Chapter XIII: THE QUEST OF THE OBESE GENTLEMAN (continued)

Utterly dumfoundered as he was for the moment, Gilead very quickly rallied from his stupefaction, and, summoning all his native urbanity to his aid, advanced a step and seized the stranger’s right hand in both of his own.

“Mr Bundy,” he said, “I apologise to you with all my heart.”

His tone was so unmistakably sincere, that the obese gentleman descended, figuratively, from the stilts on which he was mounted and involuntarily returned the pressure of his fingers, only gasping a little in a slow and cod-like manner.

“The sarcasm, the innuendo,” said Gilead, “of which I cannot pretend to hold myself guiltless, must have appeared to you as pointless as they were impertinent. My sole excuse is that I took you for someone else.”

“O, indeed!” said Mr Bundy, heavily perplexed.

“Yes,” said Gilead--“I cannot, I must not say for whom, lest I further endanger a confidence which my rashness has already sufficiently imperilled. But when I tell you, sir, in the sole attempt at self-justification which exists to me, and in response to the noble candour which has made me acquainted with your real name, that _mine_ is Gilead Balm--”

“What! Of Lamb’s Agency?” exclaimed the stranger.

“I entreat you, sir,” continued Gilead, “to believe that I am actuated by no spirit of empty vaunting, but, on the contrary, by one of humiliation that the business of my office should have been committed to so unintelligent a representative as myself. I can plead, sir, nothing but the excuse of good intentions. I believed you, as I say, to be someone else, and, acting upon that assumption, I answered, under a fictitious name, your advertisement, and was so happy, or so unfortunate, as to find myself engaged. My explanation can go no farther, nor be offered less lamely. Will you be generously content with it, with my reiterated apologies, and with the assurance that whatever confidences I may have surprised will remain absolutely sacred to me?”

His candour, his winning manner, not to speak of his self-revelation, won him at once and as always complete absolution. Mr Bundy, with a supreme effort to throw off the lowness of spirit into which he had again sunk, responded, as heartily as possible, in kind.

“Say no more, sir,” he said; “say no more. I congratulate myself, I positively do, on this accident.”

“We have been talking at cross-purposes,” said Gilead.

“We will do so no longer,” cried the other. “I should know, sir, of the lofty motives which actuate your Agency; and, more, of the personal reputation of its founder. I should take it as an honour, sir, if you would permit me to make bare to Mr Balm the bosom which has already, perchance unwittingly, half revealed itself to a stranger.”

“I shall be delighted,” said Gilead gravely. “You heap coals of fire on my head.”

“Then, sir,” said Mr Bundy, with a gleam of real brightness, “do me the favour--the morning is well advanced--to share with me my luncheon, which lies ready for us yonder.”

He led the way to the shed, where lay a basket well packed with pâté de foie gras sandwiches under a napkin, some Bath buns and cream cakes, a syphon of soda-water, a tumbler, and a flask of whisky.

“Sit, sir, sit,” said the stranger; “and, while we eat, I will, with your permission, make known to you that part of my story which turns upon the fortuity which has made you my honoured confidant. It is soon told.”

He offered Gilead a sandwich, took a clump of three himself, devoured two with a falling visage, and, waving the other in his hand, began:--

“My name, sir, is as I told you Emmanuel Bundy; my residence is situate in the Leigham Court Road, Streatham; my business is that of a hide-merchant, in the pursuit of which, I may say, I have amassed a considerable fortune. I am fifty-four years of age. That odious vanity which would falsify the accounts of Nature has never been mine. Years, as they accumulate gold, accumulate wisdom. Why should we boast of the lesser gain and repudiate the greater? Amongst all the possessions which they have brought to me I account none more priceless than my acquaintance with Cornelia Cox.”

He paused a moment to devour his sandwich and to help himself to three more.

“Ah, Mr Balm!” he said, “you must forgive my astonishment over your confession of ignorance as to that transcendent, that incomparable woman. Yet, in truth, my own acquaintance with her dates but from two years back.” (He took half of the three sandwiches at a bite, before he continued):--“I had always found a refuge in books from the monotony of my sordid, and none too savoury occupation. It was left to that moment to reveal to me the full inner heart and significance of literature. Such eloquence, such fire, such an intimate understanding of the deep workings of the human soul! The melting passion of ‘Night-Lights,’ the exquisite je ne sais quoi of ‘Evadne,’ the sensuous luminosity of the ‘Glow-worm’! Here was a woman, I felt, who had tasted the cup of life to its golden depths.”

He sighed, drew himself on a full tumbler of whisky and soda, drained it, sighed again profoundly, and continued, taking another handful of sandwiches:--

“I am a bachelor, sir. I had never until that gracious moment encountered a soul capable of understanding and responding to the deep sentiments within my own. Every profound expression of her feeling seemed to find an echo in my breast. Truths that I had conceived, but had failed to find utterance for, she could crystallize in a phrase. The insensate world of criticism accused her of platitude: jackasses, whose pachydermatous hides were insensible to the fine point of satire, were dull to the blows of anything less than a bludgeon. But _I_ recognized; _I_ understood.

“One day I came across her portrait in an illustrated paper. I will not dwell upon my emotions. It was a face--haunting, ethereal--which exactly embodied my conception of the writer. Looking into its eyes, I could fathom at a glance the unmistakable source of ‘Night-Lights’; the very ‘Evanescence of Evadne’ spoke in that ductile form. From that moment my existence became little more than a devouring hunger, a prolonged swoon of passion.”

He finished the sandwiches and started on a cream tart before he spoke again.

“One day, after a struggle with myself, I did a desperate thing--I wrote, through her publishers, to Miss Cornelia Cox. I wrote palpitating, in a delicious tremor; I pronounced myself the most faithful, the most adoring of her disciples; my pen travelled on the wings of intoxication. To my rapture she answered me.”

He stopped to take a second tumbler of whisky and soda.

“She answered me,” he said, gasping; “and I answered her answer. She wrote again. By degrees a regular correspondence was established between us. I tasted her soul in periodic budgets--a delirious experience; but those sacred, those melodious groves must remain undesecrated of the outer throng. You will understand and excuse me, Mr Balm.”

“Certainly,” said Gilead.

“O!” cried the obese gentleman, “why had I not, in those exquisite first days, the courage of my convictions! I desired, and always desired a still more intimate union of souls, and I delayed until delay became fatal. I was not then by many degrees what you see me now. Though constitutionally of a full habit of body, it had remained for the sun of passion, it appeared, to develop in me this extreme fruitiness. For two years now we have corresponded, and I have been swelling all the time; and during all the time, Mr Balm, we have never yet once met.”

“Not?” said Gilead. “Well, what then? For all Miss Cox knows, your present proportions may have been your first.”

While he spoke, Mr Bundy had finished the last of the buns and cream-cakes. He now struck his breast, and gazed up to heaven with a very full look.

“Impossible,” he said; “for--the truth must be confessed--we have latterly exchanged photographs, and the one of myself that I sent her _was taken years ago when I was slim and comely_.”

He rose with difficulty, and, feeling in the pocket of his coat which hung near, produced two photographs in a folding frame which he offered to Gilead.

“Look, sir,” he said hoarsely, “and consider the measure of retribution exacted for one moment of unthinking vanity. Yet surely--the views we had exchanged had been in themselves so fine, so shapely, had been uttered in so exalted a strain of poetry--the little imposition, amounting to no more than a harmless anachronism, might have been thought natural and excusable? And in succumbing to the temptation I had no thought but to resume, as quickly and as effectually as possible, the contours of the photograph. Alas! in compounding with one’s conscience Destiny always chooses the inconvenient moment for exposure. Judge of my feelings when I tell you that circumstances ruled, all in one instant, that the too-long-delayed meeting between us should be fixed, at last and inevitably, for the middle of next week!”

He stood by, quite sagging with dejection, while Gilead, with a profound face, examined the pictures. That of the lady presented a half-length in book-muslin, a little posée, the visage a little spare, but sentimental and interesting. Turning to the other, he found it hard to repress a smile. It had certainly been taken, by inference, years ago. Mr Bundy appeared in it as a comparatively slim gentleman of sedate, but not mature age, with queer clownish hair and a relatively distinguished mien. Gravely he returned the articles to their owner.

“You have honoured me, sir,” he said, “with your confidence. My advice, without presumption, is at your service.”

“I ask it; I entreat it,” cried Mr Bundy.

“Then, sir,” said Gilead, “believe me that vanity never yet cured vanity, but that truth is the universal panacea. You, and presumably the lady, genuinely desire this union?”

“A union on her part,” said the sufferer miserably, “with the subject of the photograph? I believe I can answer for her so far. As for myself, should I take such steps otherwise to make it possible? You comprehend now, Mr Balm, my position; my desperate essay, on my doctor’s advice, to abate--at a moment’s notice, so to speak--my figure; the torture of conscience which drove me to seek, in the distraction of cheerful companionship, some forgetfulness of the purpose with which I wrought, and the deceit which had necessitated it.”

“You might, with as much hope of success,” said Gilead, “seek to reduce an egg by boiling.” He spoke with a certain sternness. “No, Mr Bundy,” he said, “the proportions of the picture will not be yours within a week. How can you expect it when--I must speak plainly--you pamper your stomach with one hand while you reduce it with the other?”

Mr Bundy, with a self-conscious look, glanced down at the luncheon-basket.

“I am afraid,” he murmured, “that you have made a poor meal.”

“I have had one sandwich, sir,” answered Gilead: “and I could wish, for your sake, that I had had all. But what can it matter to you? The spiritual communion for which you crave is hardly concerned with things of the flesh.”

“It must suffer, its lustre must sink diminished in the shadow of the moral falsehood,” cried Mr Bundy, abashed and despairing.

“Then, sir,” said Gilead, “apply truth for a remedy. It is the only one. Come, be a man, Mr Bundy, and own up and ask absolution.”

“I dare not,” answered the obese gentleman, almost weeping--“I dare not. Her sensitiveness--the shock--my tongue-tied confusion! She does not even know my vocation. Sooner or later she would have to, and then--the double disillusionment!”

“I would not wrong her,” said Gilead; “but wealth, with the best of us, is a flattering recommendation.”

The other looked at him meltingly.

“Ah!” he sighed, “if I could only find one, cultured, diplomatic, who would consent to be my deputy for the truth!”

Gilead drew himself up.

“You mean me,” he said.

“I know you represent it,” faltered Mr Bundy--and stopped, casting down his eyes.

The young man considered a little.

“Very well, sir,” he said suddenly. “I owe you a certain reparation. I will undertake this delicate business, on condition that you give me a note of introduction to the lady.”

The obese gentleman laughed with glee.

“Come,” he said--“come home with me at once, and I will write it.”

THE QUEST OF THE OBESE GENTLEMAN (_continued_)

At three o’clock that same afternoon Gilead found himself on the door-step of a bijou residence in Maida Vale. He was very grave, and for more than a present reason. One having the power to examine into his mind would have discovered there a steadfast purpose of loyalty, a determination to ignore the slanderous whisperings of certain dark spirits which were seeking to undermine in him a rooted faith, to destroy a cherished ideal. One would have found there, also, perhaps, a little pathetic unaccountable sense of weariness, a shadowy emotion--the first in his life--of self-pity. If he had, he would have seen them dismissed as soon as realised. The emotion was essentially feminine, and Gilead had surely despised himself for even succumbing to it. He could not be such a woman as to pet a grievance before it was justified. There was no grievance at all to justify itself; with his eyes set to the truth he told himself so, and he had the will to believe it. Suspicion was a germ that once admitted destroyed the reason; only that strong will had power to keep it out.

A slattern servant admitted him into the bijou hall, and there kept him standing while she delivered the note to her mistress. She came back shortly and, breathing heavily, showed him into the bijou drawing-room and there left him. Glancing around, Gilead saw torn lace curtains, a piano with candle brackets run with grease, a dirty table-cloth, and on it the debris of a meal of biscuits and soda-water scattered among many papers. The whole house looked as if it habitually woke too late to tidy up the confusion of yesterday.

A step at the door brought him to attention, and he bowed with a feeling between chivalry and wonder. The incomparable one stood before him, and he had to admit to himself that she was gaunt, _fade_, and presumably in the over-prime of life. Certainly there was a resemblance to the portrait, but as certainly it was the resemblance of an unflattering copy. Miss Cox was in a negligée of soiled white serge or flannel; there was an air of transcendental slipshoddiness about her; her hair fell in unconsidered loops; her thinness amounted to emaciation; her complexion had once no doubt been ethereal, but had materialized in the course of time, mellowing to the tone of antique parchment. But the expression was all there, spiritual, ineffable--and languishing, for the utmost of its passionate soul, through a couple of large burning eyes.

“Mr Balm?” she exclaimed introductorily, in a deep agitated voice.

He bowed a second time; and she entered, closed the door, and sank into a chair. She was patently nervous and overcome--a lady whose sensitive organization was not proof against unforeseen demands upon it. In one lean long hand she held the accrediting letter; in the other a handkerchief, none too spotless, with which she perpetually fanned herself.

“I trust, Madam,” said Gilead gently, “that, in consenting to act as an intermediary in a matter of so delicate a nature, I convey with me your correspondent’s intimation as to the reasons which induced him to the choice of his representative. Let me assure you that I undertake the confidence with the profoundest sympathy with and respect for its nature. He describes me--”

She raised an entreating hand, interrupting him. “He describes you, sir,” she said, in faintly hollow tones, “as his deputy for the truth. O, believe me, I understand fully! I have long dreaded this moment.”

“Madam,” exclaimed Gilead, startled.

She leaned forward, agonised, intense.

“He has discovered it, then,” she said, “and the romance of my life is blighted in its vernal prime. The photograph--”

“I have had the privilege of seeing it,” said Gilead at a loss, observing that she stopped.

To his horror the lady, on that admission, sank back in her seat, sobbing amphorically.

“Deliver your blow, sir, in swiftest mercy,” she said. “Strike and spare not. Return to your principal and denounce the fond impostor, who sought, by an ardent subterfuge, to draw out for yet a little the linked sweetness of a correspondence which had come to form the romance and solace of her loveless days. Your mission is the truth. Speak it unpityingly. Compare for his disenchantment the portrait with the original; say that you found me spare, unattractive if you will, past my first youth; assert, what it is useless to deny, that, with the desperate purpose to retain his admiration, to evoke even a warmer, a more ecstatic communion of soul, I did that, succumbed to a temptation, whose fruits could only realise themselves in dust and vanity. Yes, sir, I confess it; the photograph represents the Cornelia of many years ago; and even if, as some say--Mr Balm! What is it!”

He was stretching up his arms, standing on his toes, in a sort of moral elevation.

“As _his_ photograph represents the Emmanuel of many years ago!” he cried, and came flat down on his soles.

She rose, she uttered a little scream in a deep way.

“What is that you say!” she cried.

“Madam,” he said, “nothing can be gained by evasion. The Mr Bundy of the photograph was interesting and slim; the Mr Bundy of to-day is interesting and fat. It was to acquaint you of that fact--of a trifling misrepresentation, common, it appears, to you both--that I accepted my commission.”

Miss Cox rose, she clasped her hands exquisitely and craned her lean neck.

“Fat!” she whispered.

“I cannot qualify the term,” said Gilead firmly. “As fat, Madam, as butter. What then? Napoleon was fat, Horace was fat; Johnson, Boswell, Gibbon, Luther, Handel were all fat. Mr Bundy cannot be blamed for emulating the example of those great men; and if--”

“Fat!” repeated the lady, closing her eyes, and in a voice of thrilled ecstasy: “I _doat_, simply _doat_ on a fat man!”

“You do?” responded Gilead, with an air of delighted relief. “Then, Madam, a fat man doats on you, and nothing remains to me but to congratulate you both on this most happy termination to a misunderstanding.”

He bowed, as if he felt his mission accomplished.

“O, stay, sir!” cried Miss Cox. She took a quick step forward; she pressed her handkerchief to her bosom. “My Bundy!” she murmured--“My own Bundy! And was it apprehension over his little roguish deceit that moved him to this step? But I fear, I shudder over my own. Will he forgive it? Will he credit that the waste, the decline--O, we starve on despond: hope is so filling! Tell him that his message has put new life into me; tell him that, repossessing him, I am already twice the woman I was. To meet him half-way, I will absorb the sustenance naturally repugnant to me--gross meats and aliments, in place of the fruits and spring water most sufficing to my needs. Tell him that, given a little time--”

She paused, breathless. “It is what he himself most craves,” said Gilead. A certain perplexity overcame him. “I confess, Madam,” he said, “that what puzzles me is the sudden inevitability of this meeting so long delayed.”

“It was due to myself,” answered the lady; and, panting, continued, with an hysterical incoherence: “A recent snap-shot--horrible, libellous, revolting--appeared in a weekly paper--I feared he would see it--urged by desperation--a travesty of the truth--reality less disenchanting--recoil from worst to something comparatively reassuring--resolved in despair to risk all--force conclusions for bliss or damnation--insisted on meeting, and having written would have withdrawn, but too late. And now--” she broke off with a gasp, and then continued: “O, sir! your appearance--the letter--I believed that he had seen, and that you--his agent--the messenger of my doom--!”

She stopped, gazing at her hearer in liquid emotion.

“You wrong me,” said Gilead gravely, “in deeming me capable of so unchivalrous a deed. No, Madam; my mission--it is unnecessary and would be unadvisable to explain how and where undertaken--was one of appeal on behalf of Mr Bundy’s conscious disabilities. That mission being now accomplished, I trust to the satisfaction of all parties, I shall beg permission to take my leave, only first charging myself with such answer as you shall deem it expedient to return to your richly endowed suitor.”

THE QUEST OF THE OBESE GENTLEMAN (_concluded_)

Gilead walked back to the Agency with a firm step, and that steadfast purpose of loyalty burning unquenched in his heart. On the way he stopped at a famous jeweller’s in Bond Street to make a purchase, having accomplished which he continued his journey to the office.

Something unwonted in the aspect of his private room struck him the instant he entered it. It was very orderly, like a newly-trimmed grave, and the amanuensis, though it was not yet five o’clock, was absent. He sat down at his desk a moment, and buried his face in his hands. Then suddenly he rose, and walked across to the table in the window. The typewriter was closed; the papers relating to all business, past and to come, were neatly docketed and arranged in accessible sheaves. After a moment’s strange observation he turned away, and, stepping to the bell, with a somewhat pale face, summoned a favoured employé.

“Mr Nestle,” he said, when the man appeared: “is he in?”

“Mr Nestle and Miss Halifax, sir,” was the answer, “were both unavoidably summoned away. Miss Halifax left a message begging, as a great favour, that you would call at the flat, sir, if you desired for any reason to see her.”

Gilead nodded.

“Thank you, Clement,” he said. “I think I will go round.”

He did not hesitate; he did not pause a moment to question the immutability of his faith; there and then he went forth and walked direct to his destination. The little maid at the door admitted him, smiling but abashed. She remembered, if he did not, the contretemps with the lift-porter a few nights earlier. A consciousness of concern, moreover, as to the meaning of this visit repeated at an inopportune moment, fluttered, no doubt, the heart under her spruce bib. She introduced him into the drawing-room in a scarce audible voice, and shut the door upon him hurriedly.

Gilead, parcel in hand, walked across the room, a stiff little smile on his lips. Both the secretary and the amanuensis were present before him, as he had expected to find them. The girl stood with her right arm resting on the piano-top, as if for support. Her face was very white; but she neither moved nor spoke. The man stood back, as if slunk into the shadow of the window curtains. He was by far the more dumbfoundered of the two.

“I was told I might find you both here,” said Gilead quietly, “and I accept the occasion gladly for a little private talk. I have been away these two or three days on a wild-goose chase, Miss Halifax. After whom, do you suppose? Why, an old friend of yours with an odd name. Perhaps it is right--stop me if you object--that Herbert should be made acquainted at last with the circumstances of that iniquitous persecution. Do you recall that late occasion in the office, when I spoke of an advertisement which you had overlooked?”

“I had not overlooked it, Mr Balm.”

She spoke in a steady toneless voice.

“Not?” said Gilead, with a faint effort at surprise; but his lips twitched.

“No,” she said. “Only I had not wished to call your attention to it--naturally.”

“That was wrong,” he answered, “however generously your reticence was designed to spare me; still, as it happens, the quest was a fruitless one. The advertiser was not the person I sought; and so we remain as far as ever from a solution of that problem. Yet the coincidence of the name was so strange a one as to seem to justify me in the pursuit. And, after all, it appears that he adopted it from a newspaper story which he once chanced to observe in the hands of a young lady sitting next him in the train.”

“Of mine,” said Miss Halifax, in the same unlifted voice. “So that is how it happened, is it?”

Nestle, in his shadows, uttered a little stifled ejaculation, which Gilead heard but disregarded. He had to make an effort; but he made it courageously, and, unwrapping his parcel, displayed a jewel case, which, being opened, revealed a fine pearl necklace with a diamond clasp.

“Indeed?” he said, with a show of unconcern. “Then the name is not so remarkable a one as we supposed? Or is it possible that the romancer himself adopted it from the living fact? Well, in any case, my quest having resulted in barrenness need not be discussed further. Let us turn to a more profitable matter. I am not intending to break my promise, and I will not be the first to speak. At the same time I am going to ask you, Miss Halifax, to accept provisionally this little token of my most grateful regard.”

She came away quite steadily from her support, and took the case gently from his hand. Her lips were brilliant; the lids of her eyes were flushed; she bore her shame like a fallen goddess.

“They are lovely,” she said. “How generous, how loyal, how noble you are! But you will take this away with you when you go, and keep it for someone worthier of your faith.”

“Vera!” cried Nestle hoarsely.

She took no notice of him, but, placing the jewels softly on the table, came and stood before her employer. And then he knew that the shadow he had dreaded and resisted so long was about to fall and overwhelm him.

“How can you still pretend to believe in us?” she said, in a low even voice. “How can you bear to remain so staunch against your own inner conviction? From the moment I knew that you had seen that advertisement and the name, I knew that the end was come. And it _is_ come, though still not, in your unswerving chivalry, at your instance. The sentence shall be mine. Your great heart shall not suffer any longer this torture of a trust that dies so hard. I will tear it out with my own hands--I daresay because its pain hurts me too, and not from any moral heroism. Mr Balm, there is no such person as Winsom Wyllie; there never was such a person, except in the silly story from which I borrowed the name for my own purposes, never dreaming that the haphazard choice would recoil upon my head like this. He, and that scientific father, and the butterfly-hunting, and the will and the persecution were all pure concoctions from beginning to end. I have been in Switzerland, but only with my brother Herbert here. Yes, he is my brother, and we are liars and impostors from first to last.”

He stirred, with a suggestion of unsteadiness, and stiffening himself, walked to the window and stood looking out of it, his back turned to her. She put a hand one moment to her eyes, and, following, spoke on in her resolute self-abasement:--

“If you will listen, it is right that you should be told all. I plead, and am going to plead nothing whatever in extenuation, save that when I elaborated that wicked lie, my education of the heart had not even been begun. I have learnt much, travelled far since then. A whole continent seems to lie between my present and my past understandings, and looking across it I see the track of bleeding feet, multitudes of them, wandering this way, and I shiver and hide my face to think how, of all the deceits and hypocrisies they include, my own vile shadow, far off over the waste, figures for the first and worst.”

She put a hand to her bosom, panting a little. Her brother came creeping out of the darkness, and, standing near her, spoke for the first time.

“Not hers alone, sir. I am as much to blame, and more.”

Gilead made a movement, as if impatient of the interruption, and he shrank back.

“My own shadow,” continued the girl--“and I have no choice but to admit it. If I dare to claim that it no longer represents me, there are my footsteps among the others reaching to this very moment to give me the lie. I am what I am, not through any independent purpose of my own, but because, in common with the common impostors on that long journey, I have found my soul in the heaven of chivalry which it revealed to me. I ask you only in charity to believe the word of an adventuress that, during all these months of my redemption, my punishment has most lain in my own shameful consciousness of the lie I had doomed myself to live. To have been honoured by you, to have shared your confidence, to have acquiesced in moral condemnations, and to have known all the time that I was utterly unworthy of your trust--more guileful than the pretenders I helped to expose.”

Her voice faltered and ceased, and for a while there ensued a profound silence. But in a little she took up again, with a scarce audible sigh, the burden of her confession:--

“I ask you to believe that, and I ask you to believe that I am even less wretched in my voluntary self-exposure than I have long been in my deceit. I have learned to value the truth, and I can speak it at last.

“Mr Balm, at the time when you engaged my brother, giving him the chance of his life, we had both long been orphans. We lived together, and I was wholly dependent on him. He had been educated to the law, and was a man of brilliant, if undisciplined, talents. He was ambitious for us both; and with both of us, I think, imagination was wont to run ahead of discretion. Unfortunately for him the morale of the firm by whom he was employed, and to whom he acted as head conveyancing clerk, was none of the best. It confessed itself in speculative enterprises, which ultimately led to the collapse and bankruptcy of Broker & Borrodaile. My brother, though morally innocent, suffered through the disrepute which the firm in its transactions had brought upon itself. He found it difficult to obtain a new situation, and before very long we were in a desperate state. It was then that Mr Plover--who had always believed in Herbert and sympathised with our misfortunes--came to our assistance, and was the means of procuring my brother a post such as he had never dreamed of possessing.

“I think that its magnitude, its possibilities, the apparent ease with which he had secured it, turned both our heads. We began to imagine all sorts of brilliant sequels to that beginning--fairy-tales at first, but by and by the prospect of actually realizing on them in some daring way began to haunt us. The world of romance had always appealed to our minds, and no doubt the atmosphere of adventure in which we had both long been living had served to vitiate our moral outlook. What if we could so take advantage of golden circumstance as to assure ourselves a lasting share in the enormous interests with which Herbert was connected! What if my brother’s employer could be inveigled into--into marrying my brother’s sister!”

She had been speaking rapidly latterly; and now she stopped in an instant, as if she had surmounted at a leap the worst of the task she had set herself. And presently, breathing like one after a race, she began again:--

“It was what I had to say, and I have said it; and I am sure--yes, I am sure you will understand my purpose in saying it.

“The plot shaped itself by degrees; I think in its manufacture the mere romantic intricacies of it quite obsessed and fascinated us. Commonplace creatures as we were, without position or recommendation, we were never so presumptuous as to suppose that you could be brought to take an interest in your secretary’s sister merely for your secretary’s sake. Some story of innocence persecuted and in distress must be invented to draw your attention and captivate your imagination. Then, lured into belief, I was to take my own magnificent measures with you to bring you to my feet. It was our double misfortune that my brother had an unqualified belief in my capacity for the task.”

She paused another moment, before she went on:--

“After all it was a desperate venture, and might have miscarried at the outset. I will not even say that I wish it had, since, humiliated though I am, I would not for all the world exchange my new for my old self. But the prize to be won seemed so inestimable, the hazard so thrilling. I do not believe the hateful ingratitude of the thing even struck us. We were born storytellers, and even as children were used to write endless romances together. We have played at life since, I think; I think we have never really grown up. Among the many stories associated with my brother’s office, we thought that this might pass muster without detection. But it was first necessary for us, of course, to separate. Under the pretext of a visit to the country I left our lodgings and repaired, as privately arranged, to Norwood, where, in an assumed name, I hired by the month the little house you will recall. In the meantime, as a precaution against possible enquiries, my brother had changed his lodgings for others at a distance. And then, having prepared our ground, we opened the game. The bogus advertisement was inserted; my brother craftily engaged your interest to it, and, when he saw that the bait had been taken, despatched to me that telegram which you saw, and which was to serve its two purposes, the one to acquaint me of your soon arrival, the other to furnish imaginary proof of the persecution under which I suffered.

“I need not say more. Carried away by the dramatic character of my part, I played it with a fervour which almost made me believe in it myself, and which I sometimes found it difficult afterwards to maintain. The miserable fraud succeeded even beyond our expectations in one way. It procured me a generous means of livelihood; and if it procured me also--”

Her voice thickened and stopped; but she cleared her throat resolutely, and continued:--

“Mr Balm, you must take what measures you will for our exposure and punishment. I beg you with all my soul not to spare us. The meanness of the fraud, the ingratitude, the thoughtlessness as to its moral effect upon you to whom we owed everything--O, nothing that I can say may palliate our guilt, or express the sickness of remorse which came to us when we grew to see ourselves as we were in the light of your true nobility. Only in atonement can we ever again find relief from a misery and self-contempt which have grown to be unbearable. When I speak for myself I speak for my brother. What we have experienced, what we have learnt of you--O, the shame is killing! But don’t, don’t think that in one way we have taken the least, the most shadowy advantage of your trust. You will find everything in the most scrupulous order; and if--if in committing us to the fate we deserve, you can only find it in your heart to say once that you forgive us--”

He stopped her on the instant, facing about.

“Nestle,” he said in a commanding voice, “you will oblige me by going back to the office. I wish to have a word alone with your sister.”

The secretary started, turned, and without a word left the room.

For minutes after he was gone Gilead stood steadfastly regarding the tragic young figure before him. And at last he spoke.

“Supposing you had been successful in your purpose--what then? Were you to live the lie for ever--you, as my wife?”

She stood, the strain relaxed, mute and drooping by the little table. Once and once only had she glanced up at his face; and it had thrilled her with pride to see how the manliness, the nobility in it had suffered no disillusionment to affect them. If sorrow had entered there, will had not surrendered.

“I don’t know,” she whispered scarce audibly. “We had not--I think--got as far as considering that.”

He gave a little odd laugh.

“Typical romancers,” he said--“to end with the wedding bells!”

She put her hand upon the table for support. There a little sharp crack, and an involuntary cry from her lips. He hurried to her. The glass of a miniature on which her hand had rested had broken and scratched the ball of her thumb.

“Blood!” he said--“I must staunch it--” and he lifted the limb, though she strove to resist, and put the soft pink palm to his lips.

She gave a miserable cry--and on the instant he had his arms about her.

“Atonement!” he said hoarsely--“you speak of atonement? It must be in giving yourself to the man you have so shamefully deceived. Nothing short of your devoting your life to him can atone.”

“No, no,” she whispered; and for the first time the tears came thick to her eyes--“No--no--no--” she seemed incapable of any but that one heart-rent ejaculation.

He held her prisoner--fiercely, as though he dreaded that she would escape him.

“Do you know,” he said, “to what I was listening all the time the little miserable confession was being uttered? Why, to the chiming of the bells, the singing of the birds, the murmuring of the happy wind, that all began together the moment I heard that Herbert was your brother.”

[The End]

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES.

I’ve included all the interior images despite the poor quality of the source material. If you can provide better copies please contact Project Gutenberg Support.

Minor spelling inconsistencies (_e.g._ dumbfoundered/dumfoundered, frock-coat/frock coat, moneylender/money-lender, etc.) have been preserved.

Alterations to the text:

Add illustrator’s name to title page.

Silently correct a few punctuation errors (quotation mark pairings, missing periods, etc.)

Images were moved to be nearer the scene they depict.

[Chapter I]

Change (she said, “_sinct_ I come here.”) to _since_.

[Chapter VII]

“and gradually, as he _proceded_ on his way” to _proceeded_.

(“You _wont_ do it?”) to _won’t_.

[Chapter VIII]

“be made to recover the red _morrocco_ handbag” to _morocco_.

“and had put the advertisement into the Daily Post” italicize _Daily Post_.

[Chapter IX]

“Was I? You are _lieing_, you know.” to _lying_.

[Chapter X]

“The _Dragon-fly_, sir? Name of Dangerfield,” to _Dragonfly_.

[Chapter XI]

(“The child,” said Gilead, still sternly--“is that _her’s_?”) to _hers_.

“it was evident, dated from other and _lest_ righteous groves” to _less_.

[End of text]