Chapter IV: Part 4

"With tears and smiles from heaven again,
The maiden spring upon the plain
Came in a sunlit fall of rain,"

and so on, though this was July, and not spring at all. And--

"A man had given all other bliss
And all his worldly work for this,
To waste his whole heart in one kiss
Upon her perfect lips."

Her own lips were not perfect, yet, as lips went, they were well enough, and, anyway, kisses would not be wasted on them.

She went down the lane, full of the anxious trembling longing that is youth's unrecognised joy, and at the corner, where the lane meets the high white road, she met him. That is to say, she stopped short, as the whispering silence of the morning was broken by a sudden rattle and a heavy thud, not pleasant to hear. And he and his bicycle fell together, six yards from her feet. The bicycle bounded, and twisted, and settled itself down with bold, resentful clatterings. The man lay without moving.

Her Tennyson quotations were swept away. She ran to help.

"Oh, are you hurt?" she said. He lay quite still. There was blood on his head, and one arm was doubled under his back. What could she do? She tried to lift him from the road to the grass edge of it. He was a big man, but she did succeed in raising his shoulders, and freeing that right arm. As she lifted it, he groaned. She sat down in the dust of the road, and lowered his shoulders till his head lay on her lap. Then she tied her handkerchief round his head, and waited till someone should pass on the way to work. Three men and a boy came after the long half hour in which he lay unconscious, the red patch on her handkerchief spreading slowly, and she looking at him, and getting by heart every line of the pale, worn, handsome face. She spoke to him, she stroked his hair. She touched his white cheek with her finger-tips, and wondered about him, and pitied him, and took possession of him as a new and precious appanage of her life, so that when the labourers appeared, she said--

"He's very badly hurt. Go and fetch some more men and a hurdle, and the boy might run for the doctor. Tell him to come to the White House. It's nearest, and it may be dangerous to move him further."

"The 'Blue Lion' ain't but a furlong further, miss," said one of the men, touching his cap.

"It's much more than that," said she, who had but the vaguest notion of a furlong's length. "Do go and do what I tell you."

They went, and, as they went, remorselessly dissected, with the bluntest instruments, her motives and her sentiments. It was not hidden from them, that wordless whisper in the shadowy inner chamber of her heart. "Perhaps the 'Blue Lion' isn't so very much further, but I can't give him up. No, I can't." But it was almost hidden from _her_. In her mind's outer hall she said--

"I'm sure I ought to take him home. No girl in a book would hesitate. And I can make it all right with mother. It would be cruel to give him up to strangers."

Deep in her heart the faint whisper followed--

"I found him; he's mine. I won't let him go."

He stirred a little before they came back with the hurdle, and she took his uninjured hand, and pressed it firmly and kindly, and told him it was "all right," he would feel better presently.

She did have him carried home, and when the doctor had set the arm and the collar-bone, and had owned that it would be better not to move him at present, she knew that her romance would not be cut short just yet. She did not nurse him, because it is only in books that young girls of the best families act as sick-nurses to gentlemen. But her mother--dear, kind, clever, foolish gentlewoman--did the nursing, and the daughter gathered flowers daily to brighten his room. And when he was better, yet still not well enough to resume the bicycle tour so sharply interrupted by a flawed nut, she read to him, and talked to him, and sat with him in the hushed August garden. Up to this point, observe, her interest had been purely romantic. He was a man of forty-five. Perhaps he had a younger brother, a splendid young man, and the brother would like her because she had been kind. _He_ had lived long abroad, had no relatives in England. He knew her Cousin Reginald at Johannesburg--everyone knew everyone else out there. The brother--there really was a brother--would come some day to thank her mother for all her goodness, and she would be at the window and look down, and he would look up, and the lamp of life would be lighted. She longed, with heart-whole earnestness, to be in love with someone, for as yet she was only in love with love.

But on the evening when there was a full moon--the time of madness as everybody knows--her mother falling asleep after dinner in her cushioned chair in the lamp lit drawing-room, he and she wandered out into the garden. They sat on the seat under the great apple tree. He was talking gently of kindness and gratitude, and of how he would soon be well enough to go away. She listened in silence, and presently he grew silent, too, under the spell of the moonlight. She never knew exactly how it was that he took her hand, but he was holding it gently, strongly, as if he would never let it go. Their shoulders touched. The silence grew deeper and deeper. She sighed involuntarily; not because she was unhappy, but because her heart was beating so fast. Both were looking straight before them into the moonlight. Suddenly he turned, put his other hand on her shoulder, and kissed her on the lips. At that instant her mother called her, and she went into the lamp-light. She said good night at once. She wanted to be alone, to realise the great and wonderful awakening of her nature, its awakening to love--for this was love, the love the poets sang about--

"A kiss, a touch, the charm, was snapped."

She wanted to be alone to think about him. But she did not think. She hugged to her heart the physical memory of that strong magnetic hand-clasp, the touch of those smooth sensitive lips on hers--held it close to her till she fell asleep, still thrilling with the ecstasy of her first lover's kiss.

Next day they were formally engaged, and now her life became an intermittent delirium. She longed always to be alone with him, to touch his hands, to feel his cheek against hers. She could not understand the pleasure which he said he felt in just sitting near her and watching her sewing or reading, as he sat talking to her mother of dull things--politics, and the war, and landscape gardening. If she had been a man, she said to herself, always far down in her heart, she would have found a way to sit near the beloved, so that at least hands might meet now and then unseen. But he disliked public demonstrations, and he loved her. She, however, was merely in love with him.

That was why, when he went away, she found it so difficult to write to him. She thought his letters cold, though they told her of all his work, his aims, ambitions, hopes, because not more than half a page was filled with lover's talk. He could have written very different letters--indeed, he had written such in his time, and to more than one address; but he was wise with the wisdom of forty years, and he was beginning to tremble for her happiness, because he loved her.

When she complained that his letters were cold he knew that he had been wise. She found it very difficult to write to him. It was far easier to write to Cousin Reginald, who always wrote such long, interesting letters, all about interesting things--Cousin Reginald who had lived with them at the White House till a year ago, and who knew all the little family jokes, and the old family worries.

They had been engaged for eight months when he came down to see her without any warning letter.

She was alone in the drawing-room when he was announced, and with a cry of joy, she let fall her work on the floor, and ran to meet him with arms outstretched. He caught her wrists.

"No," he said, and the light of joy in her face made it not easy to say it. "My dear, I've come to say something to you, and I mustn't kiss you till I've said it."

The light had died out.

"You're not tired of me?"

He laughed. "No, not tired of you, my little princess, but I am going away for a year. If you still love me when I come back we'll be married. But before I go I must say something to you."

Her eyes were streaming with tears.

"Oh, how can you be so cruel?" she said, and her longing to cling to him, to reassure herself by personal contact, set her heart beating wildly.

"I don't want to be cruel," he said; "you understand, dear, that I love you, and it's just because I love you that I must say it. Now sit down there and let me speak. Don't interrupt me if you can help it. Consider it a sort of lecture you're bound to sit through."

He pushed her gently towards a chair. She sat down sulkily, awkwardly, and he stood by the window, looking out at the daffodils and early tulips.

"Dear, I am afraid I have found something out. I don't think you love me--"

"Oh, how can you, how can you?"

"Be patient," he said. "I've wondered almost from the first. You're almost a child, and I'm an old man--oh, no, I don't mean that that's any reason why you shouldn't love me, but it's a reason for my making very sure that you _do_ before I let you marry me. It's your happiness I have to think of most. Now shall I just go away for a year, or shall I speak straight out and tell you everything? If your father were alive I would try to tell him; I can't tell your mother, she wouldn't understand. You can understand. Shall I tell you?"

"Yes," she said, looking at him with frightened eyes.

"Well: look back. You think you love me. Haven't my letters always bored you a little, though they were about all the things I care for most?"

"I don't understand politics," she said sullenly.

"And I don't understand needle-work, but I could sit and watch you sew for ever and a day."

"Well, go on. What other crime have I committed besides not going into raptures over Parliament?"

She was growing angry, and he was glad. It is not so easy to hurt people when they are angry.

"And when I am talking to your mother, that bores you too, and when we are alone, you don't care to talk of anything, but--but--"

This task was harder than he had imagined possible.

"I've loved you too much, and I've shown it too plainly," she said bitterly.

"My dear, you've never loved me at all. You have only been in love with me."

"And isn't that the same thing?"

"Oh! it's no use," he said, "I must _be_ a brute then. No, it's not the same thing. It's your poets and novelists who pretend it is. It's they who have taught you all wrong. It's only half of love, and the worst half, the most untrustworthy, the least lasting. My little girl, when I kissed you first, you were just waking up to your womanhood, you were ready for love, as a flower-bud is ready for sunshine, and I happened to be the first man who had the chance to kiss you and hold your dear little hands."

"Do you mean that I should have liked anyone else as well if he had only been kind enough to kiss me?"

"No, no; but ... I wish girls were taught these things out of books. If you only knew what it costs me to be honest with you, how I have been tempted to let you marry me and chance everything! Don't you see you're a woman now--women were made to be kissed, and when a man behaves like a brute and kisses a girl without even asking first, or finding out first whether she loves him, it's not fair on the girl. I shall never forgive myself. Don't you see I took part of you by storm, the part of you that is just woman nature, not yours but everyone's; and how were you to know that you didn't love me, that it was only the awakening of your woman nature?"

"I hate you," she said briefly.

"Yes," he answered simply, "I knew you would. Hate is only one step from passion."

She rose in a fury. "How dare you use that word to me!" she cried. "Oh, you are a brute! You are quite right: I don't love you--I hate you, I despise you. Oh, you brute!"

"Don't," he said; "I only used that word because it's what people call the thing when it's a man who feels it. With you it's what I said, the unconscious awakening of the womanhood God gave you. Try to forgive me. Have I said anything so very dreadful? It's a very little thing, dear, the sweet kindness you've felt for me. It's nothing to be ashamed or angry about. It's not a hundredth part of what I have felt when you have kissed me. It's because it's such a poor foundation to build a home on that I am frightened for you. Suppose you got tired of my kisses, and there was nothing more in me that you did care for. And that sort of ... lover's love doesn't last for ever--without the other kind of love--"

"Oh, don't say any more," she cried, jumping up from her chair. "I did love you with all my heart. I was sorry for you. I thought you were so different. Oh, how could you say these things to me? Go!"

"Shall I come back in a year?" he asked, smiling rather sadly.

"Come back? _Never!_ I'll never speak to you again. I'll never see you again. I hope to God I shall never hear your name again. Go at once!"

"You'll be grateful to me some day," he said, "when you've found out that love and being in love are not the same thing."

"What is love, then? The kind of love _you'd_ care for?"

"I care for it all," he said. "I think love is tenderness, esteem, affection, interest, pity, protection, and passion. Yes, you needn't be frightened by the word; it is the force that moves the world, but it's only a part of love. Oh, I see it's no good. God bless you, child: you'll understand some day!"

She does understand now; she has married her Cousin Reginald, and she understands deeply and completely. But she only admits this in that deep, shadowy, almost disowned corner of her heart. In the reception room of her mind she still thinks of her first lover as "That Brute!"

DICK, TOM, AND HARRY

"AND so I look in to see her whenever I can spare half an hour. I fancy it cheers her up a bit to have some one to talk to about Edinburgh--and all that. You say you're going to tell her about its having been my doing, your getting that berth. Now, I won't have it. You promised you wouldn't. I hate jaw, as you know, and I don't want to have her gassing about gratitude and all that rot. I don't like it, even from you. So stow all that piffle. You'd do as much for me, any day. I suppose Edinburgh _is_ a bit dull, but you've got all the higher emotions of our fallen nature to cheer you up. Essex Court is dull, if you like! It's three years since I had the place to myself, and I tell you it's pretty poor sport. I don't seem to care about duchesses or the gilded halls nowadays. Getting old, I suppose. Really, my sole recreation is going to see another man's girl, and letting her prattle prettily about him. Lord, what fools these mortals be! Sorry I couldn't answer your letter before. I suppose you'll be running up for Christmas! So long! I'm taking her down those Ruskins she wanted. Here's luck!"

The twisted knot of three thin initials at the end of the letter stood for one of the set of names painted on the black door of the Temple Chambers. The other names were those of Tom, who had strained a slender competence to become a barrister, and finding the achievement unremunerative, had been glad enough to get the chance of sub-editing a paper in Edinburgh.

Dick enveloped and stamped his letter, threw it on the table, and went into his bedroom. When he came back in a better coat and a newer tie he looked at the letter and shrugged his shoulders, and he frowned all the way down the three flights and as far as Brick Court. Here he posted the letter. Then he shrugged his shoulders again, but after the second shrug the set of them was firmer.

As his hansom swung through the dancing lights of the Strand, he shrugged his shoulders for the third time.

And, at that, his tame devil came as at a signal, and drew a pretty curtain across all thoughts save one--the thought of the "other man's girl." Indeed, hardly a thought was left, rather a sense of her--of those disquieting soft eyes of hers--the pretty hands, the frank laugh--the long, beautiful lines her gowns took on--the unexpected twists and curves of her hair--above all, the reserve, veiling tenderness as snowflakes might veil a rose, with which she spoke of the other man.

Dick had known Tom for all of their men's lives, and they had been friends. Both had said so often enough. But now he thought of him as the "other man."

The lights flashed past. Dick's eyes were fixed on a picture. A pleasant room--an artist's room--prints, sketches, green curtains, the sparkle of old china, fire and candle light. A girl in a long straight dress; he could see the little line where it would catch against her knee as she came forward to meet him with both hands outstretched. Would it be both hands? He decided that it would--to-night.

He was right, even to the little line in the sea-blue gown.

Both hands; such long, thin, magnetic hands.

"You _are_ good," she said at once. "Oh--you must let me thank you. Tom's told me who it was that got him that splendid berth. Oh--what a friend you are! And lending him the money and everything. I can't tell you--It's too much--You are--"

"Don't," he said; "it's nothing at all."

"It's everything," said she. "Tom's told me quite all about it, mind! I know we owe everything to you."

"My dear Miss Harcourt," he began. But she interrupted him.

"Why not Harry?" she asked. "I thought--"

"Yes. Thank you. But it was nothing. You see I couldn't let poor old Tom go on breaking his heart in silence, when just writing a letter or two would put him in a position to speak."

She had held his hands, or he hers, or both, all this time. Now she moved away to the fire.

"Come and sit down and be comfortable," she said. "This is the chair you like. And I've got some cigarettes, your very own kind, from the Stores."

She remembered a time when she had thought that it was he, Dick, who might break his heart for her. The remembrance of that vain thought was a constant pin-prick to her vanity, a constant affront to her modesty. She had tried to snub him in those days--to show him that his hopes were vain. And after all he hadn't had any hopes: he'd only been anxious about Tom! In the desolation of her parting from Tom she had longed for sympathy. Dick had given it, and she had been kinder to him than she had ever been to any man but her lover--first, because he was her lover's friend, and, secondly, because she wanted to pretend to herself that she had never fancied that there was any reason for not being kind to him.

She sat down in the chair opposite to his.

"Now," she said, "I won't thank you any more, if you hate it so; but you are good, and neither of us will ever forget it."

He sat silent for a moment. He had played for this--for this he had delayed to answer the letter wherein Tom announced his intention of telling Harriet the whole fair tale of his friend's goodness. He had won the trick. Yet for an instant he hesitated to turn it over. Then he shrugged his shoulders--I will not mention this again, but it was a tiresome way he had when the devil or the guardian angel were working that curtain I told you of--and said--

"Dear little lady--you make me wish that I _were_ good."

Then he sighed: it was quite a real sigh, and she wondered whether he could possibly not be good right through. Was it possible that he was wicked in some of those strange, mysterious ways peculiar to men: billiards--barmaids--opera-balls flashed into her mind. Perhaps she might help him to be good. She had heard the usual pretty romances about the influence of a good woman.

"Come," she said, "light up--and tell me all about everything."

So he told her many things. And now and then he spoke of Tom, just to give himself the pleasure-pain of that snow-veiled-rose aspect.

He kissed her hand when he left her--a kiss of studied brotherliness. Yet the kiss had in it a tiny heart of fire, fierce enough to make her wonder, when he had left her, whether, after all.... But she put the thought away hastily. "I may be a vain fool," she said, "but I won't be fooled by my vanity twice over."

And she kissed Tom's portrait and went to bed.

Dick went home in a heavenly haze of happiness--so he told himself as he went. When he woke up at about three o'clock, and began to analyse his sensations, he had cooled enough to call it an intoxication of pleasurable emotion. At three in the morning, if ever, the gilt is off the ginger-bread.

Dick lay on his back, his hands clenched at his sides, and, gazing open-eyed into the darkness, he saw many things. He saw all the old friendship: the easy, jolly life in those rooms, the meeting with Harriet Harcourt--it was at a fancy-ball, and she wore the white-and-black dress of a Beardsley lady; he remembered the contrast of the dress with her eyes and mouth.

He saw the days when his thoughts turned more and more to every chance of meeting her, as though each had been his only chance of life. He saw the Essex Court sitting-room as it had looked on the night when Tom had announced that Harriet was the only girl in the world--adding, at almost a night's length, that impassioned statement of his hopeless, financial condition. He could hear Tom's voice as he said--

"And I _know_ she cares!"

Dick felt again the thrill of pleasure that had come with the impulse to be, for once, really noble, to efface himself, to give up the pursuit that lighted his days, the dream that enchanted his nights. His own voice, too, he heard--

"Cheer up, old chap! We'll find a lucrative post for you in five minutes, and set the wedding bells a-ringing in half an hour, or less! Why on earth didn't you tell me before?"

The glow of conscious nobility had lasted a long while--nearly a week, if he recollected aright. Then had come the choice of two openings for Tom, one in London, and one, equally good, in Edinburgh. Dick had chosen to offer to his friend the one in Edinburgh. He had told himself then that both lovers would work better if they were not near enough to waste each other's time, and he had almost believed--he was almost sure, even now, that he had almost believed--that this was the real reason.

But when Tom had gone there had been frank tears in the lovers' parting, and Dick had walked up the platform to avoid the embarrassment of witnessing them.

"You beast, you brute, you hound!" said Dick to himself, lying rigid and wretched in the darkness. "You knew well enough that you wanted him out of the way. And you promised to look after her and keep her from being dull. And you've done all you can to keep your word, haven't you? She hasn't been dull, I swear. And you've been playing for your own hand--and that poor stupid honest chap down there slaving away and trusting you as he trusts God. And you've written him lying letters twice a week, and betrayed him, as far as you got the chance, every day, and seen what a cur you are, every night, as you see it now. Oh, yes--you're succeeding splendidly. She forgets to think of Tom when she's talking to you. How often did _she_ mention him last night? It was _you_ every time. You're not fit to speak to a decent man, you reptile!"

He relaxed the clenched hands.

"Can't you stop this infernal see-saw?" he asked, pounding at his pillow; "light and fire every day, and hell-black ice every night. Look at it straight, you coward! If you're game to face the music, why, face it! Marry her, and friendship and honesty be damned! Or perhaps you might screw yourself up to another noble act--not a shoddy one this time."

Still sneering, he got up and pottered about in slippers and pyjamas till he had stirred together the fire and made himself cocoa. He drank it and smoked two pipes. This is very unromantic, but so it was. He slept after that.

When he woke in the morning all things looked brighter. He almost succeeded in pretending that he did not despise himself.

But there was a letter from Tom, and the guardian angel took charge of the curtain again.

He was tired, brain and body. The prize seemed hardly worth the cost. The question of relative values, at any rate, seemed debatable. The day passed miserably.

At about five o'clock he was startled to feel the genuine throb of an honest impulse. Such an impulse in him at that hour of the day, when usually the devil was arranging the curtain for the evening's tragi-comedy, was so unusual as to rouse in him a psychologic interest strong enough to come near to destroying its object. But the flame of pleasure lighted by the impulse fought successfully against the cold wind of cynical analysis, and he stood up.

"Upon my word," said he, "the copy-books are right--'Be virtuous and you will be happy.' At least if you aren't, you won't. And if you are.... One could but try!"

He packed a bag. He went out and sent telegrams to his people at King's Lynn, and to all the folk in town with whom he ought in these next weeks to have danced and dined, and he wrote a telegram to her. But that went no further than the floor of the Fleet Street Post Office, where it lay in trampled, scattered rhomboids.

Then he dined in Hall--he could not spare from his great renunciation even such a thread of a thought as should have decided his choice of a restaurant; and he went back to the gloomy little rooms and wrote a letter to Tom.

It seemed, until his scientific curiosity was aroused by the seeming, that he wrote with his heart's blood. After the curiosity awoke, the heart's blood was only highly-coloured water.

"Look here. I can't stand it any longer. I'm a brute and I know
it, and I know you'll think so. The fact is I've fallen in love
with your Harry, and I simply can't bear it seeing her every
day almost and knowing she's yours and not mine" (there the
analytic demon pricked up its ears and the scratching of the
pen ceased). "I have fought against this," the letter went on
after a long pause. "You don't know how I've fought, but it's
stronger than I am. I love her--impossibly, unbearably--the
only right and honourable thing to do is to go away, and I'm
going. My only hope is that she'll never know.

"Your old friend."

As he scrawled the signatory hieroglyphic, his only hope was that she _would_ know it, and that the knowledge would leaven, with tenderly pitying thoughts of him, the heroic figure, her happiness with Tom, the commonplace.

He addressed and stamped the envelope; but he did not close it.

"I might want to put in another word or two," he said to himself. And even then in his inmost heart he hardly knew that he was going to her. He knew it when he was driving towards Chenies Street, and then he told himself that he was going to bid her good-bye--for ever.

Angel and devil were so busy shifting the curtain to and fro that he could not see any scene clearly.

He came into her presence pale with his resolution to be noble, to leave her for ever to happiness--and Tom. It was difficult though, even at that supreme moment, to look at her and to couple those two ideas.

"I've come to say good-bye," he said.

"_Good-bye?_" the dismay in her eyes seemed to make that unsealed letter leap in his side pocket.

"Yes--I'm going--circumstances I can't help--I'm going away for a long time."

"Is it bad news? Oh--I _am_ sorry. When are you going?"

"To-morrow," he said, even as he decided to say, "to-night."

"But you can stay a little now, can't you? Don't go like this. It's dreadful. I shall miss you so--"

He fingered the letter.

"I must go and post a letter; then I'll come back, if I may. Where did I put that hat of mine?"

As she turned to pick up the hat from the table, he dropped the letter--the heart's blood written letter--on the floor behind him.

"I'll be back in a minute or two," he said, and went out to walk up and down the far end of Chenies Street and to picture her--alone with his letter.

She saw it at the instant when the latch of her flat clicked behind him. She picked it up, and mechanically turned it over to look at the address.

He, in the street outside, knew just how she would do it. Then she saw that the letter was unfastened.

How often had Tom said that there were to be no secrets between them! This was _his_ letter. But it might hold Dick's secrets. But then, if she knew Dick's secrets she might be able to help him. He was in trouble--anyone could see that--awful trouble. She turned the letter over and over in her hands.

He, without, walking with half-closed eyes, felt that she was so turning it.

Suddenly she pulled the letter out and read it. He, out in the gas-lit night, knew how it would strike at her pity, her tenderness, her strong love of all that was generous and noble. He pictured the scene that must be when he should re-enter her room, and his heart beat wildly. He held himself in; he was playing the game now in deadly earnest. He would give her time to think of him, to pity him--time even to wonder whether, after all, duty and honour had not risen up in their might to forbid him to dare to try his faith by another sight of her. He waited, keenly aware that long as the waiting was to him, who knew what the ending was to be, it must be far, far longer for her, who did not know.

At last he went back to her. And the scene that he had pictured in the night where the east wind swept the street was acted out now, exactly as he had foreseen it.

She held in her hand the open letter. She came towards him, still holding it.

"I've read your letter," she said.

In her heart she was saying, "I must be brave. Never mind modesty and propriety. Tom could never love me like this. _He's_ a hero--my hero."

In the silence that followed her confession he seemed to hear almost the very words of her thought.

He hung his head and stood before her in the deep humility of a chidden child.

"I am sorry," he said. "I am ashamed. Forgive me. I couldn't help it. No one could. Good-bye. Try to forgive me--"

He turned to go, but she caught him by the arms. He had been almost sure she would.

"You mustn't go," she said. "Oh--I _am_ sorry for Tom--but it's not the same for him. There are lots of people he'd like just as well--but you--"

"Hush!" he said gently, "don't think of me. I shall be all right. I shall get over it."

His sad, set smile assured her that he never would--never, in this world or the next.

Her eyes were shining with the stress of the scene: his with the charm of it.

"You are so strong, so brave, so good," she made herself say. "I can't let you go. Oh--don't you see--I can't let you suffer. You've suffered so much already--you've been so noble. Oh--it's better to know now. If I'd found out later--"

She hung her head and waited.

But he would not spare her. Since he had sold his soul he would have the price: the full price, to the last blush, the last tear, the last tremble in the pretty voice.

"Let me go," he said, and his voice shook with real passion, "let me go--I can't bear it." He took her hands gently from his arms and held them lightly.

Next moment they were round his neck, and she was clinging wildly to him.

"Don't be unhappy! I can't bear it. Don't you see? Ah--don't you see?"

Then he allowed himself to let her know that he did see. When he left her an hour later she stood in the middle of her room and drew a long breath.

"_Oh!_" she cried. "What have I done? What _have_ I done?"

He walked away with the maiden fire of her kisses thrilling his lips. "I've won--I've won--I've won!" His heart sang within him.

But when he woke in the night--these months had taught him the habit of waking in the night and facing his soul--he said--

"It was very easy, after all--very, very easy. And was it worth while?"

But the next evening, when they met, neither tasted in the other's kisses the bitterness of last night's regrets. And in three days Tom was to come home. He came. All the long way in the rattling, shaking train a song of delight sang itself over and over in his brain. He, too, had his visions: he was not too commonplace for those. He saw her, her bright beauty transfigured by the joy of reunion, rushing to meet him with eager hands and gladly given lips. He thought of all he had to tell her. The fifty pounds saved already. The Editor's probable resignation, his own almost certain promotion, the incredibly dear possibility of their marriage before another year had passed. It seemed a month before he pressed the electric button at her door, and pressed it with a hand that trembled for joy.

The door opened and she met him, but this was not the radiant figure of his vision. It seemed to be not she, but an image of her--an image without life, without colour.

"Come in," she said; "I've something to tell you."

"What is it?" he asked bluntly. "What's happened, Harry? What's the matter?"

"I've found out," she said slowly, but without hesitation: had she not rehearsed the speech a thousand times in these three days? "I've found out that it was a mistake, Tom. I--I love somebody else. Don't ask who it is. I love him. Ah--_don't_!"

For his face had turned a leaden white, and he was groping blindly for something to hold on to.

He sat down heavily on the chair where Dick had knelt at her feet the night before. But now it was she who was kneeling.

"Oh, _don't_, Tom, dear--don't. I can't bear it. I'm not worth it. He's so brave and noble--and he loves me so."

"And don't _I_ love you?" said poor Tom, and then without ado or disguise he burst into tears.

She had ceased to think or to reason. Her head was on his shoulder, and they clung blindly to each other and cried like two children.

* * * * *

When Tom went to the Temple that night he carried a note from Harry to Dick. With sublime audacity and a confidence deserved she made Tom her messenger.

"It's a little secret," she said, smiling at him, "and you're not to know."

Tom thought it must be something about a Christmas present for himself. He laughed--a little shakily--and took the note.

Dick read it and crushed it in his hand while Tom poured out his full heart.

"There's been some nonsense while I was away," he said; "she must have been dull and unhinged--you left her too much alone, old man. But it's all right now. She couldn't care for anyone but me, after all, and she knew it directly she saw me again. And we're to be married before next year's out, if luck holds."

"Here's luck, old man!" said Dick, lifting his whisky. When Tom had gone to bed, weary with the quick sequence of joy and misery and returning joy, Dick read the letter again.

"I can't do it," said the letter, "it's not in me. He loves me too much. And I _am_ fond of him. He couldn't bear it. He's weak, you see. He's not like you--brave and strong and noble. But I shall always be better because you've loved me. I'm going to try to be brave and noble and strong like you. And you must help me, Dear. God bless you. Good-bye."

"After all," said Dick, as he watched the white letter turn in the fire to black, gold spangled, "after all, it was not so easy. And oh, how it would have been worth while!"

MISS EDEN'S BABY

MISS EDEN'S life-history was a sad one. She told it to her employer before she had been a week at the Beeches. Mrs. Despard came into the school-room and surprised the governess in tears. No one could ever resist Mrs. Despard--I suppose she has had more confidences than any woman in Sussex. Anyhow, Miss Eden dried her tears and faltered out her poor little story.

She had been engaged to be married--Mrs. Despard's was a face trained to serve and not to betray its owner, so she did not look astonished, though Miss Eden was so very homely, poor thing, that the idea of a lover seemed almost ludicrous--she had been engaged to be married: and her lover had been killed at Elendslaagte, and her father had died of heart disease--an attack brought on by the shock of the news, and his partner had gone off with all his money, and now she had to go out as a governess: her mother and sister were living quietly on the mother's little fortune. There was enough for two but not enough for three. So Miss Eden had gone governessing.

"But you needn't pity me for that," she said, when Mrs. Despard said something kind, "because, really, it's better for me. If I were at home doing nothing I should just sit and think of _him_--for hours and hours at a time. He was so brave and strong and good--he died cheering his men on and waving his sword, and he did love me so. We were to have been married in August."

She was weeping again, more violently than before; Mrs. Despard comforted her--there is no one who comforts so well--and the governess poured out her heart. When the dressing-bell rang Miss Eden pulled herself together with a manifest effort.

"I've been awfully weak and foolish," she said, "and you've been most kind. Please forgive me--and--and I think I'd rather not speak of it any more--ever. It's been a relief, just this once--but I'm going to be brave. Thank you, thank you for all your goodness to me. I shall never forget it."

And now Miss Eden went about her duties with a courageous smile, and Mrs. Despard could not but see and pity the sad heart beneath the bravely assumed armour. Miss Eden was fairly well educated, and she certainly was an excellent teacher. The children made good progress. She worshipped Mrs. Despard--but then every one did that--and she made herself pleasures of the little things she was able to do for her--mending linen, arranging flowers, running errands, and nursing the Baby. She adored the Baby. She used to walk by herself in the Sussex lanes, for Mrs. Despard often set her free for two or three hours at a time, and more than once the mother and children, turning some leafy corner in their blackberrying or nutting expeditions, came upon Miss Eden walking along with a far-away look in her eyes, and a face set in a mask of steadfast endurance. She would sit sewing on the lawn with Mabel and Gracie playing about her, answering their ceaseless chatter with a patient smile. To Mrs. Despard she was a pathetic figure. Mr. Despard loathed her, but then he never liked women unless they were pretty.

"I ought to be used to your queer pets by now," he said; "but really this one is almost too much. Upon my soul, she's the ugliest woman I've ever seen."

She certainty was not handsome. Her eyes were fairly good, but mouth and nose were clumsy, and hers was one of those faces that seem to have no definite outline. Her complexion was dull and unequal. Her hair was straight and coarse, and somehow it always looked dusty. Her figure was her only good point, and, as Mr. Despard observed, "If a figure without a face is any good, why not have a dressmaker's dummy, and have done with it?"

Mr. Despard was very glad when he heard that a little legacy had come from an uncle, and that Miss Eden was going to give up governessing and live with her people.

Miss Eden left in floods of tears, and she clung almost frantically to Mrs. Despard.

"You have been so good to me," she said. "I may write to you, mayn't I? and come and see you sometimes? You will let me, won't you?"

Tears choked her, and she was driven off in the station fly. And a new governess, young, commonplacely pretty, and entirely heart-whole, came to take her place, to the open relief of Mr. Despard, and the little less pronounced satisfaction of the little girls.

"She'll write to you by every post now, I suppose," said Mr. Despard when the conventional letter of thanks for kindness came to his wife. But Miss Eden did not write again till Christmas. Then she wrote to ask Mrs. Despard's advice. There was a gentleman, a retired tea-broker, in a very good position. She liked him--did Mrs. Despard think it would be fair to marry him when her heart was buried for ever in that grave at Elendslaagte?

"But I don't want to be selfish, and poor Mr. Cave is so devoted. My dear mother thinks he would never be the same again if I refused him."

Mr. Despard read the letter, and told his wife to tell the girl to take the tea-broker, for goodness' sake, and be thankful. She'd never get such another chance. His wife told him not to be coarse, and wrote a gentle, motherly letter to Miss Eden.

On New Year's Day came a beautiful and very expensive handkerchief-sachet for Mrs. Despard, and the news that Miss Eden was engaged. "And already," she wrote, "I feel that I can really become attached to Edward. He is goodness itself. Of course, it is not like the other. That only comes once in a woman's life, but I believe I shall really be happy in a quiet, humdrum way."

After that, news of Miss Eden came thick and fast. Edward was building a house for her. Edward had bought her a pony-carriage. Edward had to call his house No. 70, Queen's Road--a new Town Council resolution--and it wasn't in a street at all, but quite in the country, only there was going to be a road there some day. And she had so wanted to call it the Beeches, after dear Mrs. Despard's house, where she had been so happy. The wedding-day was fixed, and would Mrs. Despard come to the wedding? Miss Eden knew it was a good deal to ask; but if she only would!

"It would add more than you can possibly guess to my happiness," she said, "if you could come. There is plenty of room in my mother's little house. It is small, but very convenient, and it has such a lovely old garden, so unusual, you know, in the middle of a town; and if only dear Mabel and Gracie might be among my little bridesmaids! The dresses are to be half-transparent white silk over rose colour. Dear Edward's father insists on ordering them himself from Liberty's. The other bridesmaids will be Edward's little nieces--such sweet children. Mother is giving me the loveliest trousseau. Of course, I shall make it up to her; but she will do it, and I give way, just to please her. It's not pretentious, you know, but everything so _good_. Real lace on all the under things, and twelve of everything, and--"

The letter wandered on into a maze of _lingerie_ and millinery and silk petticoats.

Mr. and Mrs. Despard were still debating the question of the bridesmaids whose dresses were to come from Liberty's when a telegraph boy crossed the lawn.

Mrs. Despard tore open the envelope.

"Oh--how frightfully sad!" she said. "I _am_ sorry! 'Edward's father dangerously ill. Wedding postponed.'"

The next letter was black-edged, and was not signed "Eden." Edward's father had insisted on the marriage taking place before he died--it had, in fact, been performed by his bedside. It had been a sad time, but Mrs. Edward was very happy now.

"My husband is so good to me, his thoughtful kindness is beyond
belief," she wrote. "He anticipates my every wish. I should be
indeed ungrateful if I did not love him dearly. Dear Mrs.
Despard, this gentle domestic love is very beautiful. I hope I
am not treacherous to my dead in being as happy as I am with
Edward. Ah! I hear the gate click--I must run and meet him. He
says it is not like coming home unless my face is the first he
sees when he comes in. Good-bye. A thousand thanks for ever for
all your goodness.

"Your grateful Ella Cave."

"Either their carriage drive is unusually long, or her face was _not_ the first," said Mr. Despard. "Why didn't she go and meet the man, and not stop to write all that rot?"

"Don't, Bill," said his wife. "You were always so unjust to that girl."

"Girl!" said Mr. Despard.

And now the letters were full of detail: the late Miss Eden wrote a good hand, and expressed herself with clearness. Her letters were a pleasure to Mrs. Despard.

"Poor dear!" she said. "It really rejoices my heart to think of her being so happy. She describes things very well. I almost feel as though I knew every room in her house; it must be very pretty with all those Liberty muslin blinds, and the Persian rugs, and the chair-backs Edward's grandmother worked--and then the beautiful garden. I think I must go to see it all. I do love to see people happy."

"You generally do see them happy," said her husband; "it's a way people have when they're near you. Go and see her, by all means."

And Mrs. Despard would have gone, but a letter, bearing the same date as her own, crossed it in the post; it must have been delayed, for it reached her on the day when she expected an answer to her own letter, offering a visit. But the late Miss Eden had evidently not received this, for her letter was a mere wail of anguish.

"Edward is ill--typhoid. I am distracted. Write to me when you can. The very thought of you comforts me."

"Poor thing," said Mrs. Despard, "I really did think she was going to be happy."

Her sympathetic interest followed Edward through all the stages of illness and convalescence, as chronicled by his wife's unwearying pen.

Then came the news of the need of a miniature trousseau, and the letters breathed of head-flannels, robes, and the charm of tiny embroidered caps. "They were Edward's when he was a baby--the daintiest embroidery and thread lace. The christening cap is Honiton. They are a little yellow with time, of course, but I am bleaching them on the sweet-brier hedge. I can see the white patches on the green as I write. They look like some strange sort of flowers, and they make me dream of the beautiful future."

In due season Baby was born and christened; and then Miss Eden, that was, wrote to ask if she might come to the Beeches, and bring the darling little one.

Mrs. Despard was delighted. She loved babies. It was a beautiful baby--beautifully dressed, and it rested contentedly in the arms of a beautifully dressed lady, whose happy face Mrs. Despard could hardly reconcile with her recollections of Miss Eden. The young mother's happiness radiated from her, and glorified her lips and eyes. Even Mr. Despard owned, when the pair had gone, that marriage and motherhood had incredibly improved Miss Eden.

And now, the sudden departure of a brother for the other side of the world took Mrs. Despard to Southampton, whence his boat sailed, and where lived the happy wife and mother, who had been Miss Eden.

When the tears of parting were shed, and the last waving handkerchief from the steamer's deck had dwindled to a sharp point of light, and from a sharp point of light to an invisible point of parting and sorrow, Mrs. Despard dried her pretty eyes, and thought of trains. There was no convenient one for an hour or two.

"I'll go and see Ella Cave," said she, and went in a hired carriage. "No. 70, Queen's Road," she said. "I think it's somewhere outside the town."

"Not it," said the driver, and presently set her down in a horrid little street, at a horrid little shop, where they sold tobacco and sweets and newspapers and walking-sticks.

"This can't be it! There must be some other Queen's Road?" said Mrs. Despard.

"No there ain't," said the man. "What name did yer want?"

"Cave," said Mrs. Despard absently; "Mrs. Edward Cave."

The man went into the shop. Presently he returned.

"She don't live here," he said; "she only calls here for letters."

Mrs. Despard assured herself of this in a brief interview with a frowsy woman across a glass-topped show-box of silk-embroidered cigar-cases.

"The young person calls every day, mum," she said; "quite a respectable young person, mum, I should say--if she was after your situation."

"Thank you," said Mrs. Despard mechanically, yet with her own smile--the smile that still stamps her in the frowsy woman's memory as "that pleasant-spoken lady."

She paused a moment on the dirty pavement, and then gave the cabman the address of the mother and sister, the address of the little house--small, but very convenient--and with a garden--such a lovely old garden--and so unusual in the middle of a town.

The cab stopped at a large, sparkling, plate-glassy shop--a very high-class fruiterer's and greengrocer's.

The name on the elaborately gilded facia was, beyond any doubt, Eden--Frederick Eden.

Mrs. Despard got out and walked into the shop. To this hour the scent of Tangerine oranges brings to her a strange, sick, helpless feeling of disillusionment.

A stout well-oiled woman, in a very tight puce velveteen bodice with bright buttons and a large yellow lace collar, fastened with a blue enamel brooch, leaned forward interrogatively.

"Mrs. Cave?" said Mrs. Despard.

"Don't know the name, madam."

"Wasn't that the name of the gentleman Miss Eden married?"

"It seems to me you're making a mistake, madam. Excuse me, but might I ask your name?"

"I'm Mrs. Despard. Miss Eden lived with me as governess."