dolly had been unusually silent during the afternoon, and now, as we turned to retrace our steps in the direction of the station from which we were to take train for london, she walked beside me without uttering a word.
suddenly, however, she put her hand upon my arm and stayed me.
“renny,” she said, “will you stop a little while? i want to speak to you.”
“all right,” i said; “speak away.”
“not here—not here. come off the path; there’s a seat out there.”
seeing with surprise that her face was pale and drawn with nervousness, and fancying our tramp might have over-tired her, i led her to the place she indicated—a bench set in the deep shadow of a chestnut tree—and we both sat down.
“now, doll,” i said, gayly, “what’s the tremendous confidence?”
“renny,” she said, quietly, “william reid has asked me to marry him.”
“no! william reid—the young fellow over at hansard’s? well, i can only tell you, dolly, that i know nothing but what’s good of him for a steady and promising chap, who’s sure to make as fine a husband as he is a workman.”
“do you advise me to take him, then? do you want me to?”
“you might do much worse—indeed you might, dolly. why, to my knowledge, he’s drawing £3 a week already. of course i shall be very, very sorry to lose my little chum and companion, but i always foresaw that this would have to be the end of our comradeship some day.”
she sat looking at the ground a little while and adjusting a fallen twig with the point of her parasol. then she rose and said, in the same quiet tone, “very well,” and moved a step away.
i rose also and was about to resume the subject, when in a moment, to my horror, she threw herself back on the bench and, flinging her hands up to her face, burst into a passion of tears.
i was so startled and shocked that for the instant i could think of nothing to do or say. then i bent down and cried:
“dolly, what is it? what’s the matter? have i hurt you in any way?”
she struggled with her sobs, but made a brave effort to command herself.
“oh, don’t look, don’t listen! i shall be all right in a minute.”
i moved away a little space and stood anxiously waiting. when i turned again her face was still buried in her arm, but the keenness of the outburst was subdued.
i approached and leaned over her tenderly, putting a kind hand on her shoulder.
“now, little woman,” i said, “won’t you tell me what it is? i might comfort and counsel you at least, dolly, dear.”
she answered so low that i had to stoop further to hear her.
“i only thought, perhaps—perhaps you might care more and not want me to.”
what a simple little sentence, yet how fierce a vision it sprung upon my blindness! i rose and stepped back almost with a cry. then dolly sat up and saw my face.
“renny,” she cried, “i never meant to tell; only—only, i am so miserable.”
i went to her and took her hand and helped her to her feet.
“dolly,” i said, in a low, hoarse voice, “i have been a selfish brute. i never thought what i was doing, when i should have thought. now, you must give me time to think.”
“you didn’t know. renny”—her pretty eyes were struggling with tears again, and her poor face looked up into mine, entreating me not to take base advantage of her surrender—“if i kissed you as you kissed me once do you think it would come?”
“it isn’t right for us to try, dear.”
thank heaven my manhood stood the test—the inference so pathetic in its childish simplicity.
“come,” i said, “we will go back now. i want time to think it all over by myself. you mustn’t refer to it again, dolly, in any way—not till i can see you by and by alone.”
she said, “yes, renny,” humbly. her very manner toward me was marked by a touching obedience.
we caught our train and sped back to london in a crowded compartment, so that the present embarrassment of tete-a-tete was spared us. at the terminus we parted gently and gravely on both sides and went each of us home.
duke was in bed when i reached our lodgings, and for that i was grateful, for i felt far too upset and confused to relish the idea of a talk with him. indeed, since the moment dolly had confessed to me, he had hung strangely in the background of my thoughts. i felt a comfortless dawning of apprehension that all along he had been keen witness of the silent little drama in which unconsciously i was an actor—had sat in the pit and sorrowfully gauged the purport of the part i played.
i went to bed, but never to sleep. all night long i tossed, struggling to unravel the disorder in my brain. i could think out nothing collectively—warp and woof were inextricably confused.
at length, in despair, i rose, redressed and went outside. the church clocks clanged six as i stepped onto the pavement; there was a fresh-blown coolness in the dusky air; the streets stretched emptily to the dawn.
in the very contact with space, the tumult in my head settled down into some manner of order, and i was able to face, after a fashion, the problem before me.
here, to one side, would i place zyp; to the other dolly. let me plead to each, counseled by heart and conscience. to zyp: you have and have ever had that of mine to which i can give no name, but which men call “love,” as an expression of what is inexpressible. i know that this gift, this sixth sense, that, like the soul, embraces all the others, once acquired, is indestructible. for joy or evil i am doomed to it, spiritually to profit or be debased by it. you may scorn, but you cannot kill it, and exiled in material form from you here it will make to you in the hereafter as surely as a stone flung from a crater returns to the earth of which it is kin.
say that the accidents of existence are to keep us here apart; that your heart desires to mate with another more picturesque than mine. it may be so. during these long four years you have never once directly, by word or sign, given proof that my being holds any interest for you. you banished me, i must remember, for all my efforts to torture hope out of them, with words designed to be final. what if i accept the sentence and say: “i yield my material form to one who desires its affections; who will be made most happy by the bestowal of them upon her; who yearns to me, perhaps, as i to you.” i may do so and none the less be sure of you some day.
to dolly: i have done you a bitter wrong, but one, i think, not irremediable. perhaps i never thought but that friendship apart from love was possible between man and woman. in any case, i have given far too much consideration to myself and far too little to you. you love me by your own confession, and, in this world of bitter troubles, it is very sweet to be loved, and loved by such as you. i am pledged, it seems, to a hopeless quest. what if i give it up? what if we taste joy in this world—the joy of a partnership that is graced by strong affection and cemented by a respect that shall be mutual? i can atone for my error to you here; my wilder love that is not to be controlled by moral reasoning i consign to futurity.
thinking these thoughts, a picture rose before me of a restful haven, wherein my storm-beaten life might rock at anchor to the end; of dolly as my wife, in all the fascination of her pretty, winning personality—her love, her playfulness, her wistful eyes and rosy mouth so responsive to laughter or tears. i felt very tender toward the child, who was glorified into woman by her very succumbing to the passion she had so long concealed. “why should i struggle any longer?” i cried in my heart, “when an earthly paradise opens its gates to me; when self-sacrifice means peace and content, and to indulge my imagination means misery?”
it was broad daylight by the time i had touched some clew to the problem that so bewildered me, and suddenly i became aware that i was moving in the midst of a great press of people. they were all going in one direction and were generally of the lowest and most degraded classes in london. there was a boisterous and unclean mirth rampant among them. there was a ravenous eagerness of haste, too, that one seemed to associate instinctively with the hideous form of vampire that crouches over fields of slain and often completes what the bullet has but half done. women were among them in numbers; some carrying infants in their gaunt, ragged arms; some plumed and decked as if for a gala sight.
i was weary with thought; weary with the monotony of introspection. evidently there was some excitement toward, and to follow it up would take me out of myself.
toiling up ludgate hill we went, an army of tramping feet. then, like a sewer diverted, we wheeled and poured into the noisome alley of the old bailey.
in a moment the truth burst upon me with a shock. there was a man to be hanged that morning!
i twisted hurriedly about and strove to force my way out again. i might as easily have stayed the thames with a finger. i was beaten back with oaths and coarse ribaldry—gathered up and carried ruthlessly in the rush for place—hemmed in, planted like a maggot in one great trunk of bestial and frouzy human flesh. had i striven again i should have been smashed and pounded underfoot, all semblance of life stamped from me.
i looked about me in agony. before and around was one huge sea of faces, from the level of which rose a jangling patter of talk and cries, like bubbles bursting on the surface of a seething tank of corruption. and under the grim shadow of newgate there stood, in full view, a hideous machine. barriers were about it, and a spruce cordon of officials, who stood out humanly in that garden of squalid refuse. it was black, with a black crossbeam; and from the beam a loop hung motionless, like a collar for death to grin through, and the crowd were already betting on the expression of his face when he should first see it.
i do not know how long or short a time my anguish lasted. it may have been half an hour, when the deep tolling of a bell wrought sudden silence in the fetid air. at its first stroke the roar of voices went off and lessened, rolling like a peal of thunder; at its third the quiet of eternity had fallen and consumed the world.
a mist came before my eyes. when it cleared i was aware of a little group on the platform, and one, with a ghastly white face, the center of it.
“who is it?” i whispered, in intolerable agony.
“curse you!” growled my next neighbor. “can’t you hold your tongue and let a cove look?”
a word marred the full relish of his appetite.
i managed to slew my head away from the direct line of vision. a low babble of voices came from the scaffold. he must be reprieved, i thought, with a leap of the heart. i could not conceive voices sounding natural, otherwise, under such fearful circumstances.
suddenly, as i was on the point of looking once more to ease my horrible tension of mind, there dropped upon my ears a low rumbling flap, and immediately a hoarse murmur went up from the multitude. then, giving a cry myself, i turned my face. the rope hung down in a straight line, but loop and man were gone.
from the universal murmur, by claps and starts, the old uproar bubbled forth from the faces, till the pent-up street resounded with it. an after-dinner loquacity was on all and the fellow who had cursed me a minute ago addressed me now with over-brimming geniality of information.
“who’s him, says you? why, where’s your wits gone, matey? him was mul-ler, the greasy furriner as murdered old briggs.”
the trial had made sensation enough of late, but the date of the poor wretch’s execution i had had no thought of.
when at last i could force a passage through the press—for they lingered like ghouls over the crumbs of the banquet—i broke into holborn, with my whole soul panting and crying for fresh air and forgetfulness. it was hideous, it was inhuman, it was debasing, i cried to myself, to launch that quivering mass of terror into eternity in a public shambles! to such as came to see, it must be grossly demoralizing; to those who, like me, were enforced spectators, it was a sickening experience that must leave an impression of morbidity almost indelible.
suddenly i felt a hand grasp my shoulder and a voice exclaim: “renny, by all the saints!”
i turned—and it was jason.
he held me at arm’s length and cried again: “renny? really?—and a true sportsman as of old!”
then he leaned to me and whispered with a grin: “i say, old fellow, if it wasn’t for luck you might be any day where he stood just now.”
