Not George Washington/Part Two/Chapter 16

(James Orlebar Cloyster's narrative continued)

Is any man really honourable? I wonder. Hundreds, thousands go triumphantly through life with that reputation. But how far is this due to absence of temptation? Life, which is like cricket in so many ways, resembles the game in this also. A batsman makes a century, and, having made it, is bowled by a ball which he is utterly unable to play. What if that ball had come at the beginning of his innings instead of at the end of it? Men go through life without a stain on their honour. I wonder if it simply means that they had the luck not to have the good ball bowled to them early in their innings. To take my own case. I had always considered myself a man of honour. I had a code that was rigid compared with that of a large number of men. In theory I should never have swerved from it. I was fully prepared to carry out my promise and marry Margaret, at the expense of my happiness—until I met Eva. I would have done anything to avoid injuring Julian, my friend, until I met Eva. Eva was my temptation, and I fell. Nothing in the world mattered, so that she was mine. I ought to have had a revulsion of feeling as I walked back to my rooms in Walpole Street. The dance was over. The music had ceased. The dawn was chill. And at a point midway between Kensington Lane and the Brompton Oratory I had proposed to Eversleigh's cousin, his Eva, "true as steel," and had been accepted.

Yet I had no remorse. I did not even try to justify my behaviour to Julian or to Margaret, or—for she must suffer, too—to Mrs. Gunton-Cresswell, who, I knew well, was socially ambitious for her niece. To all these things I was indifferent. I repeated softly to myself, "We love each other."

From this state of coma, however, I was aroused by the appearance of my window-blind. I saw, in fact, that my room was illuminated. Remembering that I had been careful to put out my lamp before I left, I feared, as I opened the hall door, a troublesome encounter with a mad housebreaker. Mad, for no room such as mine could attract a burglar who has even the slightest pretensions to sanity.

It was not a burglar. It was Julian Eversleigh, and he was lying asleep on my sofa.

There was nothing peculiar in this. I roused him.

"Julian," I said.

"I'm glad you're back," he said, sitting up; "I've some news for you."

"So have I," said I. For I had resolved to tell him what I had done.

"Hear mine first. It's urgent. Miss Margaret Goodwin has been here."

My heart seemed to leap.

"Today?" I cried.

"Yes. I had called to see you, and was waiting a little while on the chance of your coming in when I happened to look out of the window. A girl was coming down the street, looking at the numbers of the houses. She stopped here. Intuition told me she was Miss Goodwin. While she was ringing the bell I did all I could to increase the shabby squalor of your room. She was shown in here, and I introduced myself as your friend. We chatted. I drew an agonising picture of your struggle for existence. You were brave, talented, and unsuccessful. Though you went often hungry, you had a plucky smile upon your lips. It was a meritorious bit of work. Miss Goodwin cried a good deal. She is charming. I was so sorry for her that I laid it on all the thicker."

"Where is she now?"

"Nearing Guernsey. She's gone."

"Gone!" I said. "Without seeing me! I don't understand."

"You don't understand how she loves you, James."

"But she's gone. Gone without a word."

"She has gone because she loved you so. She had intended to stay with the Gunton-Cresswells. She knows them, it seems. They didn't know she was coming. She didn't know herself until this morning. She happened to be walking on the quay at St. Peter's Port. The outward-bound boat was on the point of starting for England. A wave of affection swept over Miss Goodwin. She felt she must see you. Scribbling a note, which she despatched to her mother, she went aboard. She came straight here. Then, when I had finished with her, when I had lied consistently about you for an hour, she told me she must return. 'I must not see James,' she said. 'You have torn my heart. I should break down.' And she said, speaking, I think, half to herself, 'Your courage is so noble, so different from mine. And I must not impose a needless strain upon it. You shall not see me weep for you.' And then she went away."

Julian's voice broke. He was genuinely affected by his own recital.

For my part, I saw that I had bludgeon work to do. It is childish to grumble at the part Fate forces one to play. Sympathetic or otherwise, one can only enact one's rôle to the utmost of one's ability. Mine was now essentially unsympathetic, but I was determined that it should be adequately played.

I went to the fireplace and poked the fire into a blaze. Then, throwing my hat on the table and lighting a cigarette, I regarded Julian cynically.

"You're a nice sort of person, aren't you?" I said.

"What do you mean?" asked Julian, startled, as I had meant that he should be, by the question.

I laughed.

"Aren't you just a little transparent, my dear Julian?"

He stared blankly.

I took up a position in front of the fire.

"Disloyalty," I said tolerantly, "where a woman is concerned, is in the eyes of some people almost a negative virtue."

"I don't know what on earth you're talking about."

"Don't you?"

I was sorry for him all the time. In a curiously impersonal way I could realise the depths to which I was sinking in putting this insult upon him. But my better feelings were gagged and bound that night. The one thought uppermost in my mind was that I must tell Julian of Eva, and that by his story of Margaret he had given me an opening for making my confession with the minimum of discomfort to myself.

It was pitiful to see the first shaft of my insinuation slowly sink into him. I could see by the look in his eyes that he had grasped my meaning.

"Jimmy," he gasped, "you can't think—are you joking?"

"I am not surprised at your asking that question," I replied pleasantly. "You know how tolerant I am. But I'm not joking. Not that I blame you, my dear fellow. Margaret is, or used to be, very good-looking."

"You seem to be in earnest," he said, in a dazed way.

"My dear fellow," I said; "I have a certain amount of intuition. You spend an hour here alone with Margaret. She is young, and very pretty. You are placed immediately on terms of intimacy by the fact that you have, in myself, a subject of mutual interest. That breaks the ice. You are at cross-purposes, but your main sympathies are identical. Also, you have a strong objective sympathy for Margaret. I think we may presuppose that this second sympathy is stronger than the first. It pivots on a woman, not on a man. And on a woman who is present, not on a man who is absent. You see my meaning? At any rate, the solid fact remains that she stayed an hour with you, whom she had met for the first time today, and did not feel equal to meeting me, whom she has loved for two years. If you want me to explain myself further, I have no objection to doing so. I mean that you made love to her."

I watched him narrowly to see how he would take it. The dazed expression deepened on his face.

"You are apparently sane," he said, very wearily. "You seem to be sober."

"I am both," I said.

There was a pause.

"It's no use for me," he began, evidently collecting his thoughts with a strong effort, "to say your charge is preposterous. I don't suppose mere denial would convince you. I can only say, instead, that the charge is too wild to be replied to except in one way, which is this. Employ for a moment your own standard of right and wrong. I know your love story, and you know mine. Miss Eversleigh, my cousin, is to me what Miss Goodwin is to you—true as steel. My loyalty and my friendship for you are the same as your loyalty and your friendship for me."

"Well?"

"Well, if I have spent an hour with Miss Goodwin, you have spent more than an hour with my cousin. What right have you to suspect me more than I have to suspect you? Judge me by your own standard."

"I do," I said, "and I find myself still suspecting you."

He stared.

"I don't understand you."

"Perhaps you will when you have heard the piece of news which I mentioned earlier in our conversation that I had for you."

"Well?"

"I proposed to your cousin at the Gunton-Cresswells's dance tonight, and she accepted me."

The news had a surprising effect on Julian. First he blinked. Then he craned his head forward in the manner of a deaf man listening with difficulty.

Then he left the room without a word.

He had not been gone two minutes when there were three short, sharp taps at my window.

Julian returned? Impossible. Yet who else could have called on me at that hour?

I went to the front door, and opened it.

On the steps stood the Rev. John Hatton. Beside him Sidney Price. And, lurking in the background, Tom Blake of the Ashlade and Lechton.

(End of James Orlebar Cloister's narrative.)