said Parker. "It"s hard luck on him."
"Suggest something better then," snapped Barrett.
But though we thought over the matter until late into the night we could think of nothing better. Barrett, who seemed to have mislaid all his impudent self-confidence, departed at last saying he would see to it.
"Who would have thought it," said Parker to me as I followed him to lock him out. "And so Maitland is a live man, after all." We stood and looked across the court to Maitland"s windows, who was still burning the midnight oil.
"You don"t think he"ll ever get wind of this," I said.
"You may trust Barrett," Parker replied. "Good-night."
Barrett proved trustworthy. He and Parker laid their heads together, and it was finally decided that Maud"s aunt should write Maitland a letter from Paris describing her sudden death, and how she had enjoined on her aunt to break it to Maitland, and to send him the little ring she always wore. After much cogitation they decided that Maud should send him a death-bed message, in which she was to own that she loved him. Barrett thought it would comfort him immensely if she had loved him at first sight, so he put it in. And though he was frightfully short of money he went up to London and got a very nice little ring with a forget-me-not in turquoises on it, for the same amount he had won off us about Maitland"s moustache. I think he was glad as it was blood money in a way (if you can call a moustache blood) that it should go back to Maitland.
The old aunt"s letter was a masterpiece. At any other time Barrett"s artistic sense would have revelled in it, but he was out of spirits, and only carried the matter through by a kind of doggedness. The letter was prim and stilted, but humane, and the writer was obviously a little hurt by the late discovery that her dear niece had concealed anything from her. She returned all the letters which she said her niece had evidently treasured, and said that she was returning heartbroken to her house in Pimlico the same day, and would, of course, see him if he wished it, but she supposed that one so busy as Maitland would hardly be able to spare the time. The letter was obviously written under the supposition that the address in Pimlico was familiar to him. It was signed in full. _Yours faithfully, Maud Markham._
Barrett got a friend whom he could rely on to post the packet on his way through Paris.
I don"t know how Maitland took the news. I don"t know what he can have thought of his grisly letters when he saw them again. But I do know that he knocked up and had to go away.
There is one thing I admire about Barrett. He did not pretend he did not feel Maitland"s illness, though I believe it was only gout. He did not pretend he was not ashamed of himself. He never would allow that we were equally guilty. And when Maitland came back rather thinner and graver, we all noticed that he treated him with respect. And he never jeered at him again. Maitland regained his old self-complacency in time and was dreadfully mysterious and Maitlandish about the whole affair. I have seen Barrett wince when he made vague allusions to the responsibility of being the object of a great pa.s.sion, and the discipline of suffering.
But he _had_ suffered in a way. He really had. And when the Bursar"s wife died Maitland was genuinely kind. He shot off lots of plat.i.tudes of course; but on previous occasions when he had said he had been stirred to the depths he only meant to the depth of a comfortable arm-chair. Now it was plat.i.tudes and actions mixed. He actually heaved himself out of his armchair, and exerted himself on behalf of the poor, dreary little bounder, took him walks, and sat with him in an evening--his sacred evenings. To think of Maitland putting himself out for anyone! It seemed a miracle.
After a time it was obvious that the incident had added a new dignity and happiness to his life. He settled down so to speak, into being an old bachelor, and grew a beard, and did not worry about women any more.
He felt he had had his romance.
I don"t know how it was, but we all three felt a kind of lurking respect for him after what had happened. You would have thought that what we knew must have killed such a feeling, especially as it wasn"t there before. But it didn"t. On the contrary. And Maitland felt the change, and simply froze on to us three. He liked us all, but Barrett best.
The Dark Cottage
The soul"s dark cottage, battered and decayed Lets in new light through c.h.i.n.ks that time has made.
_Edmund Waller._
PART I
1915
John Damer was troubled for his country and his wife and his child.
At first he had been all patriotism and good cheer. "It will be a short war and a b.l.o.o.d.y one. The Russians will be in Berlin by Christmas. We shall sweep the German flag from the seas. We are bound to win."