for nearly four years did i work persistently, striving to redeem my past, at the offices in great queen street. at this period my position was greatly improved, my services estimated at a value that was as honorable to my employer as it was advantageous to me. i had grown to be fairly at peace with myself and more hopeful for the future than i had once deemed it possible that i could ever be.
not all so, however. the phantom light that had danced before my youthful eyes, danced before them still, no whit subdued in brilliancy. with the change to wider and manlier sentiments that i was conscious of in my own development, i fostered secret hope of a similar growth in zyp. at 22, i thought, she could hardly remain the irresponsible, bewitching changeling she had been at 17. womanliness must have blossomed in her, and with it a sense of the right relationship of soul to body. perhaps even the glamour of mystery that must surround my manner of life had operated as a growing charm with her, and had made me, in her eyes, something of the fascinating figure she always was and would be in mine.
sometimes now, in thinking of him, i had fear of jason, but more often not. zyp’s parting words to me—that were ever in my ears—seemed weighted with the meaning, at least, that had i fought my battle well i should have won.
to think of it—to recall it—always gave me a strange, troubled comfort. in my best moments it returned upon me, crying—crying the assurance that no selfish suit pressed by my brother could ever prevail over the inwarder preference her heart knew for me. in my worst, it did no more than trouble me with a teasing mock at my human passion so persistent in its faith to a will-o’-the-wisp.
i think that all this time i never dared to put bravely to myself the thought—as much part of my being as my eyesight—that not for one true moment had i yielded my hope of zyp to circumstances. all my diligence, all my labor, all my ambition, were directed to this solitary end—that some day i might lay them at her feet as bribes to her favor. therefore, till self-convinced of their finished worthiness, i toiled on with dogged perseverance, studying, observing, perfecting, denying myself much rest and pleasure till my heart should assure me that the moment was come.
and what of them at the old haunted mill? news was rare and scanty, yet at intervals it came to link me with their destinies. the first year of my banishment my father wrote to me three times—short, rugged notes, void of information and negatively satisfactory only in the sense that, had anything of importance taken place, he would, i concluded, have acquainted me of it. these little letters were answered by me in epistles of ample length, wherein i touched upon my manner of life and the nature of my successes. the second year, however, the desultory correspondence was taken up by jason, who wrote, as he talked, in a spirit of boisterous banter, and, under cover of familiar gossip, told me less, if possible, than my father had. dad, he said in his first, had tired of the effort and had handed the task over to him. therefore he acquitted himself of it in long leaps over gaps that covered months, and it was now more than four or five since i had received any sort of communication from him.
this did not greatly trouble me. there was that between us, which, it always seemed to me, he sought to give expression to in his letters—a hint secretly conveyed that i must never forget i lived and prospered on sufferance only. now my own knowledge of the methods of justice, no less than the words dr. crackenthorpe had once applied to my case, had long been sufficient to assure me that i had little or nothing to fear from the processes of the law. no less peremptory, however, was the conviction that jason had it in his power to socially ruin me at a word; and the longer that word was delayed—that is to say, so long as my immunity did not clash with his interests—the better chance i had of testing and retesting my armor of defense. yet, for all my care, he found out a weak place presently.
in the meantime i lived my life, such as it was, and found a certain manner of pleasure in it. duke and i, still good friends, changed our lodgings, toward the last quarter of the fourth year, and moved into more commodious ones over an iron-monger’s shop in holborn. here we had a sitting-room as well as a bedroom common to both of us, and tasted the joys of independence with a double zest.
since our river experience it had become a usual thing for me to join my friend and dolly in their frequent sunday walks together. this, at first, i deprecated; but duke would have it so; and finally it lapsed into an institution. indeed, upon many occasions i was left to escort the girl alone, duke pleading disinclination or the counter-attraction of some book he professed to be absorbed in.
was i quite so blind as i appeared to be? i can hardly say myself. that the other entertained a most affectionate regard for the girl was patent. he was always to me, however, such a quaint medley of philosophical resignation and human susceptibility that i truly believe i was more than half inclined to doubt the existence in him of any strong bias toward the attractions of the other sex.
his behavior to dolly was generally much more that of an elder brother toward a much younger half-sister born into the next generation, than of a lover who seeks no greater favor from a woman than that she shall keep the best secrets of her womanhood for him. he petted, indulged, and playfully analyzed her all in one. now, thinking of him in the stern knowledge of years, i often marvel over the bitter incapacity of the other sex to choose aright the fathers of its children. how could the frailest, prettiest soul among them turn from such luminous depths as his to the meretricious foppery of emptier parises?
but then i was greatly to blame. the winning ways of the girl, no less than duke’s persistent deprecation of any affectation of proprietorship in her, are my one excuse. a poor one, even then, for how may i cry out on simple-hearted dolly, when i failed to read the little history of sorrow that was daily before my eyes. it was after events only that interpreted to me the pride that would not let the cripple kneel, a suitor to pity.
as to my own feelings toward the pretty soul i had once so basely linked to my own with an impulsive kiss—they were a compound of indulgence and a tenderness that fell altogether short of love. i desired to be on brotherly terms of intimacy with her, indeed, but only in such manner as to preclude thought of any closer tie. when she was shy with me upon our first meeting after that untoward contact in the lock-house, i laughed her into playfulness and would have no sentimental glamour attaching to our bond of sympathy. alas! i was to learn how reckless a thing it is to seek to extinguish with laughter the fire of a woman’s heart.
one sunday afternoon in the early autumn of that fourth year, dolly and i were loitering together about the slopes and byways of epping forest. there is no season more attuned to the pathetic sympathies of young hearts than that in which the quiet relaxing of green life from its hold on existence speaks only to grayer breasts of premature decay and the vulgar ceremonial of the grave. youth, however, recognizes none of this morbid aspect. to it the yellowing leaf, if it speaks of desolation, speaks from that “passion of the past” the poets strove to explore. it stands but two-thirds of the way up to the hill of years, and flowering stretches are beneath it to the rear and above, before its eyes, the fathomless sky and the great clouds nozzling the mountain crests like flocks of sheep.
all that afternoon as we wandered we came across lizards sprawling stupefied—as they will in october—on buskets of gorse, too exhausted, apparently, to feel the prick of thorn or fear, and butterflies sitting on blades of grass with folded wings, motionless as those that are wired to bonnets. the air was full of a damp refreshing sweetness, and the long grass about every bush and hedge side began to stir with the movement of secret things, as though preparations for mystic revel were toward and invitations passing. i could almost see the fairy rings forming, noiseless, on the turf, when the lonely moon should hang her lantern out by and by.
