Complete Novels of E Nesbit

by Edith Nesbit

  Even then he tried to be strong.

  “Don’t!” he said tenderly, “don’t worry. It’s all right — I was a fool. Pull yourself together — there’s someone coming.”

  “I don’t care,” she said, for the touch of his cheek, pressed against her hair, told her all that she wanted to know. “Let them come, I don’t care! Oh, how could you be so silly and horrid? Oh, thank God, thank God! Oh, how could you?”

  Of course, a really honourable young man would have got out of the situation somehow. He didn’t. He accepted it, with his arms round her and his lips against the face where the tears now ran warm and salt. It was one of the immortal moments.

  The picture was charming, too — a picture to wring the heart of the onlooker with envy, or sympathy, according to his nature. But there was only one onlooker, a man of forty, or thereabouts, who paused for an instant under the great gate of the castle and took in the full charm and meaning of the scene. He turned away, and went back along the green path with hell in his heart. The other two were in Paradise. The Onlooker fell like the third in Eden — the serpent, in fact. Two miles away he stopped and lit a pipe.

  “It’s got to be borne, I suppose,” he said, “like all the rest of it. She’s happy enough. I ought to be glad. Anyway, I can’t stop it.” Perhaps he swore a little. If he did, the less precise and devotional may pardon him. He had loved the Girl since her early teens, and it was only yesterday’s post that had brought him the appointment that one might marry on. The appointment had come through her father, for whom the Onlooker had fagged at Eton. He went back to London, hell burning briskly. Moral maxims and ethereal ideas notwithstanding, it was impossible for him to be glad that she was happy — like that.

  The Lover who came to his love over strewn wallflowers desired always, as has been seen, to act up to his moral ideas. So he took next day a much earlier train than was at all pleasant, and called on her father to explain his position and set forth his prospects. His coming was heralded by a letter from her. One must not quote it — it is not proper to read other people’s letters, especially letters to a trusted father, from a child, only and adored. Its effect may be indicated briefly. It showed the father that the Girl’s happiness had had two long years in which to learn to grow round the thought of the young man, whom he now faced for the first time. Odd, for to the father he seemed just like other young men. It seemed to him that there were so many more of the same pattern from whom she might have chosen. And many of them well off, too. However, the letter lay in the prosperous pocket-book in the breast of the father’s frock-coat, and the Lover was received as though that letter were a charm to ensure success. A faulty, or at least a slow-working, charm, however, for the father did not lift a bag of gold from his safe and say: “Take her, take this also — be happy” — he only consented to a provisional engagement, took an earnest interest in the young man’s affairs, and offered to make his daughter an annual allowance on her marriage.

  “At my death she will have more,” he said, “for, of course, I have insured my life. You, of course, will insure yours.”

  “Of course I will,” the Lover echoed warmly; “does it matter what office?”

  “Oh, any good office — the Influential, if you like. I’m a director, you know.”

  The young man made a reverent note of the name, and the interview seemed played out.

  “It’s a complicated nuisance,” the father mused; “it isn’t even as if I knew anything of the chap. I oughtn’t to have allowed the child to make these long visits to her aunt. Or I ought to have gone with her. But I never could stand my sister Fanny. Well, well,” and he went back to his work with the plain unvarnished heartache of the anxious father — not romantic and pretty like the lover’s pangs, but as uncomfortable as toothache, all the same.

  He had another caller that afternoon; he whom we know as the Onlooker came to thank him for the influence that had got him the appointment as doctor to the Influential Insurance Company.

  The father opened his heart to the Onlooker — and the Onlooker had to bear it. It was an hour full of poignant sentiments. The only definite thought that came to the Onlooker was this—”I must hold my tongue. I must hold my tongue.” He held it.

  Three days later he took up his new work. And the very first man who came to him for medical examination was the man in whose arms he had seen the girl he loved.

  The Onlooker asked the first needful questions automatically. To himself he was saying: “The situation is dramatically good; but I don’t see how to develop the action. It really is rather amusing that I — I should have to tap his beastly chest, and listen to his cursed lungs, and ask sympathetic questions about his idiotic infant illnesses — one thing, he ought to be able to remember those pretty vividly — the confounded pup.”

  The Onlooker had never done anything wronger than you have done, my good reader, and he never expected to meet a giant temptation, any more than you do. A man may go all his days and never meet Apollyon. On the other hand, Apollyon may be waiting for one round the corner of the next street. The devil was waiting for the Onlooker in the answers to his careless questions—”Father alive? No? What did he die of?” For the answer was “Heart,” and in it the devil rose and showed the Onlooker the really only true and artistic way to develop the action in this situation, so dramatic in its possibilities. The illuminative flash of temptation was so sudden, so brilliant, that the Doctor-Onlooker closed his soul’s eyes and yielded without even the least pretence of resistance.

  He took his stethoscope from the table, and he felt as though he had picked up a knife to stab the other man in the back. As, in fact, he had.

  Ten minutes later, the stabbed man was reeling from the Onlooker’s consulting room. Mind and soul reeled, that is, but his body was stiffer and straighter than usual. He walked with more than his ordinary firmness of gait, as a man does who is just drunk enough to know that he must try to look sober.

  He walked down the street, certain words ringing in his ears—”Heart affected — probably hereditary weakness. No office in the world would insure you.”

  And so it was all over — the dreams, the hopes, the palpitating faith in a beautiful future. His days might be long, they might be brief; but be his life long or short, he must live it alone. He had a little fight with himself as he went down Wimpole Street; then he hailed a hansom, and went and told her father, who quite agreed with him that it was all over. The father wondered at himself for being more sorry than glad.

  Then the Lover went and told the Girl. He had told the father first to insure himself against any chance of yielding to what he knew the Girl would say. She said it, of course, with her dear arms round his neck.

  “I won’t give you up just because you’re ill,” she said; “why, you want me more than ever!”

  “But I may die at any moment.”

  “So may I! And you may live to be a hundred — I’ll take my chance. Oh, don’t you see, too, that if there is only a little time we ought to spend it together?”

  “It’s impossible,” he said, “it’s no good. I must set my teeth and bear it. And you — I hope it won’t be as hard for you as it will for me.”

  “But you can’t give me up if I won’t be given up, can you?”

  His smile struck her dumb. It was more convincing than his words.

  “But why?” she said presently. “Why — why — why?”

  “Because I won’t; because it’s wrong. My father ought never to have married. He had no right to bring me into the world to suffer like this. It’s a crime. And I’ll not be a criminal. Not even for you — not even for you. You’ll forgive me — won’t you? I didn’t know — and — oh, what’s the use of talking?”

  Yet they talked for hours. Conventionally he should have torn himself away, unable to bear the strain of his agony. As a matter of fact, he sat by her holding her hand. It was for the last time — the last, last time. There was really a third at that interview. The Onlooker had imagination
enough to see the scene between the parting lovers.

  They parted.

  And now the Onlooker dared not meet her — dared not call at the house as he had used to do. At last — the father pressed him — he went. He met her. And it was as though he had met the ghost of her whom he had loved. Her eyes had blue marks under them, her chin had grown more pointed, her nose sharper. There was a new line on her forehead, and her eyes had changed.

  Over the wine he heard from the father that she was pining for the Lover who had inherited heart disease.

  “I suppose it was you who saw him, by the way,” said he, “a tall, well-set-up young fellow — dark — not bad looking.”

  “I — I don’t remember,” lied the Onlooker, with the eyes of his memory on the white face of the man he had stabbed.

  Now the Lover and the Onlooker had each his own burden to bear. And the Lover’s was the easier. He worked still, though there was now nothing to work for more; he worked as he had never worked in his life, because he knew that if he did not take to work he should take to drink or worse devils, and he set his teeth and swore that her Lover should not be degraded. He knew that she loved him, and there was a kind of fierce pain-pleasure — like that of scratching a sore — in the thought that she was as wretched as he was, that, divided in all else, they were yet united in their suffering. He thought it made him more miserable to know of her misery. But it didn’t. He never saw her, but he dreamed of her, and sometimes the dreams got out of hand, and carried him a thousand worlds from all that lay between them. Then he had to wake up. And that was bad.

  But the Onlooker was no dreamer, and he saw her about three times a week. He saw how the light of life that his lying lips had blown out was not to be rekindled by his or any man’s breath. He saw her slenderness turn to thinness, the pure, healthy pallor of her rounded cheek change to a sickly white, covering a clear-cut mask of set endurance. And there was no work that could shut out that sight — no temptation of the world, the flesh, or the devil to give him even the relief of a fight. He had no temptations; he had never had but the one. His soul was naked to the bitter wind of the actual; and the days went by, went by, and every day he knew more and more surely that he had lied and thrown away his soul, and that the wages of sin were death, and no other thing whatever. And gradually, little by little, the whole worth of life seemed to lie in the faint, far chance of his being able to undo the one triumphantly impulsive and unreasoning action of his life.

  But there are some acts that there is no undoing. And the hell that had burned in his heart so fiercely when he had seen her in the other man’s arms burned now with new bright lights and infernal flickering flame tongues.

  And at last, out of hell, the Onlooker reached out his hands and caught at prayer. He caught at it as a drowning man catches at a white gleam in the black of the surging sea about him — it may be a painted spar, it may be empty foam. The Onlooker prayed.

  And that very evening he ran up against the Lover at the Temple Station, and he got into the same carriage with him.

  He said, “Excuse me. You don’t remember me?”

  “I’m not likely to have forgotten you,” said the Lover.

  “I fear my verdict was a great blow. You look very worried, very ill. News like that is a great shock.”

  “It is a little unsettling,” said the Lover.

  “Are you still going on with your usual work?”

  “Yes.”

  “Speaking professionally, I think you are wrong. You lessen your chances of life! Why don’t you try a complete change?”

  “Because — if you must know, my chances of life have ceased to interest me.”

  The Lover was short with the Onlooker; but he persisted.

  “Well, if one isn’t interested in one’s life, one may be interested in one’s death — or the manner of it. In your place, I should enlist. It’s better to die of a bullet in South Africa than of fright in London.”

  That roused the Lover, as it was meant to do.

  “I don’t really know what business it is of yours, sir,” he said; “but it’s your business to know that they wouldn’t pass a man with a heart like mine.”

  “I don’t know. They’re not so particular just now. They want men. I should try it if I were you. If you don’t have a complete change you’ll go all to pieces. That’s all.”

  The Onlooker got out at the next station. Short of owning to his own lie, he had done what he could to insure its being found out for the lie it was — or, at least, for a mistake. And when he had done what he could, he saw that the Lover might not find it out — might be passed for the Army — might go to the Front — might be killed — and then—”Well, I’ve done my best, anyhow,” he said to himself — and himself answered him: “Liar — you have not done your best! You will have to eat your lie. Yes — though it will smash your life and ruin you socially and professionally. You will have to tell him you lied — and tell him why. You will never let him go to South Africa without telling him the truth — and you know it.”

  “Well — you know best, I suppose,” he said to himself.

  “But are you perfectly certain?”

  “Perfectly. I tell you, man, you’re sound’s a bell, and a fine fathom of a young man ye are, too. Certain? Losh, man — ye can call in the whole College of Physeecians in consultation, an’ I’ll wager me professional reputation they’ll endorse me opeenion. Yer hairt’s as sound’s a roach. T’other man must ha’ been asleep when ye consulted him. Ye’ll mak’ a fine soldier, my lad.”

  “I think not,” said the Lover — and he went out from the presence. This time he reeled like a man too drunk to care how drunk he looks.

  He drove in cabs from Harley Street to Wimpole Street, and from Wimpole Street to Brooke Street — and he saw Sir William this and Sir Henry that, and Mr. The-other-thing, the great heart specialist.

  And then he bought a gardenia, and went home and dressed himself in his most beautiful frock-coat and his softest white silk tie, and put the gardenia in his button-hole — and went to see the Girl.

  “Looks like as if he was going to a wedding,” said his landlady.

  When he had told the Girl everything, and when she was able to do anything but laugh and cry and cling to him with thin hands, she said —

  “Dear — I do so hate to think badly of anyone. But do you really think that man was mistaken? He’s very, very clever.”

  “My child — Sir Henry — and Sir William and Mr.—”

  “Ah! I don’t mean that. I know you’re all right. Thank God! Oh, thank God! I mean, don’t you think he may have lied to you to prevent your — marrying me?”

  “But why should he?”

  “He asked me to marry him three weeks ago. He’s a very old friend of ours. I do hate to be suspicious — but — it is odd. And then his trying to get you to South Africa. I’m certain he wanted you out of the way. He wanted you to get killed. Oh, how can people be so cruel!”

  “I believe you’re right,” said the Lover thoughtfully; “I couldn’t have believed that a man could be base like that, through and through. But I suppose some people are like that — without a gleam of feeling or remorse or pity.”

  “You ought to expose him.”

  “Not I — we’ll just cut him. That’s all I’ll trouble to do. I’ve got you — I’ve got you in spite of him — I can’t waste my time in hunting down vermin.”

  THE DUEL

  “BUT I wasn’t doing any harm,” she urged piteously. She looked like a child just going to cry.

  “He was holding your hand.”

  “He wasn’t — I was holding his. I was telling him his fortune. And, anyhow, it’s not your business.”

  She had remembered this late and phrased it carelessly.

  “It is my Master’s business,” said he.

  She repressed the retort that touched her lips. After all, there was something fine about this man, who, in the first month of his ministrations as Parish Priest, could a
ctually dare to call on her, the richest and most popular woman in the district, and accuse her of — well, most people would hardly have gone so far as to call it flirting. Propriety only knew what the Reverend Christopher Cassilis might be disposed to call it.

  They sat in the pleasant fire-lit drawing-room looking at each other.

  “He’s got a glorious face,” she thought. “Like a Greek god — or a Christian martyr! I wonder whether he’s ever been in love?”

  He thought: “She is abominably pretty. I suppose beauty is a temptation.”

  “Well,” she said impatiently, “you’ve been very rude indeed, and I’ve listened to you. Is your sermon quite done? Have you any more to say? Or shall I give you some tea?”

  “I have more to say,” he answered, turning his eyes from hers. “You are beautiful and young and rich — you have a kind heart — oh, yes — I’ve heard little things in the village already. You are a born general. You organise better than any woman I ever knew, though it’s only dances and picnics and theatricals and concerts. You have great gifts. You could do great work in the world, and you throw it all away; you give your life to the devil’s dance you call pleasure. Why do you do it?”

  “Is that your business too?” she asked again.

  And again he answered —

  “It is my Master’s business.”

  Had she read his words in a novel they would have seemed to her priggish, unnatural, and superlatively impertinent. Spoken by those thin, perfectly curved lips, they were at least interesting.

  “That wasn’t what you began about,” she said, twisting the rings on her fingers. The catalogue of her gifts and graces was less a novelty to her than the reproaches to her virtue.