I
AS Mary made her way from Bridport House across the Park, in the direction of Broad Place and luncheon, it came suddenly upon her that she was in a state of the most abject misery she had ever been in. It was a gorgeous midday of July, but the world had ceased to be habitable. She had come up against a blank wall. At that moment there was nothing in life to make it worth while.
In the ordeal she had just passed through a fierce pride had forbade her to show one glimpse of her real feelings. She had carried off the whole scene with almost an air of comedy, for she was determined that “those people” should not realize what wounds it was in their power to deal. But Dame Nature, now that she had the high-mettled creature to herself, was having something to say to her on the matter. A price was being exacted for these heroics and for this stoicism.
The Duke had left an impression of fine chivalry on a perceptive mind, but in spite of that, now they were no longer face to face, her deepest feeling was an angry resentment. Life was not playing fair. In the course of a strenuous three and twenty years she had rubbed shoulders with all sorts of men and women, but in spite of an honest catholicity of outlook, she had come to the conclusion already that there was only one kind for which she had any real use. It was not a question of loaves and fishes, or a puerile snobbishness; it was simply that one of the deepest instincts she had, the sense of the artist, demanded a setting.
Walking along, blind to everything but the misery of this reaction, she was suddenly brought up short, thrown as it were against the world in its concrete reality, by the knowledge that a pair of eyes was devouring her. Cutting across her path at an acute angle as he converged upon her from the direction of Kensington Gardens was a man wholly absorbed in the occupation of looking at her. With a start she awoke to the force of his gaze; her subconscious perception of it was so strong that it even aroused a tacit hostility.
Who was this large, lean, top-hatted creature striding towards her in a pair of aggressively checked trousers? Where had she seen that freckled face, those bold eyes, those prognathous jaws? As he came on he caught her gaze and fixed it; but she dropped her eyes at once, adroitly giving him only the line of her cheek to look at. Whoever he was, he was not a gentleman!
In the next moment, however, she had begun to realize that he was outside and beyond any trite symbol of that kind. He was less a man than a natural force; moreover, as soon as he had passed her, he stopped abruptly and turned round to follow her with his eyes. She did not need to turn round herself to verify her sense of the act, even had personal dignity not intervened to prevent her.
She felt annoyed. Again she asked herself who he could be. When and where had she seen him? And then a light broke. It may have been the checked trousers, it may have been the prognathous jaws, but her mind was suddenly flung back upon that recent visit to Beaconsfield Villas, and a certain unforgettable scene. This slightly fantastic figure was no less a person than Lady Muriel’s fiancé, the new Home Secretary.
II
Crossing to Broad Place she could not check a laugh. Wounded, angry, humiliated by the pressure of a recent event, there still lurked in her a true appreciation of the human comedy. What a pill for Bridport House to have to swallow! It was poetic justice that the pride which strained at a gnat so harmless as herself should have to gulp a real live camel in the person of the Right Honorable Gentleman.
But the laugh, after all, was hollow. Tears of vexation leaped to her eyes. And they owed more to the perception of her own inadequacy in this smarting hour than to the act of Fate. “Wretch that I am!” She was ready to chasten herself with scorpions as she crossed the familiar path into Albert Gate.
Within a very few yards were the loyal, warm-hearted friends of her own orbit. And there, alas! was the rub. Her own orbit could not satisfy her now. She craved something that all their kindness, their cheerfulness, their frank affection could not give. “Just common or garden snobbishness, my dear, that’s the nature of your complaint,” whispered a monitor within. “You are no better than anyone else when you are invited to call on a duke in Mount Street.”
That might be true, or it might not, but sore and rebellious as she was, she was strongly inclined to dispute the verdict. After all, her feeling went infinitely deeper. It was futile, however, to analyze it now. This was not the place nor was there present opportunity. She glanced at the watch on her wrist. It was one o’clock.
The watch on her wrist was as hostile as everything else in her little world just now. Even one o’clock had a sharp sting of its own. “Don’t be late for lunch,” had been Milly’s parting words. “Charley Cheesewright is coming. And he’s dying to meet you.”
She managed to navigate the vortex of Knightsbridge without knowing that she did so; and then, all at once, she realized that she was within twenty yards of Victoria Mansions, and that a rather overdressed young man was a few yards ahead.
With a feeling akin to nausea she pulled up in time to watch this short, squat figure disappear within the precincts of Number Five. For a reason she couldn’t explain she was quite sure that this was none other than Mr. Charles Cheesewright. She didn’t know him; if a back view meant anything she had no wish to know him; certainly she had no desire to make his acquaintance going up in the lift.
She hung back a discreet three minutes on the pavement of Broad Place before daring to enter the vestibule of Number Five, Victoria Mansions. By then the coast was clear; Mr. Charles Cheesewright, apparently, had gone up in the Otis elevator. And she stood on the mat, drawn and tense, a figure of tragedy, waiting for the Otis elevator to come down again.
III
At last the Otis elevator came down and she went up in it. And then confronted by the door of the flat, she peered through the glass panel to make sure that Mr. Charles Cheesewright was not standing the other side of it; then she opened it with a furtive key, slipped in, and stole past the half-open door of the tiny drawing-room through which came the penetrating accents of Mrs. Wren attuned to the reception of “company.”
Once in her own room her first act was to look in the glass with a lurking sense of horror; the second was to decide, which she instantly did, that it would be quite impossible to meet Mr. Cheesewright, and that she didn’t need any luncheon.
By the time she had taken off her hat and made herself a little more presentable, both these decisions had grown immutable. She could not meet Mr. Cheesewright, she did not want any luncheon. All she needed was complete solitude, and perhaps a cigarette. But all too soon was she ravished of even these modest requirements. Milly burst suddenly into the room.
“Twenty past one!” she cried reproachfully. “I didn’t hear you come in. We are waiting for you.”
Mary saw that her plan must be given up. If she really meant to forgo a meal and the honor of Mr. Cheesewright’s acquaintance there would have to be a satisfactory explanation. But what explanation could she make? Certainly none that would conceal the truth. And at that moment she wished almost savagely for it to be concealed. Confronted by a choice of evils she made a dash at the less.
“I’m so sorry. I’ll be with you in one minute.”
Sheer pride forced her tone to a superhuman lightness, verging on gayety. But there was a formidable member of her sex to deal with. In spite of that heroic note, Milly was not to be taken in; she looked at the dissembler with eyes that saw a great deal too much. “I expect you’ve taken a pretty bad toss, my fine lady,” they seemed to say.
“I’ll be with you in one minute,” repeated Mary, with burning cheeks and a beating heart. But Milly continued to stare. Suddenly she laid impulsive hands on her shoulders and gave her a kiss.
Mary didn’t like kissing. Her friend’s proneness to the habit always irritated her secretly; this present indulgence in it brought Mary as near to active dislike as it would have been possible for her to get.
Milly went back to the drawing-room seething with an excited curiosity. Before she could make up her mind to follow Mary stood a long moment in black despair; and then “biting on the bullet,” as the soldiers say, she went to join the others.
“Naughty girl!” was the arch reception of Mrs. Wren. “I’m very cross. Didn’t you promise not to be late? But if you must call before lunch on dukes in Park Lane I suppose people like us will have to take the consequences.”
Mary would gladly have given a year’s salary for the head of Mrs. Wren on a charger, but Milly intervened neatly with the presentation of Mr. Cheesewright, in itself a little masterpiece of quiet humor.
Princess Bedalia’s reception of Mr. Charles Cheesewright was perhaps the severest test to which her sterling goodness had been exposed. Every nerve was on edge. She wanted to slay Mr. Cheesewright, braided coat, turquoise tie-pin, diamond sleeve links, immaculate coiffure and all. But for the sake of Milly she dragooned her feelings to the pitch of bowing quite charmingly.
Luncheon, after all, was not so bad. Mrs. Wren was frankly at her worst and most tactless; her one idea was to impress the guest, to let him see that money was not everything, and that judged by her standards he was a most ordinary young man. For such a democrat her table talk was surprisingly full of Debrett. It was all very lacerating, but Mary continued to play up as well as she knew how. And by the time the meal was half over the reward of pure unselfishness came to her in the shape of a quite unexpected liking for Mr. Charles Cheesewright.
By all the rules of the game, that is, if mere outward appearance went for anything, Mr. Cheesewright should have been insufferable. But at close quarters, with curried prawns and chablis before him, and a very fine girl opposite, he was nothing of the kind. Mrs. Wren had confided to Mary a week ago, “that she was afraid from what she had heard, that he was not out of the top drawer.” The statement had been provoked by an odious comparison with Wrexham, “who,” declared Milly in her most aboriginal manner, “had, as far as mother was concerned, simply queered the pitch for everybody.”
Perhaps in the eyes of Mary it was Mr. Cheesewright’s supreme merit that, in spite of his clothes, he was modestly content to be his humble self. In every way he was a very middling young man. But he knew that he was and, in Mary’s opinion, that somehow saved him from being something worse. Mrs. Wren was far from agreeing. His face and form were plebeian, but there was no reason why he should take them lying down. He was Eton and Cambridge certainly—or was it Harrow and Oxford?—anyhow an adequate expression of a sound convention; and it was for that reason no doubt that all through a particularly trying meal he kept up his end bravely. In fact, he did so well that he earned the gratitude of the young woman opposite, although he was far from suspecting that he had done anything of the kind.
She had begun by counting the minutes and in looking ahead to the time when she could retire with her wounds. But there was a peculiar virtue in the meal; at any rate it agreed so well with the natural constitution of Mr. Charles Cheesewright that he was able to relieve the tension of the little dining-room without knowing it. He wasn’t brilliant, certainly, but he talked plainly, sanely, modestly about the things that mattered; the Brodotsky Venus at the Portman Gallery, the miserable performance of Harrow, the new play at the Imperial, the sure defeat of America’s Big Four, Mr. Jarvey’s new novel, the prospect of the Kaiser lifting the pot at Cowes, and other matters of international importance, so that by the time coffee and crême-de-menthe had rounded up the meal, Mary was inclined to feel sorry that it was at an end.
When a few minutes before three Mr. Cheesewright went his way—to have a net at Lord’s Cricket Ground—the famous Princess Bedalia felt a pang of regret. He had played a pretty good innings already, even if he didn’t seem to know it. And the honest shake of her hand did its best to tell him so.
IV
As soon as Mr. Cheesewright had gone, Mary prepared to go too. But before she could retire Milly and her mother were at her. Both had a pretty shrewd suspicion that she had been making a sorry mess of things at Bridport House. These ladies, however, were so cunning, that they did not show their hands at once. To begin with, they exchanged a glance full of meaning, and then as Mary got up and made for the door, Mrs. Wren commanded her to sit down again and tell them what she thought of Charley. That was guile. She didn’t in the least want to know what anyone thought of Charley; besides, it would have been quite possible for Mary to deliver her verdict even as she stood with the knob of the door in her hand.
“I like him—immensely!” she said, returning to the sofa in deference to Mrs. Wren.
Mother and daughter looked at her searchingly, with eyes that questioned.
“I like him—immensely!” she repeated.
“He’s not the kind of man,” said Mrs. Wren with an air of vexation, “I should have written home about when I was a girl.”
“What’s wrong with him?” said Milly, bridling. “Why do you always crab him, mother?”
“I—crab him!” Mrs. Wren’s air was the perfection of injured innocence. “Nothing of the kind. It isn’t his fault he’s not a blue blood—and if my lord of Wrexham’s form is anything to go by, he may be none the worse for that.”
“Yes, of course, as far as you are concerned Wrexham’s the fly in the ointment,” said Milly with a sudden flutter of anger.
Mary would have given much to escape, but to have fled with thunder and forked lightning in the air would have been an act of cowardice, not to say treachery.
The truth was Mrs. Wren still had other views for Milly, but up till now Wrexham had disappointed her. Moreover, both these clear-headed and extremely practical ladies were inclined to think he would continue to do so. For one thing he was under the thumb of his family, who were as hostile as they could be; again Wrexham was a bit of a weakling who didn’t quite know his own mind. Certainly he had a regard for Milly, but whether it would enable him to wear a martyr’s crown was very doubtful. Milly, at any rate, had allowed a second Richmond to enter the field of her affections, in the shape of Mr. Charles Cheesewright, the sole inheritor of Cheesewright’s Mixture, a young man of obscure antecedents but of considerable wealth. So far Mr. Cheesewright had received small encouragement from Mrs. Wren, and Milly herself had been very guarded in her attitude; yet it was as plain as could be that one of the more expensive of the public schools and one of the older universities had made a little gentleman of Mr. Cheesewright. “But,” as Milly said, “the truth was Wrexham had simply queered the pitch for everybody.”
Mary, as the friend of all parties, including Mr. Cheesewright, who had unexpectedly found favor in her sight, felt it to be her duty to stay in the room, so that, if possible, oil might be poured on the troubled waters. She had sense of acute discomfort, it was true; and it was not made less by the sure knowledge that the heavy weapons mother and daughter were using for the benefit of each other would soon be turned against herself.
There was not long to wait for this prophecy to be fulfilled. As soon as the ladies had cut off her retreat, they dropped the academic subject of Mr. Cheesewright and bluntly demanded to know what was the matter. It was vain for Mary to try to parry this expected attack. Her friends, when their feelings were deeply stirred, indulged in a sledge-hammer style of warfare, against which any ordinary kind of defense was powerless.
“Don’t tell me,” said Mrs. Wren, “that you have let them bully you into giving him up!”
This was what Milly was wont to call her mother’s “old Sadler’s Wells touch” with a vengeance. The victim bit her lip sharply, but she could not prevent the color from rushing to her cheeks and giving her completely away.
“Why, of course she has!” cried Milly, looking at her pitilessly. “I knew she would. I told you, my dear, she was set on doing something fantastic. And here have I been telling Charley that one day she would be a duchess.”
“I call it soppy,” said Mrs. Wren.
“Downright mental flabbiness,” cried Milly. “It’s the sort of thing a girl would do in the Family Herald.”
Mary quailed before these taunts. Even if her friends had an unconventional way of expressing themselves, it did not blind her to the poignant nature of their emotions. In the tone of mother and daughter was a note which showed how deeply they were wounded by her moral weakness—they could consider it nothing else. And the bitterness of the attack was the measure of their devotion. Mrs. Wren could hardly restrain her tongue, Milly was at the verge of tears. Such a girl as Mary Lawrence had no right to wreck two lives for a mere whim.
“You are nothing but a fool,” said Mrs. Wren. “You’ll never get such a chance again. I’d like to shake you.”
Mary had no fight left in her. She sat on the sofa a picture of dismay. For the first time she saw mother and daughter as they really were, in all their native crudeness; yet when the worst was said of them they had a generosity of soul which made them suffer on her account; and that fact alone seemed to leave her at their mercy.
“You’ve no right to let them ruin your life and his,” said Milly pitilessly.
“One simply can’t go where one isn’t wanted,” said Mary at last with a face of ashes.
Mrs. Wren took up the phrase, the first the girl had been able to utter in her own defense, and flung it back. “Not wanted forsooth! Who are they that they should pick and choose! A dead charge on the community—neither more nor less.”
“No one can’t,” said Mary, tormentedly. “How could one!”
“Rubbish!” said Mrs. Wren. “You can’t afford to be so proud. From the way you talk you might be the Queen of England.”
The girl shook her head. “And it isn’t quite fair that they should have to put up with me.”
Those unfortunate words were made to recoil upon her heavily. Both her assailants were frankly amazed that she should want to look at the matter from the enemy point of view. To such a mind as Mrs. Wren’s it could only mean that Bridport House had hypnotized her with the semblance of place and power.
“I could shake you,” re-affirmed the good lady. “A girl as first-rate as you are has no right to be a snob.”
Somehow that barb was horrible. Nothing wounds like the truth.
Strong in the conviction that “she had got her” Mrs. Wren proceeded. “You set as high a value on these people as they set on themselves. It’s noodles like you who keep them up. What use are they anyway, except to play the fool with honest folk?”
“Yes, that’s right,” said Milly with flashing eyes, as she took up the parable. “Wrexham’s one of the same push. His lot simply won’t look at me, yet I consider myself the equal of anyone. And I should make a very good countess.”
Mary could only gasp. She was rather overcome by this naïveté.
“So you would, my dear,” said Mrs. Wren. “And one of these days you will be a countess—if you don’t throw yourself away on Tom, Dick, and Harry in the meantime.”
Mary was hard set not to break out in a hysterical laugh. She was in the depths if ever soul was, yet the sense of humor is immortal and survives every torment.
Fate, however, had not yet given the last turn to the screw.
V
At this moment the neat parlormaid came into the room.
“Mr. Dinneford!” she announced.
Jack stood a moment on the threshold to gaze at the three occupants. He was rather like a sailor who fears foul weather and has not the courage to read the sky.
“I’m glad you’ve come, young man,” said Mrs. Wren, getting up to receive him. And she added almost at once, for it was never her way to beat about the bush, “We are giving her the finest talking to she has ever had in her life.”
Jack nearly groaned. The look of the three of them had told him already that she must have made a fearful hash of things.
By now the Tenderfoot had risen very high in Mrs. Wren’s favor. To begin with he would one day be the indubitable sixth Duke of Bridport—a handicap, no doubt, in the sight of some types of democrat, but apparently not, in the eyes of Mrs. Wren, an insuperable barrier. Again, she was a pretty shrewd judge of a man, and this one had passed all his examinations so far with flying colors. He was absolutely straightforward, absolutely honorable; moreover, he knew his own mind—whereby he had a signal advantage over his stable companion, who, in spite of great merits, was lacking in character.
“Yes, we are setting her to rights,” said Milly, wrinkling a nose of charming pugnacity. The face of the culprit was tense and rather piteous, but Jack’s glance at it was perfectly remorseless.
“I knew she would,” he groaned.
“Knew she would what?” demanded Mrs. Wren.
“Let Uncle Albert down her,” was the prompt rejoinder.
“That didn’t want much guessing,” said Milly bitterly.
“Bridport-House-itis! That’s her trouble,” said Mrs. Wren. “And she seems to have quite a bad form of the disease. I can’t understand such a girl, I can’t really. To me she’s unnatural. If I found people ‘coming the heavy’ over me, I should just set my back to the wall and say, ‘Very well, my fine friends, I’m now going to let you see that Jane Wren is every bit as good as you are.’”
“So would any other reasonable being.” And that unpremeditated speech of the Tenderfoot’s would have made Mrs. Wren his friend for life, had she not become so already.
“That’s what I call sensible,” said she. “And there’s only one thing for you to do now, young man, and that is to take her straight away and marry her.”
At this point Mary got up from her sofa. But Mrs. Wren held one great advantage; she had her back to the door. “You don’t leave this room, my fine lady”—again “the old Sadler’s Wells touch,” and Jack and Milly could not deny that it was rather superb—“until you realize that we all think alike in this matter.”
“Quite so,” said the Tenderfoot, immensely stimulated by this powerful backing. “Let us try to see the thing as it is. This isn’t a case for high falutin’ sentiment. Bridport House is steeped in crass idiocy; all the more reason, I say, that we give it no encouragement.”
“Quite so,” chimed Mrs. Wren.
“Quite so,” chimed Milly, who was irresistibly reminded of a recent command performance of “Money.”
Mrs. Wren shook a histrionic finger at the luckless Mary, whose eyes were seeking rather wildly a means of escape. “Don’t speak! Don’t venture to say a word!” The victim had not shown the least disposition to do so. “You simply haven’t a leg to stand on, you know.”
It was a shameful piece of bullying but the victim bore it stoically. And it did not go on for long. Neither Mrs. Wren nor Milly was exactly a fool. As soon as they saw that main force was not likely to help them, and that more harm than good might be done by it, they decided to leave the whole matter to Jack. They had expressed their own point of view very fully, they knew that he could be trusted to make the most of his case; besides, when all was said, he was the person best able to deal with an entirely vexatious affair.
Of a sudden, the astute Milly flung a swift glance at her mother and got up from her chair. And without another word on the subject, this pair of conspirators dramatically withdrew.
VI
Such an exit from the scene was far more eloquent than words. And its immediate effect was to plunge Jack and Mary with a haste that was hardly decent, into what both felt was perilously like a final crisis. Its very nature was of a sort that a finer diplomacy would have been careful to avoid. But Jack, baffled and angry, was not in a mood to temporize; besides, that was never his way.
The fine shades of emotion were not for him, but he had the perception to feel that if he remained five minutes longer in that little room the game might be lost irretrievably. In fact, it seemed to be lost already. The specter of defeat was hovering round him; nay, it was embodied in the very atmosphere he breathed.
Knowing the moment to be full of peril, he determined to force himself to the greatest delicacy of which he was capable, for this might prove the final throw. The look in her eyes seemed to tell him that all was lost, but he would set the thought aside and act as if he were not aware of it.
A long and very trying pause lent weight to this decision, and then at last he said in a tone altogether different from the one he had recently used, “Tell me, why are you so determined to keep a hardshell like Uncle Albert on his pedestal?”
The form of the question provoked a wry little smile. “We poor females are by nature conservative.”
“You are that,” he said. “Take you and me. We’ve both seen the world. And the world has changed me altogether, but I should say it hasn’t changed you at all.”
“No; I don’t think it has,” she admitted ruefully, “in the things that are really important.”
“Six years ago, before I went West, I saw Bridport House at pretty much the same angle you see it now. But I suppose if you get lumbering timber, or living by your wits, or looking for gold in the Yukon, it mighty soon comes home to you that it is only realities that count. And the cold truth is that Bridport House simply isn’t a reality at all.”
“There I can’t agree with you,” she said with a simple valor he was bound to admire. “I haven’t seen the Yukon, but I’ve seen Bridport House and it’s intensely real to me. Somehow the place is quite wonderful. It works upon one like a charm.”
“I was a fool to let you go there.”
“But it only confirms my guesses.”
“Why, you are as bad as your Aunt Sanderson,” he burst out. “And you haven’t her excuse. One can understand her point of view, although it’s very extreme, and absurdly overdone, but yours, if you’ll let me say so, is merely fanciful. Why you should be absolutely the last person in the world to be hypnotized by mere rank and pride of place.”
“It isn’t that at all.”
“What is it, then?”
“It’s something I can’t explain, a kind of instinct, I suppose. Please don’t think I’m overawed by vain shows. But there is such a thing as tradition, at least there is to me, and every stick and stone of that house simply glows with it.”
“Mere sentiment!”
“Oh, yes—I know—but sentiment’s the thing that rules the world.”
“Plain, practical common sense rules the world.”
“I mean the only world worth living in.”
He could do nothing with her, and the fact was now hurting him horribly. A man used to his own way, of clear vision, and strong will, he could not bear the thought of being sidetracked or thwarted. Besides, her reasoning was demonstrably false. He was growing bitterly annoyed but, after all, such a solicitude for others only added to her value. Moreover, here was a nature almost fantastically fine, and for decency’s sake he must constrain his egotism to respect her scruples.
But the sense of defeat was hard to bear. Since that morning’s fatal visit to the Mecca of tradition her will had crystallized. There seemed little hope of shaking it now.
“Let me ask one question,” he said tensely. “Do you still care for me?”
Before she could answer the question her breath came quickly, her color mounted. And then she said in a low voice, “I do—I always shall.”
It was no use telling her she was a fool. She was grotesquely in the wrong, even if she was sublimely in the right. He would like to have shaken her—and yet how dare he sully her with a point of view which was purely personal?
“I expect that old barbarian is laughing finely in his sleeve,” he said with a sudden descent to another plane.
“You don’t read him right.” A warm throb of feeling was in her voice. “He’s quite deep and true—and kind, so kind you would hardly believe. When I went there this morning I felt I was going to hate him, and yet I find I can’t.”
“You are an idealist,” he said. “And you’ve tuned up that old cracked file to the pitch of your own sackbut and psaltery. He’s not fine in any way if you see him as I do—but I’m an earthworm, of course. He’s just a hardshell and an unbeliever, who runs tradition for all it’s worth, because that means loaves and fishes for him and his.”
She countered this speech staunchly; it was not worthy of him. And yet the tone of reproof was so gentle that it gave him new courage. Besides, he was a born fighter and the mere thought of losing such a prize was more than he could bear.
“You can’t go back on your word,” he burst out with sudden defiance. “You made a promise that you’re bound to keep.”
The look in her eyes asked for pity. “Oh! I could never go there,” she shivered, “among all those hostile women.”
“We will keep a thousand miles away from them.”
“They have told me I’m not good enough.”
“Like their damned impertinence!” He flushed with anger.
“But I promised this morning that I wouldn’t.”
“You first promised me that you would.”
Again he had her cornered. It was almost the act of a cad to drive her so hard, but he was an elemental who had simply to obey the laws of his being. It seemed madness and damnation to let her go. And yet there were tears in her eyes which he dare not look at. If he saw them he was done.
With a kind of savage joy he felt her weaken a little at the impact of his will. It was a piece of cruelty for which there was no help, a form of bullying he could not avoid.
“The best thing we can do,” he said suddenly, “is to get married at once and then clear off to Canada. Then we shall be beyond the jurisdiction of Bridport House.”
“That old man would never forgive me,” was the simple reply. “It would make the whole thing quite hopeless for everybody.”
He checked the words at the tip of his tongue. She had no right to play for the other side, but there was something in her bearing which shamed him to silence. For the first time he was torn; this immolation of self might be a deeper wisdom; at least he felt thin and shallow in its presence.
“Won’t you help me?” She laid a hand on his. Tears were now running down her cheeks.
He caught his breath sharply at the unexpected appeal; it was like the fixing of a knife. There was no alternative; he saw at once with fatal clearness that these four little words cut the ground from under his feet.
“Of course I will,” he said miserably, “if that is how you really feel about it.”
She bowed her head in the moment’s intensity. “Thank you,” she said softly.
He could only gasp. Here was the end.
“We must forget each other,” she said stoically.
“Or ask the sun and moon to stand still,” he said. “I shall never marry anyone else.”
She gave him the honest hand of the good comrade and he took it to his lips.
“I shall go back to Canada.”
“Won’t you stay and help them?”
“No,” he said, “these stupid people have got on my nerves. Besides, this city is not big enough to hold us both just now.”
“I intend to go to Paris and study for the opera.”
“No,” he said decisively. “This time next week I shall be on my way back to Vancouver, unless——”
“Unless——?”
“Unless Bridport House can be made to forget the Parish Pump in the meantime. And there’s hardly a chance of that.”