Читать книгу: «Captain Desmond, V.C.», страница 24

Paul's eyes, that neither judged nor questioned, rested on his friend like a benediction. In that moment he had his reward for months of silent service, of patience strained almost to breaking point, of anxiety that bordered on despair.

Minute after minute they sat silent, while the splendour in the west blazed and spread till it challenged the oncoming shadow in the north; and the near hills grown magically ethereal, stood in a shimmer of gold, like hills of dream.

Then Desmond spoke again very quietly, without looking round.

"Now perhaps you better understand – this last year?"

"Yes, Theo, I do understand," Paul answered in the same tone, and Desmond let out a great breath.

"God! The relief it is to feel square with you again!"

III

In a third-floor sitting-room, facing east, breakfast was laid for two. Every item of the meal bespoke furnished apartments; and even the May sunshine, flooding the place, failed to beautify the shabby carpet and furniture, the inevitable oleographs and the family groups that shared the mantelpiece with pipes, pouches, and a tin of tobacco. A hanging bookcase held some military books, a couple of novels, and a volume of Browning – the property of Paul. After Bellagio – Piccadilly; and their year abroad constrained them to economy at home.

Theo Desmond sauntering in, scanned every detail with fastidious distaste. To-day, for the first time, a great longing possessed him for the airy ramshackle bungalows of the Frontier he loved, for the trumpet-call to "stables," for a sight of his squadron and the feel of a saddle between his knees.

His wandering gaze lighted on a letter near Paul's place. The address was in Honor's handwriting. He stood a moment regarding it, then turned sharply away and went over to the window. There he remained, seemingly absorbed in the varied traffic of Piccadilly, actually consumed by such jealousy as he had never suffered while he imagined that her heart was given to his friend.

For Paul's sake he could and would endure all things; but this detestable unknown who had won her and could not claim her was quite another affair. There could be no thought of standing aside on his account. It was simply a question of Honor herself. She was not the woman lightly to withdraw her love, once given. And yet – in a year – who could tell? Love, like the spirit, bloweth where it listeth; and Paul's failure did not of necessity predicate his own. For all her sudden bewildering reserves, she had drawn very near to him in those last terrible weeks at Kohat; and now – now – if he could believe there was the veriest ghost of a chance – !

The mere possibility set heart and blood in a tumult; a tumult checked ruthlessly by the thought that if Honor Meredith was not the woman to change lightly, still less was she the woman to approach with that confession which, at all hazards, he was bound to make. Speaking of it to Paul had cost him such an effort as he ached to remember. Speaking of it to her seemed a thing inconceivable. And yet – in that case – what hope of escape from this unholy tangle, from this fury of jealousy that had stabbed his manhood broad awake at last?

In Italy he fondly believed that he had fought his fight and conquered. Yet now, behold, it was all to do over again!

"Theo, my dear chap, there is such a thing as breakfast!" Paul's voice brought him back to earth with a thud. "Will you have a congealed rasher or a tepid egg – or both?"

"Neither, confound you!" Desmond answered, swinging round with an abrupt laugh and strolling back to the table.

Inevitably he glanced at the perturbing envelope, open now and propped against the milk-jug, and as inevitably Paul answered his look.

"Honor is in town for a few days," he said, putting the letter near Theo's plate, "staying with Lady Meredith's sister. She hopes I can go in and see her this morning. She seems under the impression that you are too busy, just now, to be included in any invitation."

Desmond buttered a leathery triangle of toast with elaborate precision. "You may as well encourage that notion, old chap. It simplifies things. You're going yourself, I suppose?"

"Yes."

"Lucky devil!"

He scowled at the envelope by his plate and tacitly dismissed the subject by an excursion into the Morning Post.

They talked politics and theatres till the unappetising meal was ended and Paul pocketed his treasure with a sigh. It was the first time Theo had ignored one of her letters; and the simple-hearted fellow – quite unaware that his mention of the other man had been a master-stroke of policy – felt almost at his wits' end. Standing by the mantelpiece mechanically filling his pipe, he watched Desmond set out his books and papers on the table near the window, intent on a morning of abnormal industry; and the pathos of it all caught at his heart. For the first time in his controlled and ordered life he felt impelled to carry a situation by storm – the result possibly of playing Providence to Theo for the space of a year.

But Theo plus a woman, loving and beloved, whom he obstinately refused to meet, was a problem demanding far more of diplomacy, of intimate human experience than Paul Wyndham had been blest withal. The one obvious service required of him was easier to recognise than to achieve. By some means these two must be brought together in spite of themselves; but for all his forty years he was pathetically at a loss to know how the deuce one contrived that sort of thing. It was a woman's job. Mrs Olliver, now, could have fixed it all up in a twinkling; while he – poor clumsy fool! – could only sit there smoking and racking his brain, while his eyes perfunctorily scanned the columns of the Morning Post.

The doings of the world and the misdoings of those in power, earthquakes, shipwrecks, and rumours of wars – all these were as nothing to him compared with the insignificant tangle of one man and one woman among the whole seething, suffering throng. But concern brought him no nearer to the unravelling of their tangle; and when the time came to go he could think of nothing better than a direct appeal to his friend.

Desmond still sat at the table, head in hand, absorbed in the intricacies of military tactics.

Paul rose and went over to him. "I'm going now, old chap." The matter of fact statement was made with indescribable gentleness. "I'll be back in an hour or so. Wish to goodness you were coming too."

"Damned if you can wish it more than I do," Desmond answered without looking up.

"Well then – come. Is it really – so impossible as you think?"

Desmond nodded decisively. "Can't you see it for yourself, man? Even if she was quit of that other confounded fellow, how could I face telling her – the truth?"

For a moment Paul was silenced; not because he found the question unanswerable, but because of that hidden knowledge which he might not disclose, even to save his friend.

"My dear Theo," he said at last, "I know – and you know – that, sooner than lose her, you could go through any kind of fire. Besides, I have an idea she would understand – "

"So have I," Desmond answered gruffly, "that's the deuce of it all. But it doesn't make a man less unworthy – "

"If it comes to that," urged the diplomatist, "are any of us worthy?"

Desmond flung up his head with an odd laugh.

"Possibly not! But there happen to be degrees of unfitness – yours and mine for instance, you blind old bat! Go along now, and enjoy the good you deserve. As for me – I have sinned and must take the consequences without whining."

"There is a radical difference, Theo," Paul remarked quietly, "between temptation and sin."

"Casuist!" was all the answer vouchsafed to him; and baffled – but not yet defeated – he went out into the May sunlight, quite determined, for once in his life, to take by storm the citadel that seemed proof against capitulation.

Before reaching his destination he had devised a plan so simple and obvious that it might have occurred to a child; and like a child he gloried in his unaided achievement. The fact that it involved leading them both blindfold to the verge of mutual discovery troubled him not a whit. Heart and conscience alike asserted that in this case the end justified the means; and it needed but the veiled light in Honor's eyes at mention of Theo's name to set the seal on his decision.

For near an hour they talked, with that effortless ease and intimacy which is the hail-mark of a genuine friendship; and at the end of it Honor realised that, without any conscious intention on her part, Theo – and little else but Theo – had been their topic as a matter of course. Never dreaming of design on the part of Paul, she merely blessed him for a devotion that almost equalled her own, and accepted, with unfeigned alacrity, his suggestion that they should meet next morning at the Diploma Gallery.

"I've not been there for a hundred years!" she declared with more of her old lightness than he had yet seen in her: "It will take me back to bread-and-butter days! And I believe they have added some really good pictures since then."

Paul exulted as an angler exults when he feels his first salmon tug at the line; but his tone was casual and composed. "Come early," he said. "Then we shall pretty well have the place to ourselves. Eleven? Half-past?"

"Somewhere between the two."

"Good."

And Paul Wyndham – the devout lover, who had trampled passion underfoot to some purpose – walked back to Piccadilly like a man reprieved. Honor was secure. Remained the capture of Theo – a more difficult feat; but, in his present mood, he refused to contemplate the possibility of failure.

A morning of unclouded brilliance found Desmond frankly bored with tactics and topography; the more so, perhaps, because Paul with simple craft took his industry for granted.

Soon after eleven, he put aside the inevitable pipe and newspaper and took up his hat. "Well, Theo," said he, "you won't be needing me till after lunch I suppose? – I'm off."

"Where to, old man?" Desmond yawned extensively as he spoke, and pushed aside his little pile of red books with a promising gesture of distaste. "What's your dissipated programme?"

"An hour in the Diploma Gallery, and a stroll in the Park," Paul replied with admirable unconcern. "D'you feel like coming?"

"I feel like chucking all these into the waste-paper basket! When England takes it into her capricious head to do this sort of thing in May, how the devil can a human man keep his nose to the grindstone? Come on!"

Paul's heart beat fast as they stepped into the street; faster still as he glanced at Theo striding briskly beside him, head in air all unconscious that he was faring toward a tryst far more in tune with the season and the new life astir in his blood than his late abnormal zeal in pursuit of promotion.

To Paul it seemed that the heavens themselves were in league with him. Overhead, scattered ranks of chimneypots were bitten out of a sky scarcely less blue and ardent than Italy's own. In every open space young leaves flashed, golden-green, on soot-blackened branches of chestnut, plane, and lime. And there were flowers everywhere – in squares and window-boxes and parks; in florists' and milliners' windows; in the baskets of flower-sellers and in women's hats. The paper-boy – blackbird of the London streets – whistled a livelier stave. Girls hurried past smiling at nothing in particular. They were glad to be alive – that was all.

And Theo?

He too was glad to be alive, to be free, at last, from the conquering shadow of memory and self-reproach. If penance were required of him, surely that black year must suffice. Now the living claimed him; and that claim could no longer be ignored. With a heart too full for speech he walked beside his friend; and halting at last, on the steps of Burlington House, he bared his head to the sunlight and drew a deep breath of content.

"I vote we don't waste much of this divine morning on pictures, Paul," he said suddenly. "Why bother about them at all?"

Wyndham started visibly; but in less than a minute he was master of himself and the situation.

"Well, as we're here, we may as well look in," he answered casually; and without waiting further objection, turned to enter the building.

Desmond, following, laid a hand on his shoulder.

"Anything to please you, old man," said he smiling.

"God knows you've danced attendance on my whims long enough!"

No sign of Honor in the cloistered coolness of the first room; only a small group of people in earnest talk before one of the pictures, and an artist, with stool and easel, making a conscientious copy of another.

Desmond made a cursory tour of the walls and passed on into the second room. Paul, increasingly anxious every moment, lagged behind and consulted his watch. It was twenty-five minutes past eleven. Would she never come?

The second room was empty, and there Desmond's aimless wandering had been checked by a battle picture; a vigorous and tragic presentment of Sir John Moore's retreat from Corunna.

"Here you are, Paul. Here's something worth looking at," said he as Wyndham joined him; and, soldier-like, they soon fell to discussing the event rather than the picture. Desmond – his head full of tactics and military history – held forth fluently quite in his old vein; while Paul – who heard scarce one word in six – nodded sagely at appropriate intervals.

Hope died hard in him. A clock outside, chiming the half-hour, rang its knell with derisive strokes that seemed to beat upon his heart. It was just his luck. She would never turn up. A hundred contingencies might arise to prevent her – a street accident, a headache, bad news of her father —

Sudden silence from Theo cut short the dismal list; and one glance at him told Paul that his hour was come indeed. For Desmond stood rigid, a dull flush burning through his tan; and his eyes looked over Paul's shoulder towards the entrance into Room Number One.

"My God!" he muttered hoarsely, "Here's Honor!"

Without a word Paul turned on his heel and saw how she, too, stood spellbound, there by the doorway, her cheeks aflame, her eyes more eloquent than she knew. Taken completely unawares, each had surprised the other's secret, even as Paul had foreseen. In that lightning flash of mutual recognition, the end he had wrought for, and agonised for, was achieved. Obviously they had no further need of his services – and, unnoticed by either, he passed quietly out of the room.

For one measureless minute they remained confronting each other; scarcely daring to breathe lest they break the spell of that passionate unspoken avowal. Then Honor came forward slowly, like one walking in her sleep – and the spell was gone. In two strides Desmond had reached her and grasped her outstretched hand.

No attempt at conventional futilities marred their supreme moment. Words seemed an impertinence in view of the overwhelming fact that he stood before her thus – his face transfigured and illumined by love unutterable, by a discovery scarcely realised even now.

There was so much to tell, and again, so little after all, that there seemed no need to tell it. Yet Honor could not choose but long for the sound of his voice; and to that end she tried very gently to withdraw her hand.

Desmond – suddenly aware that they were alone – tightened his grasp. "No – no," he protested under his breath, "unless – you wish it. Do you – Honor?"

"I don't wish it," she answered very low, and her eyes, resting on his, had a subdued radiance as of sunlight seen through mist.

Haloed in that radiance Desmond beheld the "infernal chap" he had been cursing for weeks; realised instantaneously all that the recognition implied; and, capturing both her hands, crushed them between his own.

"Honor – my splendid Honor!"

He still spoke under his breath; and still his eyes held hers in a gaze so compelling that it seemed as though he were drawing her very soul into his own with a force that she had neither will nor power to resist.

In that long look she knew that, for all her passionate intensity of heart and spirit, this man, whom she had won, surpassed her in both; that in all things he rose above her – and would always rise. And because she was very woman at the core, such knowledge gladdened her beyond telling; crowned her devotion as wedded love is rarely crowned in a world honeycombed with half-heartedness in purpose and faith and love.