Kitabı oku: «The God in the Car: A Novel», sayfa 13

CHAPTER XXIII
THE CUTTING OF THE KNOT

"You can manage it for me?" asked Willie Ruston.

"I suppose I can," answered Carlin; "but it's rather queer, isn't it, Willie?"

"I don't know whether it's queer or not; but I must talk to her for half-an-hour."

"Why not at Curzon Street?"

Ruston laughed a short little laugh.

"Do you really want the reason stated?" he inquired.

Carlin shook his head gloomily, but he attempted no remonstrance. He confined himself to saying,

"I hope the deuce you're not getting yourself into a mess!"

"She'll be here about five. You must be here, you know, and you must leave me with her. Look here, Carlin, I only want a word with her."

"But my wife – "

"Send your wife somewhere – to the theatre with the children, or somewhere. Mind you're here to receive her."

He issued his orders and walked away. He hated making arrangements of this sort, but there was (he told himself) no help for it. Anything was better than talking to Maggie Dennison before the world in a drawing-room. And it was for the last time. Removed from her presence, he felt clear about that. The knot must be cut; the thing must be finished. His approaching departure made a natural and inevitable end to it; and her mad suggestion of coming with him shewed in its real enormity as he mused on it in his solitary thoughts. For a moment she had carried him away. The picture of her pale eloquent face, and the gleam of her eager eyes had almost led him to self-betrayal; the idea of her in such a mood beside him in his work and his triumphs had seemed for the moment irresistible. She could double his strength and make joy of his toil. But it could not be so; and for it to be so, if it could be, he must stand revealed as a traitor to his friend, and be banned for an outlaw by his acquaintance. He had been a traitor, of course, but he need not persist. They – she and he – must not stereotype a passing madness, nor refuse the rescue chance had given them. There was time to draw back, to set matters right again – at least, to trammel up the consequence of wrong.

When she came, and Carlin, frowning perplexedly, had, with awkward excuses, taken himself away, he said all this to her in stumbling speech. From the exaltation of the evening before they fell pitiably. They had soared then in vaulting imagination over the bristling barriers; to-day they could rise to no such height. Reality pressed hard upon them, crushing their romance into crime, their passion to the vulgarity of an everyday intrigue. This secret backstairs meeting seemed to stamp all that passed at it with its own degrading sign; their high-wrought defiance of the world and the right dwindled before their eyes to a mean and sly evasiveness. So felt Willie Ruston; and Maggie Dennison sat silent while he painted for her what he felt. She did not interrupt him; now and again a shiver or a quick motion shewed that she heard him. At last he had said his say, and stood, leaning against the mantelpiece, looking down on her. Then, without glancing up, she asked,

"And what's to become of me, Willie?"

The sudden simple question revealed him to himself. Put in plain English, his rigmarole meant, "Go your way and I'll go mine." What he had said might be right – might be best – might be duty – might be religion – might be anything you would. But a man may forfeit the right to do right.

"Of you?" he stammered.

"I can't live as I am," she said.

He began to pace up and down the room. She sat almost listlessly in her chair. There was an air of helplessness about her. But she was slowly thinking over what he had said and realising its purport.

"You mean we're never to meet again?" she asked.

"Not that!" he cried, with a sudden heat that amazed himself. "Not that, Maggie. Why that?"

"Why that?" she repeated in wondering tones. "What else do you mean? You don't mean we should go on like this?"

He did not dare to answer either way. The one was now impossible – had swiftly, as he looked at her, come to seem impossible; the other was to treat her as not even he could treat her. She was not of the stuff to live a life like that.

There was silence while he waged with himself that strange preposterous struggle, where evil seemed good, and good a treachery not to be committed; wherein his brain seemed to invite to meanness, and his passion, for once, to point the better way.

"I wish to God we had never – " he began; but her despairing eyes stifled the feeble useless sentence on his lips.

At last he came near to her; the lines were deep on his forehead, and his mouth quivered under a forced smile. He laid his hand on her shoulder. She looked up questioningly.

"You know what you're asking?" he said.

She nodded her head.

"Then so be it," said he; and he went again and leant against the mantelpiece.

He felt that he had paid a debt with his life, but knew not whether the payment were too high.

It seemed to him long before she spoke – long enough for him to repeat again to himself what he had done – how that he, of all men, had made a burden that would break his shoulders, and had fettered his limbs for all his life's race – yet to be glad, too, that he had not shrunk from carrying what he had made, and had escaped coupling the craven with his other part.

"What do you mean?" she asked at last; and there was surprise in her tone.

"It shall be as you wish," he answered. "We'll go through with it together."

Though he was giving what she asked, she seemed hardly to understand.

"I can't let you go," he said; "and I suppose you can't let me go."

"But – but what'll happen?"

"God knows," said he. "We shall be a long way off, anyhow."

"In Omofaga, Willie?"

"Yes."

After a pause she rose and moved a step towards him.

"Why are you doing it?" she asked, searching his eyes with hers. "Is it just because I ask? Because you're sorry for me?"

She was standing near him, and he looked on her face. Then he sprang forward, catching her hands.

"It's because you're more to me than I ever thought any woman could be."

She let her hands lie in his.

"But you came here," she said, "meaning to send me away."

"I was a fool," he said, grimly, between his teeth.

She drew her hands away, and then whispered,

"And, Willie – Harry?"

Again he had nothing to answer. She stood looking at him with a wistful longing for a word of comfort. He gave none. She passed her hand across her eyes, and burst into sudden sobs.

"How miserable I am!" she sobbed. "I wish I was dead!"

He made as though to take her hand again, but she shrank, and he fell back. With one hand over her eyes, she felt her way back to her chair.

For five minutes or more she sat crying. Ruston did not move. He had nothing wherewith to console her, and he dared not touch her. Then she looked up.

"If I were dead?" she said.

"Hush! hush! You'd break my heart," he answered in low tones.

In the midst of her weeping, for an instant she smiled.

"Ah, Willie, Willie!" she said; and he knew that she read him through and through, so that he was ashamed to protest again.

She did not believe in that from him.

Presently her sobs ceased, and she crushed her handkerchief into a ball in her hand.

"Well, Maggie?" said he in hard even tones.

She rose again to her feet and came to him.

"Kiss me, Willie," she said; "I'm going back home."

He took her in his arms and kissed her. She released herself, and gazed long in his face.

"Why?" he asked. "You can't bear it; you know you can't. Come with me, Maggie. I don't understand you."

"No; I don't understand myself. I came here meaning to go with you. I came here thinking I could never bear to go back. Ah, you don't know what it is to live there now. But I must go back. Ah, how I hate it!"

She laid her hand on his arm.

"Think – if I came with you! Think, Willie!"

"Yes," he said, as though it had been wrung from him, "I know. But come all the same, Maggie," and with a sudden gust of passion he began to beseech her, declaring that he could not live without her.

"No, no," she cried; "it's not true, Willie, or you're not the man I loved. Go on, dear; go on. I shall hear about you. I shall watch you."

"But you'll be here – with him," he muttered in grim anger.

"Ah, Willie, are you still – still jealous? Even now?"

A silence fell between them.

"You shall come," he said at last. "What do I care for him or the rest of them? I care for nothing but you."

"I will not come, Willie. I dare not come. Willie, in a week – in a day – Willie, my dear, in an hour you will be glad that I would not come."

As she spoke, her voice grew louder. The words sounded like a sentence on him.

"Is that why?" he asked, regarding her with moody eyes.

She hesitated before she answered, in bewildered despair.

"Yes. I don't know. In part it is. And I daren't think of Harry. Let me think, Willie, that it's a little bit because of Harry and the children. I know I can't expect you to believe it, but it is a little, though it's more because of you."

"Of me? – for my sake, do you mean?"

"No; not altogether for your sake; because of you."

"And, Maggie, if he suspects?"

"He won't suspect," she said. "He would take my word against the world."

"They suspect – some of them – that woman Mrs. Cormack. And – does Marjory?"

"It is nothing. He won't believe. Marjory will not say a word."

"You'll persuade him that there was nothing – ?"

"Yes; I'll persuade him," she answered.

She began to pull a glove on to her hand.

"I must go," she said. "It's nearly an hour since I came."

He took a step towards her.

"You won't come, Maggie?" he urged, and there was still eagerness in his voice.

"Not again, Willie. I can't stand it again. Good-bye. I've given you everything, Willie. And you'll think of me now and then?"

He was unmanned. He could not answer her, but turned towards the wall and covered his face with his hand.

"I shan't think of you like that," she said, a note of wondering reproach in her voice. "I shall think of you conquering. I like the hard look that they blame you for. Well, you'll have it soon again, Willie."

She moved towards the door. He did not turn. She waited an instant looking at him. A smile was on her lips, and a tear trickled down her cheeks.

"It's like shutting the door on life, Willie," she said.

He sprang forward, but she raised her hand to stay him.

"No. It is – settled," said she; and she opened the door of the room and walked out into the little entrance-hall.

It was a wet evening, and the rain pattered on the roof of the projecting porch. They stood there a moment, till her cabman, who had taken refuge in the lee of the garden wall, brought his vehicle up to the door. They heard a step creak behind them in the hall, and then recede. Carlin was treading on tip-toe away.

Maggie Dennison put out her hand and met Ruston's. She pressed his hand with strength more than her own, and she said, very low,

"I am dying now – this way – for my king, Willie," and she stepped out into the rain, and climbed into the cab.

"Back to where you brought me from," she called to the man, and leaning forward, where the cab lamps caught her face, so that it gleamed like the face of some marble statue, she looked on Willie Ruston. Her lips moved, but he heard no word. The wheels turned and the lamps flashed, and she was carried away.

Willie started forward a step or two, then ran to the gate and, leaning on it, watched the red lights as they fled away; and long after they were gone, he stood there, bareheaded, in the drenching rain. He did not think; he still saw her, still heard her voice, and watched her broad low brow. She still stood before him, not the fairest of women, but the woman who was for him. And the rumble of retreating wheels sounded again in his ears. She was gone.

How long he stood he did not know. Presently he felt an arm passed through his, and he was led back to the house.

Old Carlin took him through the hall into his own little study, where a bright fire blazed, and gave him brandy, which he drank, and helped him off with his wet coat, and put a cricketing jacket on him, and pushed him into an arm-chair, and hunted for a pair of slippers for him.

All this while neither spoke; and at last Carlin, his tasks done, stood and warmed himself at the fire, looking steadily in front of him, and never at his friend.

"You dear old fool," said Willie Ruston.

"Ah, well, well, you mustn't take cold. If you were laid up now, what the deuce would become of Omofaga?"

His small, sharp, shrewd eyes blinked as he spoke, and he glanced at Willie Ruston as he named Omofaga.

Willie sprang to his feet with an oath.

"My God!" he cried, "why do you do this for me? Who'll do anything for her?"

Carlin blinked again, keeping his gaze aloof. Then he held out his hand, and Willie seized it, saying,

"I'm – I'm precious hard hit, old man."

The other nodded and, as Willie sank back in his chair, stole quietly out of the room, shutting the door close behind him.

Willie Ruston drew his chair nearer the fire, and spread out his hands to the blaze. And as the heat warmed his frame, the stupor of his mind passed, and he saw some of what was true – a glimpse of his naked self thrown up against the light of the love that others found for him. And he turned away his eyes, for it seemed to him that he could not look long and endure to live. And he groaned that he had won love and made for himself so mighty an accuser of debts that it lay not in him to pay. For even then, while he cursed himself, and cursed the nature that would not be changed in him; even while the words of his love were in his ears, and her presence near with him; even while life seemed naught for the emptiness her going made, and himself nothing but longing for her; even then, behind regret, behind remorse, behind agony, behind self-contempt and self-disgust, lay hidden, and deeper hidden as he thrust it down, the knowledge that he was glad – glad that his life was his own again, to lead and make and shape; wherein to take and hold, to play and win, to fasten on what was his, and to beat down his enemies before his face. That no man could rob him of, and the woman who could would not. So, as Maggie Dennison had said, in the passing of an hour he was glad; and in the passing of a week he had learnt to look in the face of the gladness which he had and loathed.

CHAPTER XXIV
THE RETURN OF A FRIEND

About a week later, Tom Loring sat at work in his rooms. The table was strewn with books of blue and of less alarming colours. Tom was smoking a short pipe, and when he paused for a fresh idea, the smoke welled out of his mouth, aye, and out of his nose, thick and fast. For a while he wrote busily; then a dash of his pen proclaimed a finished task, and he lay back in the luxury of accomplishment. Presently he pushed back his chair, knocked out his pipe, refilled it, and stretched himself on the sofa. After the day's work came the day's dream; and the day's dream dwelt on the coming of the evening hour, when Tom was to take tea with Adela Ferrars at half-past five. When he had an appointment like that, it coloured his whole day, and made his hard labour pass lightly. Also it helped him to forget what there was in his own life and his friends' to trouble him; and he nursed with quiet patience a love that did not expect, that hardly hoped for, any issue. As he had been content to be Harry Dennison's secretary, so he seemed satisfied to be an undeclared lover; finding enough for his modesty in what most men would have felt only a spur to urge them to press further.

He was roused by a step on the stair. A moment later, Harry Dennison burst into the room. Tom had seen him a few days before, uneasy, troubled, apologetic, talking of Maggie's strange indisposition – she was terribly out of sorts, he had said, and appeared to find all company and all talk irksome. He had spoken with a meek compassion that exasperated Tom – an unconsciousness of any hardship laid on him. Tom sat up, glad to console him for an hour; glad, perhaps, of any company that would trick an hour into the past. But to-day Harry's step was light; there was a smile on his lips, a gleam of hope in his eyes; he rushed to Tom, seized his hand, and, before he sat down or took off his hat, blurted out,

"Tom, old boy, she wants you to come back."

Tom started.

"What?" he cried, "Mrs. Dennison wants – "

"Yes," Harry went on, "she sent for me to-day, and told me that she saw how I missed you, and that she was sorry that she had – well – sorry for all the trouble, you know. Then she said, 'I wonder if Tom (she called you Tom) bears malice. Tell him Omofaga is quite gone, and I want him to come back, and if he'll come here, I'll go on my knees to him.'"

Harry stopped, smiling joyfully at his wonderful news. Tom wore a doubtful look.

"I can't tell you," said Harry, "what it means to me. It's not only your coming, old chap, though, heaven knows, I'm gladder of that than I've been of anything for months – but you see what it means, Tom? It means – why, it means that we're to be as we were before that fellow came. Tom, she spoke to me more as she used to-day."

His voice faltered; he spoke as an innocent loyal man might of a pardon from some loved capricious Sovereign. He had not understood the disfavour – he had dimly discerned inexplicable anger. Now it was past, and the sun shone again. Tom found himself saying,

"I wish there were more fellows in the world like you, Harry."

Harry's eyes opened in momentary astonishment at the irrelevance, but he was too full of his news and his request to stay for wonder.

"You'll come, Tom?" he asked. "You won't refuse her?" "Could anyone refuse her anything?" was what his tone said. "We want you, Tom," he went on. "Hang it, I've had no one to speak to lately but that Cormack woman. I hate that woman. She's always hinting something – some lie or other, you know."

"Don't be too hard on little Mrs. Cormack," said Tom.

He remembered certain words which had shown a soft spot in Mrs. Cormack's heart. Harry did not know that she had grieved to hear him pacing up and down.

"You'll come, Tom? I know, of course, that you've a right to be angry, and to say you won't, and all that. But I know you won't do it. She's not well, Tom; and I – I can't always understand her. You used to understand her, Tom. She used to like your chaff, you know."

Tom would not enter on that. He pressed Harry's hand, answering,

"Of course, I'll come."

"Bring all this with you," cried Harry. "I shan't take up your time. You must stick to your own work as much as you like. When'll you come, Tom?"

"Why, to-morrow," said Tom Loring.

"Not now?"

"I might, if you like," smiled Tom.

"That's right, old chap. You can send round for your things. Bring a bag, and come to-night. Your room's there for you. I told them to keep it ready. Damn it, Tom, I thought things would come straight some day, and I kept it ready."

Had things come straight? Tom did not know.

"I say," pursued Harry, "I met Ruston to-day. He was very kind about my cutting the Omofaga. I wonder if I've been unjust to him!"

Then Tom smiled.

"I shouldn't bother about that, if I were you," said he.

"Well, he's not a thin-skinned chap, is he?" asked Harry, with relief.

"I should fancy not," said Tom.

"You see, he's off in a fortnight, and I thought we ought to part friends. So I told him – well, I said, you know, that when he came back, we should be glad to see him."

Tom began to laugh.

"You're getting quite a diplomatist, Harry," he said.

When Harry bustled away, his high spirits raised higher still by Tom's ready assent, Tom put on the garb of society, and took a cab to Adela Ferrars'.

"She'll be very pleased about this," thought Tom, as he went along. "It's good news to take her."

But whatever else Tom Loring knew, it is certain that he was not infallible on the subject of women and their feelings. He recognised the fact (having indeed suspected it many times before) when Adela, on the telling of his tidings, flashed out in petulance,

"She's sent for you back?" she asked; and Tom nodded.

"And you're going?" was the next quick question.

"Well, I could hardly refuse, could I?"

"No; I suppose not – at least not if you're Maggie Dennison's dog, for her to drive away with a stick and whistle back at her pleasure."

Tom had been drinking tea. He set down the cup, and feebly stroked his thigh with his hand; and he glanced at Adela (who was rattling the tea things) with deprecatory surprise.

"I hadn't thought of it like that," he ventured to remark.

"Oh, of course, you hadn't. Maggie sends you away – you go. Maggie sends a footman (well, then, Harry) for you – and back you go. And I suppose you'll say you're very sorry, won't you? and you'll promise you won't do it again, won't you?"

"I don't think I shall be asked to do that," said Tom, speaking seriously, but showing a slight offence in his manner.

"But if she tells you to?" asked Adela scornfully.

"I didn't think you'd take it like this. Why shouldn't I go back?"

"Oh, go back! Go back and fetch and carry for Maggie, and write Harry's speeches till the end of the chapter. Oh, yes, go back."

Tom was puzzled.

"Has anything upset you to-day?" he asked.

"Has anything upset me!" echoed Adela, throwing her eyes up to the ceiling.

Tom finished his tea in a nervous gulp.

"I don't see why I shouldn't go back," he said.

"Well, I'm telling you to go back," said Adela. "Go back till she's had enough of you again – and then be turned out again."

Tom's face grew crimson.

"At least," he said slowly, "she has never spoken to me like that."

Adela had left the table and taken an arm-chair near the fire. Her back was to the door and her face towards Tom; she held a fire-screen between her and him, letting the blaze burn her face. But Tom, being unobservant, paid no attention to the position of the fire-screen. With a look of pain on his face, he took up his hat and rose to his feet. The meeting had been very different from what he had hoped.

"When do you go?" she asked brusquely.

"To-night. I'm just going back to my rooms for a bag, and then I shall go. I'm sorry you should – I'm sorry you don't think I'm doing right."

"It doesn't matter two straws what I think," said Adela behind the screen.

"Aye, but it does to me," said Tom.

She made no answer, and he stood for a moment, looking uneasily at the intruding fire-screen.

"Well, good-bye," he said.

"Good-bye."

"I shall see you soon, I hope."

"If Maggie will let you come."

"I don't know," said Tom, "what pleasure you find in that. It seems to me that as a gentleman – to say nothing of my being their friend – I must go back."

She made no retort to this, and he moved a step towards the door. Then he turned and glanced at her. She had dropped the screen and her eyes were fixed on the fire. He sighed, frowned, shrugged his shoulders, turned, and made for the door again. In another second he would have been gone, but Adela cried softly,

"Mr. Loring."

"Yes," he answered, coming to a halt.

"Stay where you are a minute. Will you stay there a minute?"

"An hour if you like," said Tom.

"I just want to say that – that – You're coming nearer! – I want you to stay just where you are."

Tom halted. He had, in fact, been coming slowly towards her.

"I suppose," said Adela, in quite an indifferent tone, "that you'll settle down with the Dennisons again?"

"I don't know. Yes; I suppose so."

"Do you," said Adela, sinking far into the recesses of the arm-chair, and holding up the screen again, "like being there better than anywhere else? I suppose Maggie is very charming?"

"You know just what she is."

"I'm sure I don't. I'm a woman."

There was a long pause. Tom felt absurd, standing there in the middle of the room. Suddenly Adela leapt to her feet.

"Oh, go away! Yes, you're right to go back. Oh, yes, you're quite right. Good-bye, Mr. Loring."

For a moment longer Tom stood still; then he moved, not towards the door, but towards Adela. When he spoke to her it was in a husky voice. There were no sweet seducing tones in his voice.

"There's only one place in the world I really care to be," he said.

She did not speak.

"Harry and Mrs. Dennison are my friends," he said, "and as long as my time's my own, I'll give it to them. But you don't suppose I go there for happiness?"

"I don't suppose you ever did anything for happiness," said Adela, as though she were advancing a heinous charge. "Really, nothing makes me so impatient as an unselfish man."

Tom smiled, but his smile was still a nervous one. Nevertheless he felt less absurd. A distant presage of triumph stole into his mind.

"Don't you want me to go?" he asked.

"You may go wherever you like," said she.

Tom came still nearer. Adela held out her hand and said "good-bye." Tom took the hand and held it.

"You see," he said, "I didn't think I had anywhere else to go. I did know a charming lady who was very witty and – very rich – !"

"I – I'll put some more in Omofaga and lose it. Oh, you are stupid, Tom! I really thought I should have to ask you myself, Tom. I'd have done it sooner than let you go."

It was not, happily, in the end necessary, and Adela said with a sigh,

"I believe that I've something to thank Mr. Ruston for, after all."

"What's that?"

"Why, he made me resolved to marry the man who of all the world was most unlike him."

"Then I've something to thank him for too."

"Tom," she said, "I don't know what I said to you. I – I was jealous of Maggie Dennison."

It was later by an hour when Tom Loring took his way, not to his rooms for a bag, but straight to Curzon Street. Adela had consented not to wait ("In one's eleventh season one does not want to wait," she said), and Tom considered that it was now hardly worth while to move. So he broke into Harry Dennison's study with a radiant face, crying,

"Harry, I'm not coming to you after all, old fellow."

Harry started up in dismay, but a short explanation turned his sorrow into rejoicing. Again and again he shook Tom's hand, telling him that the man who won a good wife won the greatest treasure earth could offer – and (he added) "by Jove, Tom, I believe the best chance of heaven too," and Tom gripped Harry's hand and cleared his own throat. Then they both felt very much ashamed, and, by way of forgetting this deplorable outburst of emotion (which Tom felt was quite un-English, and smacked indeed of Mrs. Cormack), agreed to go upstairs and announce the news to Maggie.

"She'll be delighted," said Harry.

Tom followed him upstairs to the drawing-room. Mrs. Dennison was sitting by the fire, doing nothing. But she sprang up when they came in, and advanced to meet Tom. He also felt like an ill-used subject as she gave him her hand and said,

"How forgiving you are, Tom!"

He looked in her face, and found her smiling under sad eyes. And he muttered some confused words about "all that" not mattering "tuppence." And indeed Mrs. Dennison seemed content to take the same view, for she smiled again and said,

"Ah, well, there's an end of it, anyhow."

Then Harry, who had been wondering why Tom delayed his tidings, burst out with them, and Tom added lamely,

"Yes, it's true, Mrs. Dennison. So you see I can't come."

She laughed.

"I must accept your excuse," she said, and added a few kind words. "As for Adela," she went on, "she's never been to see me lately, but for your sake I'll be humble and go and see her to-morrow."

Harry, as though suddenly remembering, exclaimed that he must tell the children; in fact, he had an idea that a man liked to talk about his engagement to a woman alone, and plumed himself on getting out of the room with some dexterity. So Tom and Maggie Dennison were left for a little while together.

At first they talked of Adela, but it was on Tom's mind to say something else, and at last he contrived to give it utterance.

"I can't tell you," he said, looking away from her, "how glad I was to get your message. This – this trouble – has been horrible. I know I behaved like a sulky fool. I was quite wrong. It's awfully good of you to forget it."

"Don't talk like that," she said in a low, slow voice. "How do you think Harry's looking?"

"Oh, better than I have seen him for a long time. But you're not looking very blooming, Mrs. Dennison."

She leant forward.

"Do you think he's happy, or is he worrying? He talks to you, you know."

"I think he's happier than he's been for months."

She lay back with a sigh.

"I hope so," she said.

"And you?" he asked, timidly yet urgently.

It seemed useless to pretend complete ignorance, yet impossible to assert any knowledge.

"Oh, why talk about me? Talk about Adela."

"I love Adela," he said gravely, "as I've never loved any other woman. But when I was a young man and came here, you were very kind to me. And I – no, I'll go on now – I looked up to you, and thought you the – the grandest woman I knew; and to us young men you were a sort of queen. Well, I haven't changed, Mrs. Dennison. I still think all that, and, if you ever want a friend to help you, or – or a servant to serve you, why, you can call on me."

She sat silent while he spoke, gazing at the ground in front of her. Tom grew bolder.

"There was one thing I came to Dieppe to do, but I hadn't the courage there. I wanted to tell you that Harry – that Harry was worthy of your love. I thought – well, I've gone further than I thought I could. You know; you must forgive me. If there's one thing in all the world that makes me feel all I ever felt for you, and more, it's to see him happy again, and you here trying to make him. Because I know that, in a way, it's difficult."

"Do you know?" she asked.

"Yes, I know. And, because I know, I tell you that you're a wife any man might thank God for."

Mrs. Dennison laughed; and Tom started at the jarring sound. Yet it was not a sound of mirth.

"You had temptations most of us haven't – yes, and a nature most of us haven't. And here you are. So," – he rose from his chair and took her hand that drooped beside her, and bent his head and kissed it – "though I love Adela with all my heart, still I kiss your hand as your true and grateful servant, as I used to be in old days."