our middle-aged hero is burdened by responsibility
but boldly undertakes the adventure
that same afternoon maradick finished “to paradise.” he read it in the room of the minstrels with the sun beating through the panes in pools of gold on to the floor, the windows flung wide open, and a thousand scents and sounds flooding the air. the book had chimed in curiously with the things that were happening to him; perhaps at any other time, and certainly a year ago, he would have flung the book aside with irritation at its slow movement and attenuated action. now it gave him the precisely correct sensation; it was the atmosphere that he had most effectually realised during these last weeks suddenly put for him clearly on to paper. towards the end of the book there was this passage: “and indeed nature sets her scene as carefully as any manager on our own tiny stage; we complain discordantly of fate, and curse our ill-luck when, in reality, it is because we have disregarded our setting that we have suffered. passing lights, whether of sailing ships or huddled towns, murmuring streams heard through the dark but not seen, the bleating of countless sheep upon a dusky hill, are all, with a thousand other formless incoherent things, but sign-posts to show us our road. and let us, with pressing fingers, wilfully close our ears and blind our eyes, then must we suffer. changes may come suddenly upon a man, and he will wonder; but let him look around him and he will see that he is subject to countless other laws and orders, and that he plays but a tiny r?le in a vast and moving scene.”
he rose and stretched his arms. he had not for twenty years felt the blood race through his veins as it did to-day. money? office stools? london? no; romance, adventure. he would have his time now that it had come to him. he could not talk to his wife about it; she would not understand; but mrs. lester——
the door opened suddenly. he turned round. no one had ever interrupted him there before; he had not known that anyone else had discovered the place, and then he saw that it was lester himself. he came forward with that curious look that he often had of seeing far beyond his immediate surroundings. he stared now past the room into the blue and gold of the cornish dusk; the vague misty leaves of some tree hung, a green cloud, against the sky, two tiny glittering stars shone in the sky above the leaves, as though the branches had been playing with them and had tossed them into the air.
then he saw maradick.
“hullo! so you’ve discovered this place too?” he came towards him with that charming, rather timid little smile that he had. “i found it quite by chance yesterday, and have been absolutely in love with it——”
“yes,” said maradick, “i’ve known it a long time. curiously enough, we were here last year and i never found it.” then he added: “i’ve just finished your book. may i tell you how very much i’ve enjoyed it? it’s been quite a revelation to me; its beauty——”
“thank you,” said lester, smiling, “it does one a lot of good when one finds that some one has cared about one’s work. i think that i have a special affection for this one, it had more of myself in it. but will you forgive my saying it, i had scarcely expected you, maradick, to care about it.”
“why?” asked maradick. lester’s voice was beautifully soft and musical, and it seemed to be in tune with the room, the scene, the hour.
“well, we are, you know, in a way at the opposite ends of the pole. you are practical; a business man; it is your work, your place in life, to be practical. i am a dreamer through and through. i would have been practical if i could. i have made my ludicrous attempts, but i have long ago given it up. i have been cast for another r?le. the visions, the theories, the story of such a man as i am must seem stupidly, even weakly vague and insufficient to such a man as you. i should not have thought that ‘to paradise’ could have seemed to you anything but a moonstruck fantasy. perhaps that is what it really is.”
he spoke a little sadly, looking out at the sky. “i am afraid that is what it is,” he said.
“is it not possible,” said maradick slowly, “that a man should, at different times in his life, have played both r?les? can one not be practical and yet have one’s dreams? can one not have one’s dreams and yet be practical?”
as he spoke he looked at the man and tried to see him from mrs. lester’s point of view. he was little and brown and nervous; his eyes were soft and beautiful, but they were the eyes of a seer.
mr. lester shook his head. “i think it is possible to be practical and yet to have your dreams. i will not deny that you have yours; but the other thing—no, i shall never see the world as it is. and yet, you know,” he went on, smiling a little, “the world will never let me alone. i think that at last i shall see that for which i have been searching, that at last i shall hear that for which i have been listening so long; and then suddenly the world breaks in upon it and shatters it, and it vanishes away. one has one’s claims, one is not alone; but oh! if i had only an hour when there might be no interruption. but i’m really ashamed, maradick; this must seem, to put it bluntly, so much rot to you, and indeed to anyone except myself.”
“no,” said maradick. “i think i understand more than you would expect. a month ago it might have been different, but now——”
“ah,” said lester, laughing, “the place has caught you, as it does everyone.”
“no, not only the place,” said maradick slowly, “there is something else. i was here last year, but i did not feel, i did not see as i do now.”
“yes, it’s tony gale as well.”
“tony?”
“yes. believe me, there’s nothing that a boy like that cannot do with his happiness and youth. it goes out from him and spreads like a magic wand. if people only knew how much they owed to that kind of influence——”
“well, perhaps it is tony,” said maradick, laughing. “i am fonder of him than i can say; but, whatever the cause, the dreams are there.”
lester took out a book from under his arm. it was long and thin and bound in grey parchment.
“here,” he said, “is a book that perhaps you know. it is one of the most beautiful comedies in our language. this man was a dreamer too, and his dreams are amongst the most precious things that we have. i may write to the end of time, but i shall never reach that exquisite beauty.”
maradick took the book; it was synge’s “play-boy of the western world.” he had never heard of the man or of the play. he turned its pages curiously.
“i am afraid,” he said, “that i’ve never heard of it. it is irish, i see. i think i do remember vaguely when the dublin players were in london last year hearing something. the man has died, hasn’t he?”
“yes, and he didn’t leave very much behind him, but what there is is of the purest gold. see, listen to this, one of the greatest love-scenes in our language. it is a boy and a girl in a lonely inn on an irish moor.”
he read:—
the girl.—“what call have you to be that lonesome when there’s poor girls walking mayo in their thousands now?”
the boy.—“it’s well you know what call i have. it’s well you know it’s a lonesome thing to be passing small towns with the lights shining sideways when the night is down, or going in strange places with a dog noising before you and a dog noising behind, or drawn to the cities where you’d hear a voice kissing and talking deep love in every shadow of the ditch, and you passing on with an empty stomach failing from your heart.”
maradick listened to the beautiful words and his eyes glowed. the dusk was falling in the room, and half-lights of gold and purple hovered over the fireplace and the gallery. the leaves of the tree had changed from green to dark grey, and, above them, where there had been two stars there were now a million.
“and again,” said lester, “listen to this.”
the boy.—“when the airs is warming in four months or five, it’s then yourself and me should be pacing neifin in the dews of night, the time sweet smells do be rising, and you’d see a little shiny new moon, maybe, sinking on the hills.”
the girl. (playfully).—“and it’s that kind of a poacher’s love you’d make, christy mahon, on the sides of neifin, when the night is down?”
the boy.—“it’s little you’ll think if my love’s a poacher’s or an earl’s itself, when you’ll feel my two hands stretched around you, and i squeezing kisses on your puckered lips, till i’d feel a kind of pity for the lord god in all ages sitting lonesome in his golden chair.”
the girl.—“that’ll be right fun, christy mahon, and any girl would walk her heart out before she’d meet a young man was your like for eloquence or talk at all.”
the boy (encouraged).—“let you wait, to hear me talking, till we’re astray in ennis, when good friday’s by, drinking a sup from a well and making mighty kisses with our wetted mouths, or gaming in a gap of sunshine, with yourself stretched back unto your necklace, in the flowers of the earth.”
the girl (in a low voice moved by his tone).—“i’d be nice so, is it?”
the boy (with rapture).—“if the mitred bishops seen you that time, they’d be the like of the holy prophets, i’m thinking, do be straining the bars of paradise to lay eyes on the lady helen of troy, and she abroad, pacing back and forward, with a nosegay in her golden shawl.”
he stopped, and sat, silently, with the book in front of him. the half-light in the room spread into a circle of pale rose-colour immediately round the window; the night sky was of the deepest blue.
to maradick it was as though the place itself had spoken. the colour of the day had taken voice and whispered to him.
“thank you,” he said. “that’s very beautiful. would you lend it to me some time?”
“delighted,” said lester. “you can have it now if you like. take it with you. the whole play won’t keep you more than half an hour. i have his other things, if you care to look at them.”
maradick went off to dress with the book under his arm.
when he came down to the drawing-room he found mrs. lester there alone. only one lamp was lit and the curtains were not drawn, so that the dusky sky glowed with all its colours, blue and gold and red, beyond the windows.
when he saw mrs. lester he stopped for a moment at the door. the lamplight fell on one cheek and some dark bands of her hair, the rest of her face was in shadow. she smiled when she saw him.
“ah! i’m so glad that you’ve come down before the rest. i’ve been wanting to speak to you all day and there has been no opportunity.”
“your husband has been showing me a wonderful play by that irishman, synge,” he said. “i hadn’t heard of him. i had no idea——”
she laughed. “you’ve struck one of fred’s pet hobbies,” she said; “start him on synge and he’ll never stop. it’s nice for a time—at first, you know; but synge for ever—well, it’s like living on wafers.”
she sighed and leaned back in her chair. she spoke in a low voice, and it gave a note of intimacy to their conversation. as she looked at him she thought again what a fine man he was. evening dress suited him, and the way that he sat, leaning a little towards her with his head raised and the lamplight falling on his chin and throat, gave her a little thrill of pleasure. he was very big and strong, and she contrasted him with her husband. maradick would probably be a bore to live with, whilst fred, as a matter of fact, did very well. but for playing a game this was the very man, if, indeed, he knew that it was only a game; it would be a dreadful nuisance if he took it seriously.
“how long are you staying here?” she said. “we shall stop for another fortnight, i suppose, unless my husband suddenly takes it into his head to run away. even then i shall probably stay. i love the place; let me see—to-day’s the fourteenth—yes, we shall probably be here until the twenty-eighth.”
“i must get back when the month is up,” said maradick.
“but i hate to think of going back. i’m enjoying every minute of it, but i don’t think my wife will be sorry. the heat doesn’t suit her.”
“i hope,” she bent forward a little and laid her hand on his chair, “that you didn’t think it very impertinent of me to speak as i did at the picnic the other day. i thought afterwards that i had, perhaps, said too much. but then i felt that you were different from most men, that you would understand. i trust too much, i think, to intuition.”
“no, please don’t think that,” he said eagerly. “we have only got another fortnight here. why shouldn’t we be friends? i’m beginning to think that i have wasted too much of my life by being afraid of going too far, of saying the wrong thing. i have begun to understand life differently since i have been here.”
whether he implied that it was since he had known her that he had begun to understand, she did not know; at any rate she would take it for that. “there are so many things that i could tell you,” she said. “i think you are to be trusted. it is not often that a woman can feel that about anyone.”
“thank you for saying that,” he said, looking her full in the face; “i will try and deserve it.”
she touched his hand with hers and felt a delicious little thrill, then she heard steps and moved to the fireplace.
lady gale and alice du cane came into the room, and it was evident at once that they were upset. lady gale talked to maradick, but it was obvious that her mind was elsewhere.
“has tony been with you this afternoon?” she said. “alice says she saw him about four o’clock, but no one has seen him since. he hasn’t come back, apparently.”
“no,” maradick said, “i haven’t seen him since breakfast.”
she looked at him for a moment, and he felt that her look had something of reproach in it. he suddenly was conscious that he was, in their eyes at any rate, responsible for anything that tony might do. he ought to have stood guard. and, after all, where had the boy been? he should have been back by now.
“it is really too bad,” lady gale said. “he knows that his father dislikes unpunctuality at meals above all things, and he has been late again and again just lately. i must speak to him. he’s later than ever to-night. where did you see him, alice?”
“down on the sand. but he didn’t see me.” she spoke uneasily, and maradick saw at once that she was keeping something back.
“he’s been going about with a punch and judy man recently,” said mrs. lester. “i have nothing to say against punch and judy men personally. i always want to stop in the street and watch; but as a continual companion——”
“this particular one,” said maradick, “is especially nice, an awfully decent little fellow. i’ve talked to him several times. no, lady gale, i’m afraid my wife isn’t well enough to come down to-night. she’s had a bad headache all day. it’s this heat, i think.” he looked at her rather as a guilty schoolboy watches his master. he reproached himself for having left the boy alone during the whole day, and he began to be anxious on his own account. the situation was getting too much for his nerves. for the first time he considered alice du cane. he had not thought of her as being very actively concerned in the business, but there was something in her face now that spoke of trouble. she was standing by the lamp nervously fingering some books at her side. the thought that she was in trouble touched him, and he began to feel the burden of the situation still more heavily upon him.
but he knew at once what it was that was troubling lady gale. it was sir richard. he had seen enough of that gentleman to know that so long as superficial things were all right, so long as bells rang at the proper moment and everyone immediately concerned with him were respectful and decently dressed, he would ask no questions; but let him once begin to have suspicions that something was lacking in respect to himself and the family generally and nothing would hinder his irritable curiosity. he had probably begun already to ask questions about tony. here was a new element of danger.
the door opened and everyone turned eagerly towards it; it was sir richard and rupert.
rupert didn’t appear to be more concerned than was usual with him, but sir richard was evidently annoyed. he advanced into the room with his customary before-dinner manner, that of one about to lead a cavalry regiment to the charge.
“it’s late,” he said; “late. where’s tony?”
it was the question that everyone had been expecting, but no one answered it for a moment. then lady gale got up from her chair.
“he’ll be in in a minute, i expect,” she said. “he’s been kept. but it’s no use waiting for dinner. i suppose fred will be late, millie? never mind, we’ll go down. you’ll dine with us, mr. maradick, won’t you?”
sir richard led the way with ominous silence.
the room was quite full, and for a breathless, agitated moment it seemed that their own table had been taken; but the alarm was false, and everyone could breathe again. lady gale’s life was spent in the endeavour to prevent her husband from discovering a grievance. let it once be discovered and a horrible time was before her, for sir richard petted it and nursed it until it grew, with a rapidity that was outside nature, into a horrible monster whose every movement caused the house to tremble.
she saw them, those grievances, come creeping round the corner and at once her hand was out and she held them, strangled, in her grip, and the danger was averted. tony had often before been responsible for these agitations, but she had always caught them in time; now, she realised it as she crossed the dining-room, she was too late, and every moment of tony’s absence made matters worse. sir richard looked at the menu, and then complained about it in monosyllables for several minutes. maradick watched the door with nervous eyes. this intrusion of sir richard into the business complicated things horribly. let him once suspect that tony was carrying on an affair with some girl in the town and the boy would at once be sent away; that, of course, would mean the end of everything, for him as well as for tony. the gales would go, the lesters would go—everyone, everything. tony himself would not allow it to be left at that, but, after all, what could he do?
alice du cane was talking excitedly about nothing in particular, mrs. lester was very quiet, rupert, as usual, was intent upon his food. alice chattered at mrs. lester, “lucy romanes was there; you know, that ridiculous girl with the scraped back hair and the pink complexion. oh! too absurd for anything! you know muriel halliday said that she simply spends her days in following captain fawcett round. he rather likes it . . . the sort of man who would. i can’t stand the girl.”
mrs. lester smiled across the table. “it’s old mrs. romanes’s fault. she sends her round, she can’t get rid of any of her girls anywhere . . . five of them, poor things; she’d sell any of them for twopence.”
sir richard had finished his soup, and he leaned across the table towards his wife.
“what is the boy doing?” he said.
“really, richard, i don’t know. he’s been out sailing, i expect, and the wind or something has kept him.”
“i won’t have it”; he glowered at everyone. “he knows when meals are, he must be here. i must have obedience; and now i come to think of it”—he paused and looked round the table—“it has happened often lately. it hadn’t occurred to me before, but i remember now; frequently—yes—late.”
then, after a pause during which no one said a word, “what has he been doing?”
this was so precisely the question that everyone else had been asking carefully and surreptitiously during the last few days that everyone looked guilty, as though they had been discovered in a crime. then everyone turned to maradick.
he smiled. “i’ve been about with him a good deal lately, sir richard. i really don’t know what we’ve done very much beyond walking. but i think he was going to sail this afternoon.”
lady gale looked anxiously at the waiter. if the food were all right the danger might be averted. but of course on this night of all nights everything was wrong: the potatoes were hard, the peas harder, the meat was overdone. sir richard glared at the waiter.
“ask mr. bannister if he would spare me a minute,” he said. bannister appeared as spherical and red-cheeked as ever.
“things are disgraceful to-night,” sir richard said. “i must beg you, mr. bannister, to see to it.”
bannister was gently apologetic. the cook should be spoken to, it was abominable; meanwhile was there anything that he could get for sir richard? no? he was sorry. he bowed to the ladies and withdrew.
“it’s abominable—this kind of thing. and tony? why, it’s quarter to nine; what does he mean? it’s always happening. are these people he knows in the town?”
he looked at his wife.
“i really don’t know, dear. i expect that he’s met people down there; it’s probable. but i shouldn’t worry, dear. i’ll speak to him.” she looked across at alice. “what were you saying about mrs. romanes, dear? i used to know her a long while ago; i don’t suppose she would remember me now.”
maradick had a miserable feeling that she blamed him for all this. if he had only looked after tony and stayed with him this would never have happened. but he couldn’t be expected to stay with tony always. after all, the boy was old enough to look after himself; it was absurd. only, just now perhaps it would have been wiser. he saw that mrs. lester was smiling. she was probably amused at the whole affair.
suddenly at the farther end of the room some one came in. it was tony. maradick held his breath.
he looked so perfectly charming as he stood there, recognising, with a kind of sure confidence, the “touch” that was necessary to carry the situation through. he could see, of course, that it was a situation, but whether he recognised the finer shades of everyone’s feeling about it—the separate, individual way that they were all taking it, so that alice’s point of view and his mother’s point of view and maradick’s point of view were all, really, at the opposite ends of the pole as far as seeing the thing went—that was really the important question. they all were needing the most delicate handling, and, in fact, from this moment onwards the “fat” was most hopelessly in the fire and the whole business was rolling “tub-wise” down ever so many sharp and precipitous hills.
but he stood there, looking down at them, most radiantly happy. his hair was still wet from his bath, and his tie was a little out of place because he had dressed in a hurry, and he smiled at them all, taking them, as it were, into his heart and scolding them for being so foolishly inquisitive, and, after it all, letting them no further into his confidence.
he knew, of course, exactly how to treat his father; his mother was more difficult, but he could leave her until afterwards.
to sir richard’s indignant “well?” he answered politely, but with a smile and a certain hurried breathlessness to show that he had taken trouble.
“really, i’m awfully sorry.” he sat down and turned, with a smile, to the company. “i’m afraid i’m dreadfully late, but it was ever so much later than i’d thought. i was most awfully surprised when i saw the clock upstairs. i’ve smashed my own watch. you remember, mother, my dropping it when we were down in the town. tuesday, wasn’t it? yes, i’ll have soup, please. i say, i hope you people won’t mind; i suppose you’ve about finished, but i’m going right through everything. i’m just as hungry as i can jolly well be. no, no sherry, thanks.”
but sir richard’s solemnity was imperturbable. “where have you been?” he said coldly. “you know how strongly i dislike unpunctuality at meal-times, yes, unpunctuality. and this is not only unpunctuality, it is positively missing it altogether; i demand an explanation.”
this public scolding before all the assembled company seemed to maradick in very bad taste, and he shifted uneasily in his chair, but tony did not seem to mind.
“i know,” he said, looking up from his soup and smiling at his father, “i am most awfully careless. but it wasn’t all that, as a matter of fact. i rowed round the point to boulter’s cove, and the tides are most awfully dicky and they played old harry with us this evening, i simply couldn’t get along at all. it was like rowing against a wall. i knew it was most beastly late, but i couldn’t get any faster.”
“us?” said sir richard. “who were your companions?”
there was a slight movement round the table.
“oh,” said tony easily, “there are all sorts of old sailor johnnies down there that one gets to know, and they’re awfully good sorts. there’s one fellow about eight foot and broad in proportion; the girls are simply mad about him, they——”
but lady gale interrupted him. “you’d better be getting on with your meal, dear. it’s late. i don’t think we need wait. shall we have coffee outside?”
“no, don’t you people wait,” said tony, “i’ll come along in a minute.”
as alice turned to go she stopped for a moment by his chair. “i saw you this afternoon,” she said.
“oh! did you?” he answered, looking up at her. for a moment he seemed disturbed, then he laughed.
“where and when?” he asked.
“this afternoon, somewhere after four; you were on the beach.” she looked at him for a moment, standing very straight and her head flung back. “i am glad you enjoyed your row,” she said with a laugh.
“i must talk to maradick about it,” he said to himself. he was quite prepared for complications; of course, there were bound to be in such a situation. but at present the memory of the wonderful afternoon enwrapped him like a fire, so that he could not think of anything else, he could not see anything but her eyes and smile and golden hair. the empty room hung before his eyes, with the white cloths on innumerable tables gleaming like white pools in rows across the floor, and dark mysterious men, who might be perhaps, at more brightly lighted times, waiters, moved silently from place to place. but beyond, outside the room, there shone the white curve of the boat stealing like a ghost across the water, and behind it the dark band of hill, the green clump of trees, the dusky, trembling figures of the sheep. oh! glorious hour!
a little waiter, with a waistcoat that was far too large for him and a tie that had crept towards his right ear, hung in the background. tony pushed his plate away and looked round.
“i say,” he said, “are you in love with anyone?”
the waiter, who hailed from walham green, and, in spite of his tender years, was burdened with five children and a sick wife, coughed apologetically.
“well, sir,” he said, “to be strictly truthful, i can’t say as i am, not just at present. and perhaps it’s just as well, seeing as how i’ve been a married man these fifteen years.” he folded a table-cloth carefully and coughed again.
“well, isn’t it possible to be in love with your wife?” asked tony.
the waiter’s mind crept timidly back to a certain tea of shrimps and buns on the margate sands many, very many years ago. he saw a red sun and a blue sky and some nigger minstrels, white and black; but that was another lifetime altogether, before there were children and doctor’s bills.
“well, sir,” he said, “it gets kind o’ casual after a time; not that it’s anyone’s fault exactly, only times ’is ’ard and there’s the children and one thing and another, and there scarcely seems time for sentiment exactly.”
he coughed his way apologetically back into the twilight at the farther end of the room.
“there scarcely seems time for sentiment exactly!” tony laughed to himself at the absurdity of it and stepped out into the garden. he didn’t want to see the family just at present. they would grate and jar. he could be alone; later, he would talk to maradick.
and lady gale, for the first time in her life, avoided him. she did not feel that she could talk to him just yet; she must wait until she had thought out the new developments and decided on a course of action. the day had filled her with alarm, because suddenly two things had been shown to her. the first, that there was no one in the world for whom she really cared save tony. there were other people whom she liked, friends, acquaintances; for her own husband and rupert she had a protecting kindliness that was bound up intimately in her feeling for the family, but love!—no—it was tony’s alone.
she had never realised before how deeply, how horribly she cared. it was something almost wild and savage in her, so that she, an old lady with white hair and a benevolent manner, would have fought and killed and torn his enemies were he in danger. the wildness, the ferocity of it frightened her so that she sat there in the dark with trembling hands, watching the lights of the ships at sea and, blindly, blindly praying.
she had known, of course, before, that he was everything to her, that without him life would lose all its purpose and meaning and beauty, but there had been other things that counted as well; now it seemed that nothing else mattered in the least.
and the second thing that she saw, and it was this second revelation that had shown her the first, was that she was in danger of losing him. the relationship of perfect confidence that had, she fondly imagined, existed until now between them, had never been endangered, because there had been nothing to hide. he had not told her everything, of course; there must have been things at oxford, and even before, that he had not told her, but she had felt no alarm because they had been, she was sure, things that did not matter. and then he had, so often, come and told her, told her with his charming smile and those open eyes of his, so that there could be no question of his keeping anything back.
she had studied the relationship of mother and son so perfectly that she had had precisely the right “touch” with him, never demanding what he was not ready to give, always receiving the confidences that he handed her. but now for the first time he was keeping things back, things that mattered. when she had spoken so bravely to maradick a fortnight ago, on that day when she had first caught sight of the possible danger, she had thought that she was strong enough and wise enough to wait, patiently, with perfect trust. but it was not possible, it could not be done. she could not sit there, with her hands folded, whilst some strange woman down there in that dark, mysterious town caught her boy away from her. every day her alarm had grown; she had noticed, too, that their relationship had changed. it had been so wonderful and beautiful, so delicate and tender, that any alteration in its colour was at once apparent to her. he had not been so frank, there had been even a little artificiality in his conversations with her. it was more than she could bear.
but, although the uncertainty of it might kill her, she must not know. she saw that as clearly, as inevitably as ever. let her once know, from his own confession, that he loved some girl down there in the town, and she would be forced to stop it. the horizon would widen, and bigger, louder issues than their own personal feelings would be concerned. the family would be called into the issue, and she could not be false to its claims. she could not be untrue to her husband and all the traditions. and yet it was only tony’s happiness that she cared for; that must be considered above everything else. maradick would know whether this girl were, so to speak, “all right.” if she were impossible, then he assuredly would have stopped it by now. maradick was, in fact, the only clue to the business that she had got.
but it was partly because she was losing her trust in him that she was unhappy now. his guard over tony had, for to-day at any rate, been miserably inadequate. he might feel, perhaps, that he had no right to spend his time in hanging on to tony’s coat-tails, it wasn’t fair on the boy, but he ought to have been with him more.
she was sitting now with alice on the seat at the farther end of the garden overlooking the town. the place seemed hateful to her, as she stared down it acquired a personality of its own, a horrible menacing personality. it lay there with its dark curved back like some horrible animal, and the lights in the harbours were its eyes twinkling maliciously; she shuddered and leant back.
“are you cold, dear?” it was the first time that alice had spoken since they had come out. she herself was sitting straight with her head back, a slim white figure like a ghost.
“no, it’s stiflingly warm, as a matter of fact. i was thinking, and that’s about the only thing that an old woman can do.”
“you are worried.” alice spoke almost sharply. “and i hate you to be worried. i’ve noticed during these last few days——”
“yes, i suppose i am a little,” lady gale sighed. “but then you’ve been worried too, dear, for the matter of that. it hasn’t been altogether a success, this place, this time. i don’t know what’s been wrong exactly, because the weather’s been beautiful.”
alice put her hand on lady gale’s. “you won’t think me an utter pig, will you, dear, if i go up to scotland at the end of the week? i think i had better, really. i’m not well down here, and it only makes it uncomfortable for the rest of you if i’m cross and absurd.”
lady gale sighed. “if you really want to go, dear,” she said, “of course you must. do just what you like. only, i shall miss you badly. you’re a great help to me, you know. of course there’s milly, but she’s been funny lately. she always gets excited down here.” lady gale put her arm round the girl. “stay for a little, dear. i want you. we all want you.”
alice drew herself up for a moment as though she would repel the caress; then she tried to say something, but the words would not come. with a little cry she buried her face in the other’s dress. for a few moments there was silence, then her shoulders heaved and she burst into passionate sobbing. lady gale said nothing—only, with her hand, she stroked her hair. the night was very still, so still that they could hear coming up from the town the distant chorus of some song.
at last alice raised her head. “please,” she said, “don’t worry about me.” but she clutched lady gale’s hand. “oh! i’m ashamed of myself. i’m a fool to give way like this.” she suddenly drew her hand fiercely away. but lady gale took it in hers.
“why,” she said, “i have been wanting you to speak to me all this time, and you wouldn’t; of course i knew what the matter was, you can’t keep that from his mother. we all seem to have been at cross-purposes, as it is in a play, when one word would put everything right, but everybody is afraid to say it. why, i want to talk to you about it all. do you suppose that i am not having a bad time too?”
alice leaned towards her and kissed her. “i’m sorry,” she said, “i’ve been so selfish lately. i haven’t thought about anyone else. i hadn’t realised what you must feel about it. i ought to have known.”
she stopped for a moment, then she went on speaking in little gasps as though she had been running. “but i hadn’t meant to speak at all anything about it. i hate myself for having given way. i, who had always prided myself on my restraint and self-possession, to cry like a child for the moon.” she shrugged her shoulders and laughed bitterly. “i won’t give way again,” she said.
lady gale put her arm round her and drew her close. “alice, dear, let me talk to you for a moment. you are going through a bad time, and it may be a crisis and alter your whole life. you are very young, my dear, and i am so old that i seem to have been through everything and to know it all from the beginning. so perhaps i can help you. i love you from the bottom of my heart, and this thing has drawn us together as nothing else in the world possibly could.”
alice pressed close against her. “oh! i’ve been so lonely these last days, you can’t know how bad it has been.”
“yes, dear, of course i know. i saw at once when we came down here that something was wrong. i wanted to talk to you, but it’s no use forcing people’s confidence. i knew that you’d speak to me if you wanted to. but we’re together in this, we both love tony.”
“oh! i’m ashamed.” alice spoke very low, it was almost a whisper. “and yet, do you know, in a way i’m glad. it showed me that i’ve got something that i was almost afraid wasn’t in me at all. in spite of my pride i have been sometimes suddenly frightened, and wondered whether it were really in me to care for anyone at all. and then all in a moment this has come. i would die for tony; i would let him trample on me, kill me, beat me. sometimes, when we are sitting, all of us, so quietly there in the drawing-room or in the garden, and he talking, oh, i want to get up and fling myself at him and hold him there before them all. i have been afraid during these last few days that i shall suddenly lose control. i have wondered once or twice whether i am not going mad. now you see why i must go.”
she buried her face in her hands.
lady gale bent over her. “alice dear, i understand, of course i understand. but let me try and show you, dear, why you must stay. just for this next week or two. you can be of so much help to me and to tony. i have been having rather a bad time too. it is like walking in the dark with things on every side of you that you cannot see. and i want you, dear.”
alice did not speak. the bells in the distant town struck ten, first one and then another and then five or six at once. five lights of boats at sea gleamed in a row like stars that had fallen into the water, through the dark mist of the trees a curved moon sailed.
“you see, dear, things are so difficult now, and they seem to grow worse every day. and really it comes to this. you and i and mr. maradick all love tony. the others don’t count. of course i’m not sure about mr. maradick, but i think he cares very much in his own way, and so we are, you see, a bodyguard for him. i mean to do as he wants to. tony has always seen things perfectly clearly and has known what he wanted, but now there are other things that make it harder for him. i hoped when we came down here that he was going to marry you, dear, but perhaps after all it is better that he shouldn’t. the only thing that matters in the least in this world is love, getting it and keeping it; and if a man or a woman have secured that, there is nothing else that is of any importance. and so i always determined that tony should have his own choice, that he should go when he wished to.”
she paused and took alice’s hand and stroked it. “this is the first time that he has ever really been in love. of course i know—i knew at once by the light in his eyes—and i want him to have it and to keep it and, whatever happens, not to miss it. but of course i must not know about it, because then his father would have to be told. sir richard thinks a great deal of the family. it is the only thing that matters to him very much. and of course there would be terrible scenes and i should have to go with the family. so, whatever happens, i must not know about it.”
“yes,” said alice, “i see that.”
“and so, you see, i put mr. maradick there as a guard. he is a worthy creature, a little dull, but very trustworthy, and i knew that he would do his best. but it is harder than i had thought it would be. now sir richard is beginning to wonder where tony goes, and i am afraid that in a day or two there will be some terrible scene and tony will go, perhaps for ever. so i want you to be with me here. you can talk to mr. maradick, and if i see that you are satisfied then i shall know that it is all right. it will make all the difference in the world if i have you.”
“you are asking rather a lot,” alice said. “i don’t think you quite realise what it is to me. it is like some strange spell, and if i were fanciful or absurd i should imagine that the place had something to do with it. of course it hasn’t, but i feel as if i should be my normal self again if i could once get away.”
“no. you’ll never be quite the same person again. one never can get back. but look at it in this way, dear. do you care enough for tony to be of real help to him, to do something for him that no one else can possibly do?”
“do i care for him?” alice laughed. “i care for him as no one has ever cared for anyone before.”
“ah! that’s what we all think, my dear. i thought that once about sir richard. but you can do everything for him now, if you will.”
but alice shrugged her shoulders. “as far as i understand it,” she said, “you want me to spy on mr. maradick.”
“no, not to spy, of course not. only to behave to tony as if nothing had happened, and to help me about sir richard. and then you can talk to mr. maradick, if you like; ask him right out about her.”
“oh, then he’ll say, and quite rightly too, that it’s none of my business.”
“but it is. it’s all our business. a thing like that can’t happen to anybody without its interfering, like a stone and a pool, with everything around it. of course it’s your business, yours more than anybody’s. and really, dear, i don’t think you’ll make things any better by going away. things seem far worse when you’ve got to look over ever so many counties to see them at all. stay here with tony and live it down. it will pass, like the measles or anything else.”
she paused. then she suddenly put her arms round the girl and held her close. “i want you, i want you, dear. i am very miserable. i feel that i am losing tony, perhaps for always. he will never be the same again, and i can’t bear it. he has always been the centre of everything, always. i scarcely know how i could have faced some things if it hadn’t been for him. and now i’ve got to face them alone; but if you are here with me i shan’t be alone after all.”
and alice let her face rest in lady gale’s dress and she promised. there was, as it happened, more in her promise than mere acquiescence. she had her own curiosity as to the way it was all going to turn out, and perhaps, deep in her heart, a hope that this girl down in the town would be nothing after all, and that tony would return, when the two or three weeks were over, to his senses. but the real temptation that attacked her was terribly severe. it would be fatally easy to talk to sir richard, and, without saying anything either definite or circumstantial, to put him unmistakably on the track. the immediate issue would, of course, be instant marching orders for everybody, and that would be the last that tony would see of his rustic. her thoughts lingered around the girl. what was she like, she wondered? coarse, with a face of beetroot red and flaxen hair; no, tony had taste, he would know what to choose. she was probably pretty. wild and uncouth, perhaps; that would be likely to catch him. and now she, alice du cane, must stand quietly by and play the part of platonic friend. what fun life must be for the gods who had time to watch.
meanwhile tony had found maradick in a deserted corner of the garden and had poured the afternoon’s history into his ears. it was a complete manual on the way to make love, and it came out in a stream of uninterrupted eloquence, with much repetition and a continual impulse to hark back to the central incident of the story.
“and then, at last, i told her!” a small bird in a nest above their heads woke for a moment and felt a little thrill of sympathy. “by heaven, maradick, old man, i had never lived until then. she and i were swept into paradise together, and for a moment earth had gone, rolled away, vanished; i can’t talk about it, i can’t really. but there we were on the sand with the sea and the sky! oh, my word! i can’t make you feel it, only now i am hers always and she is mine. i am her slave, her knight. one always used to think, you know, that all the stuff men and women put about it in books was rot and dreadfully dull at that, but now it all seems different. poetry, music, all the things that one loved, are different now. they are new, wonderful, divine! and there we were in the boat, you know, just drifting anywhere.”
maradick played audience to this enthusiasm with a somewhat melancholy patience. he had felt like that once about mrs. maradick. how absurd! he saw her as he had seen her last with the bed-clothes gathered about her in a scornful heap and her eyes half closed but flashing fire. she had refused to speak to him! and he had kissed her once and felt like tony.
“no, but a fellow can’t talk about it. only, one thing, maradick, that struck me as awfully funny, the way that she accepted everything. when i told her about my people, of course i expected her to be awfully disappointed. but she seemed to understand at once and accepted it as the natural thing. so that if it comes to running away she is quite prepared.”
“if it comes to running away!” the words at once brought the whole situation to a point, and maradick’s responsibility hit him in the face like a sudden blow from the dark. for a moment fear caught him by the throat; he wanted, wildly, to fling off the whole thing, to catch the next train back to epsom, to get away from this strange place that was dragging him, as it were, with a ghostly finger, into a whirlpool, a quagmire; anything was treacherous and dangerous and destructive. and then he knew, in the next instant, that though he might go back to epsom and his office and all the drudgery of it, he would never be the same man again, he could never be the same man again. he knew now that the only thing in the world worth having was love—this town had shown him that—and that, for it, all the other things must go. this boy had found it and he must help him to keep it. he, maradick, had found it; there were friends of his here—tony, mrs. lester—and he couldn’t go back to the loneliness of his old life with the memory of these weeks.
“look here,” he gripped tony’s arm, “i don’t suppose i ought to have anything to do with it. any man in his senses would tell your people, and there’d be an end of the whole thing; but i gave you my word before and i’ll go on with it. besides, i’ve seen the girl. i’d fall in love with her myself, tony, if i were your age, and i don’t want you to miss it all and make a damned muddle of your life just because you weren’t brave enough or because there wasn’t anyone to help you.”
“by jove, maradick, you’re a brick. i can’t tell you how i feel about it, about her and you and everything, a chap hasn’t got words; only, of course, it’s going forward. you see, you couldn’t tell my people after all that you’ve done—you wouldn’t, you know; and as i’d go on whether you left me or no you may just as well help me. and then i’m awfully fond of you; i like you better than i’ve ever liked any man, you’re such an understanding fellow.”
tony took breath a moment. then he went on—
“the mater’s really the only thing that matters, and if i wasn’t so jolly sure that she’d like janet awfully, and really would want me to carry the thing through, i wouldn’t do it at all. but loving janet as i do has made me know how much the mater is to me. you know, maradick, it’s jolly odd, but there are little things about one’s mater that stick in one’s mind far more than anything else. little things . . . but she’s always been just everything, and there are lots of blackguards, i know, feel just the same . . . and so it sort of hurts going on playing this game and not telling her about it. it’s the first thing i’ve not told her . . . but it will be all right when it’s over.”
“there are other people,” said maradick; “your father——”
“oh, the governor! yes, he’s beginning to smell a rat, and he’s tremendous once he’s on the track, and that all means that it’s got to be done jolly quickly. besides, there’s alice du cane; she saw us, janet and me, on the beach this afternoon, and there’s no knowing how long she’ll keep her tongue. no, i’ll go and see morelli to-morrow and ask him right off. i went back with her to-night, and he was most awfully friendly, although he must have had pretty shrewd suspicions. he likes me.”
“don’t you be too sure about him,” said maradick; “i don’t half like it. i don’t trust him a yard. but see here, tony, come and see me at once to-morrow after you’ve spoken to him, and then we’ll know what to do.”
tony turned to him and put his hand on his shoulder. “i say. i don’t know why you’re such a brick to me. i’ll never forget it”; and then suddenly he turned up the path and was gone.
maradick climbed the dark stairs to his room. his wife was in bed, asleep. he undressed quietly; for an instant he looked at her with the candle in his hand. she looked very young with her hair lying in a cloud about the pillow; he half bent down as though he would kiss her. then he checked himself and blew out the candle.
