as they went on their way harold noticed that leonard’s breathing became more regular, as in honest sleep. he therefore drove slowly so that the other might be sane again before they should arrive at the gate of his father’s place; he had something of importance to say before they should part.
seeing him sleeping so peacefully, harold passed a strap round him to prevent him falling from his seat. then he could let his thoughts run more freely. her safety was his immediate concern; again and again he thought over what he should say to leonard to ensure his silence.
whilst he was pondering with set brows, he was startled by leonard’s voice at his side:
‘is that you, harold? i must have been asleep!’ harold remained silent, amazed at the change. leonard went on, quite awake and coherent:
‘by george! i must have been pretty well cut. i don’t remember a thing after coming down the stairs of the club and you and the hall-porter helping me up here. i say, old chap, you have strapped me up all safe and tight. it was good of you to take charge of me. i hope i haven’t been a beastly nuisance!’ harold answered grimly:
‘it wasn’t exactly what i should have called it!’ then, after looking keenly at his companion, he said: ‘are you quite awake and sober now?’
‘quite.’ the answer came defiantly; there was something in his questioner’s tone which was militant and aggressive. before speaking further harold pulled up the horse. they were now crossing bare moorland, where anything within a mile could have easily been seen. they were quite alone, and would be undisturbed. then he turned to his companion.
‘you talked a good deal in your drunken sleep—if sleep it was. you appeared to be awake!’ leonard answered:
‘i don’t remember anything of it. what did i say?’
‘i am going to tell you. you said something so strange and so wrong that you must answer for it. but first i must know its truth.’
‘must! you are pretty dictatorial,’ said leonard angrily. ‘must answer for it! what do you mean?’
‘were you on caester hill to-day?’
‘what’s that to you?’ there was no mistaking the defiant, quarrelsome intent.
‘answer me! were you?’ harold’s voice was strong and calm.
‘what if i was? it is none of your affair. did i say anything in what you have politely called my drunken sleep?’
‘you did.’
‘what did i say?’
‘i shall tell you in time. but i must know the truth as i proceed. there is some one else concerned in this, and i must know as i go on. you can easily judge by what i say if i am right.’
‘then ask away and be damned to you!’ harold’s calm voice seemed to quell the other’s turbulence as he went on:
‘were you on caester hill this morning?’
‘i was.’
‘did you meet miss --- a lady there?’
‘what . . . i did!’
‘was it by appointment?’ some sort of idea or half-recollection seemed to come to leonard; he fumbled half consciously in his breast-pocket. then he broke out angrily:
‘you have taken my letter!’
‘i know the answer to that question,’ said harold slowly. ‘you showed me the letter yourself, and insisted on my reading it.’ leonard’s heart began to quail. he seemed to have an instinctive dread of what was coming. harold went on calmly and remorselessly:
‘did a proposal of marriage pass between you?’
‘yes!’ the answer was defiantly given; leonard began to feel that his back was against the wall.
‘who made it?’ the answer was a sudden attempt at a blow, but harold struck down his hand in time and held it. leonard, though a fairly strong man, was powerless in that iron grasp.
‘you must answer! it is necessary that i know the truth.’
‘why must you? what have you to do with it? you are not my keeper! nor stephen’s; though i dare say you would like to be!’ the insult cooled harold’s rising passion, even whilst it wrung his heart.
‘i have to do with it because i choose. you may find the answer if you wish in your last insult! now, clearly understand me, leonard everard. you know me of old; and you know that what i say i shall do. one way or another, your life or mine may hang on your answers to me—if necessary!’ leonard felt himself pulled up. he knew well the strength and purpose of the man. with a light laugh, which he felt to be, as it was, hollow, he answered:
‘well, schoolmaster, as you are asking questions, i suppose i may as well answer them. go on! next!’ harold went on in the same calm, cold voice:
‘who made the proposal of marriage?’
‘she did.’
‘did . . . was it made at once and directly, or after some preliminary suggestion?’
‘after a bit. i didn’t quite understand at first what she was driving at.’ there was a long pause. with an effort harold went on:
‘did you accept?’ leonard hesitated. with a really wicked scowl he eyed his big, powerfully-built companion, who still had his hand as in a vice. then seeing no resource, he answered:
‘i did not! that does not mean that i won’t, though!’ he added defiantly. to his surprise harold suddenly released his hand. there was a grimness in his tone as he said:
‘that will do! i know now that you have spoken the truth, sober as well as drunk. you need say no more. i know the rest. most men—even brutes like you, if there are any—would have been ashamed even to think the things you said, said openly to me, you hound. you vile, traitorous, mean-souled hound!’
‘what did i say?’
‘i know what you said; and i shall not forget it.’ he went on, his voice deepening into a stern judicial utterance, as though he were pronouncing a sentence of death:
‘leonard everard, you have treated vilely a lady whom i love and honour more than i love my own soul. you have insulted her to her face and behind her back. you have made such disloyal reference to her and to her mad act in so trusting you, and have so shown your intention of causing, intentionally or unintentionally, woe to her, that i tell you here and now that you hold henceforth your life in your hand. if you ever mention to a living soul what you have told me twice to-night, even though you should be then her husband; if you should cause her harm though she should then be your wife; if you should cause her dishonour in public or in private, i shall kill you. so help me god!’
not a word more did he say; but, taking up the reins, drove on in silence till they arrived at the gate of brindehow, where he signed to him to alight.
he drove off in silence.
when he arrived at his own house he sent the servant to bed, and then went to his study, where he locked himself in. then, and then only, did he permit his thoughts to have full range. for the first time since the blow had fallen he looked straight in the face the change in his own life. he had loved stephen so long and so honestly that it seemed to him now as if that love had been the very foundation of his life. he could not remember a time when he had not loved her; away back to the time when he, a big boy, took her, a little girl, under his care, and devoted himself to her. he had grown into the belief that so strong and so consistent an affection, though he had never spoken it or even hinted at it or inferred it, had become a part of her life as well as of his own. and this was the end of that dreaming! not only did she not care for him, but found herself with a heart so empty that she needs must propose marriage to another man! there was surely something, more than at present he knew of or could understand, behind such an act done by her. why should she ask everard to marry her? why should she ask any man? women didn’t do such things! . . . here he paused. ‘women didn’t do such things.’ all at once there came back to him fragments of discussions—in which stephen had had a part, in which matters of convention had been dealt with. out of these dim and shattered memories came a comfort to his heart, though his brain could not as yet grasp the reason of it. he knew that stephen had held an unconventional idea as to the equality of the sexes. was it possible that she was indeed testing one of her theories?
the idea stirred him so that he could not remain quiet. he stood up, and walked the room. somehow he felt light beginning to dawn, though he could not tell its source, or guess at the final measure of its fulness. the fact of stephen having done such a thing was hard to bear; but it was harder to think that she should have done such a thing without a motive; or worse: with love of leonard as a motive! he shuddered as he paused. she could not love such a man. it was monstrous! and yet she had done this thing . . . ‘oh, if she had had any one to advise her, to restrain her! but she had no mother! no mother! poor stephen!’
the pity of it, not for himself but for the woman he loved, overcame him. sitting down heavily before his desk, he put his face on his hands, and his great shoulders shook.
long, long after the violence of his emotion had passed, he sat there motionless, thinking with all the power and sincerity he knew; thinking for stephen’s good.
when a strong man thinks unselfishly some good may come out of it. he may blunder; but the conclusion of his reasoning must be in the main right. so it was with harold. he knew that he was ignorant of women, and of woman’s nature, as distinguished from man’s. the only woman he had ever known well was stephen; and she in her youth and in her ignorance of the world and herself was hardly sufficient to supply to him data for his present needs. to a clean-minded man of his age a woman is something divine. it is only when in later life disappointment and experience have hammered bitter truth into his brain, that he begins to realise that woman is not angelic but human. when he knows more, and finds that she is like himself, human and limited but with qualities of purity and sincerity and endurance which put his own to shame, he realises how much better a helpmate she is for man than could be the vague, unreal creations of his dreams. and then he can thank god for his goodness that when he might have given us angels he did give us women!
of one thing, despite the seeming of facts, he was sure: stephen did not love leonard. every fibre of his being revolted at the thought. she of so high a nature; he of so low. she so noble; he so mean. bah! the belief was impossible.
impossible! herein was the manifestation of his ignorance; anything is possible where love is concerned! it was characteristic of the man that in his mind he had abandoned, for the present at all events, his own pain. he still loved stephen with all the strength of his nature, but for him the selfish side ceased to exist. he was trying to serve stephen; and every other thought had to give way. he had been satisfied that in a manner she loved him in some way and in some degree; and he had hoped that in the fulness of time the childish love would ripen, so that in the end would come a mutual affection which was of the very essence of heaven. he believed still that she loved him in some way; but the future that was based on hope had now been wiped out with a sudden and unsparing hand. she had actually proposed marriage to another man. if the idea of a marriage with him had ever crossed her mind she could have had no doubt of her feeling toward another. . . . and yet? and yet he could not believe that she loved leonard; not even if all trains of reasoning should end by leading to that point. one thing he had at present to accept, that whatever might be the measure of affection stephen might have for him, it was not love as he understood it. he resolutely turned his back on the thought of his own side of the matter, and tried to find some justification of stephen’s act.
‘seek and ye shall find; knock and it shall be opened to ye’ has perhaps a general as well as a special significance. it is by patient tireless seeking that many a precious thing has been found. it was after many a long cycle of thought that the seeking and the knocking had effectual result. harold came to believe, vaguely at first but more definitely as the evidence nucleated, that stephen’s act was due to some mad girlish wish to test her own theory; to prove to herself the correctness of her own reasoning, the fixity of her own purpose. he did not go on analysing further; for as he walked the room with a portion of the weight taken from his heart he noticed that the sky was beginning to quicken. the day would soon be upon him, and there was work to be done. instinctively he knew that there was trouble in store for stephen, and he felt that in such an hour he should be near her. all her life she had been accustomed to him. in her sorrows to confide in him, to tell him her troubles so that they might dwindle and pass away; to enhance her pleasures by making him a sharer in them.
harold was inspirited by the coming of the new day. there was work to be done, and the work must be based on thought. his thoughts must take a practical turn; what was he to do that would help stephen? here there dawned on him for the first time the understanding of a certain humiliation which she had suffered; she had been refused! she who had stepped so far out of the path of maidenly reserve in which she had always walked as to propose marriage to a man, had been refused! he did not, could not, know to the full the measure of such humiliation to a woman; but he could guess at any rate a part. and that guessing made him grind his teeth in impotent rage.
but out of that rage came an inspiration. if stephen had been humiliated by the refusal of one man, might not this be minimised if she in turn might refuse another? harold knew so well the sincerity of his own love and the depth of his own devotion that he was satisfied that he could not err in giving the girl the opportunity of refusing him. it would be some sort of balm to her wounded spirit to know that leonard’s views were not shared by all men. that there were others who would deem it a joy to serve as her slaves. when she had refused him she would perhaps feel easier in her mind. of course if she did not refuse him . . . ah! well, then would the gates of heaven open . . . but that would never be. the past could not be blotted out! all he could do would be to serve her. he would go early. such a man as leonard everard might make some new complication, and the present was quite bad enough.
it was a poor enough thing for him, he thought at length. she might trample on him; but it was for her sake. and to him what did it matter? the worst had come. all was over now!
