Part 13

“What good will it do to proclaim our knowledge?” he asked. “It insists merely on double bigamy--smash-up all round!”

“Then----?” she clutched at him. “You’re going to----?”

He turned to answer the challenge of the telephone operator, gave a number.

“Hallo!--The Newport Hotel--Will you ask Mrs. Durham to come to the telephone, please?--She’s staying at Room 363--right!--I’ll hold on!”

“Jack! Jack!” His wife implored him. “It’s not right--it _can’t_ be right!--We must tell her!”

His attention was claimed by the telephone.

“Hallo!--Is that Mrs. Durham?--My name’s Satterthwaite, no, you won’t recognize it.--Your husband has met with a slight accident--nothing serious--he’s here and he wants to know if you’ll come round and fetch him as he feels rather shaky--yes----” he gave the address, “--yes--ground-floor flat. Very good. We’ll expect you.”

He put up the receiver, turned to his wife with a grim smile.

“Now we shall see what Harry’s other choice is like,” he said.

She was not to be diverted.

“But, Jack--you’ll tell her?--You _must_ tell her!” she implored.

He looked her full in the eyes. His voice was grave.

“Evelyn! Are you tired of our life together? Do you prefer him to me?”

She turned away her head with a hopeless gesture.

“Oh, don’t ask me! Don’t tempt me!--I don’t want to think of myself--I only want to do what is right! And how can it be right to--to let him go away like a stranger from all that was his!”

He laid his hands upon her shoulders, forced her gaze to meet his again.

“And is it right, Evelyn, to break your life, to break my life, to break this woman’s life--to put Harry himself into an impossible position--out of a quixotic regard for pure ethics?”

“Oh, I don’t know!” she said, shaking her head in mental anguish. “I only know that he’s Harry--and that we’re disowning him----”

“But he does not know that he is Harry Tremaine--he’s quite content to be Durham!”

“And if he wakes up again and remembers?”

He shrugged his shoulders.

“Wait till it happens. We can only deal with the actual situation. At the present time he’s quite happily Durham!--Now, dear,” he smiled affection, “trust me! Leave it all to me--just keep quiet!” He kissed her on the brow. “It will all work out.”

She turned away, shuddering.

“He was my husband,” she said, drearily.

“He _was_!--And your husband was killed in action on October 10th, 1918. The man in the drawing-room is a complete stranger by the name of Durham.--Now, let us go in to him.”

She resigned herself, with one last protest.

“I don’t like it, Jack! I won’t promise! Right is right!”

“In this case it is wrong! Come!”

He led her back to the drawing-room. Their visitor rose politely from his chair.

“Don’t get up,” said Satterthwaite. “Your wife is coming along.”

“Thank you,” he replied. “It is very good of you to take so much trouble. I shall be quite all right when my wife arrives to take charge of me.” He smiled in half-serious self-depreciation.

The three of them sat down. The Durham personality was amiably loquacious. The young woman watched him speechlessly, noting, with an icy chill at her heart, a hundred little familiarities of gesture as he sat in that old familiar chair all unconscious of any previous presence in it.

“I’m very muddled still,” he confided. “I can’t remember anything since being in that street-car. The row, whatever it was, is a complete blank to me--I can’t imagine even how I got into this street. Extraordinary, isn’t it?”

“Very,” agreed Satterthwaite, coolly.

“It’s not the first time I’ve had a lapse of memory like this,” he went on. “A shock does it. I went through the war--and--would you believe it?--I woke up one day in hospital utterly unable to remember anything about myself except that my name was Durham! I couldn’t remember where I came from--nor whether I had any relatives--couldn’t remember anything except just my name. And--this is the strange part of it--I never have remembered. They discharged me from hospital--shell-shock it was--and I just started life afresh.” He smiled confidently at the young woman. “I sometimes wonder whether I was married before, madam--but I hope not. I couldn’t part with the wife I’ve got. I married her eighteen months ago and she’s everything to me. I don’t think there’s another woman like her in the world! And she feels the same about me. That’s the right sort of married life, isn’t it?”

He waited for her agreement. Her tongue seemed to be sticking to the roof of her dry mouth. She could only nod, speechlessly, and try to smile. Something seemed to be crying out in her: “Harry! Harry!” Another part of her consciousness prayed desperately for guidance. Should she--could she--ought she to speak--to break this pathetic little idyll he sketched for her?

She looked curiously at his clothes. They were cheap and ill-fitting--frayed at the trouser-ends. So different from the spruce Harry she had known!

As though something of her thought had communicated itself to him, he clapped his hand suddenly to his breast-pocket, fished out a wallet, glanced into it, put it back.

“Whew!” he breathed in deep relief. “I had a nasty turn--thought perhaps I had lost that in the row. It contains all I own in the world!” He smiled. “It’s all right, though!” He glanced around him appreciatively. “But it wouldn’t buy the things you’ve got in this room, all the same. I admire your taste, if you’ll pardon my saying so, madam. I’m glad my wife is coming round--I’ll show her the sort of drawing-room we’re going to have some day, when we’ve made good!”

His cheerful smile was heart-breaking. She felt as though she must jump up and run across to him, shrieking that it was his--all his! That he and she had bought it all together, every bit of it. And yet she could not stir--could only stare at him in a fascination that was dumb.

Satterthwaite sat apparently unmoved, but his jaw was set hard.

“Perhaps you’ll come in for a legacy some day,” he said, casually.

His wife glanced at him, reading his thought. Of course, Jack would not do anything mean, would compensate him somehow! She was suddenly very grateful to him. The idea of a future anonymous restitution lightened her conscience a little.

“It’s not likely!” said their visitor, indifferently. “We have neither of us any relatives--my wife and I. And I don’t care so long as I’ve got her. When we get some youngsters we shall be the happiest family going!” He smiled--and she thought of Dorothy, peacefully asleep in the other room. She shut out the picture with an effort.

The door-bell rang, and, with an enormous relief, she sprang up to answer it. Anything to put an end to this torture! For one moment, in the hall, she hesitated.

“Help me! help me, O God, to do what is right!” she prayed in dumb agony. And the question came up inexorably before her, vast, overpowering, not to be solved. Right!--what was right?

She opened the door.

An insignificant-looking little woman of the lower middle-class stood on the threshold, nervously agitated, her eyes wild with alarm.

“My husband?” she asked, breathlessly. “Mr. Durham?”

“He’s here,” replied Mrs. Satterthwaite, coldly. “This way.”

She led her to the drawing-room and Harry Tremaine’s two wives entered together, the one beautiful, refined, exquisitely dressed--the other commonplace, dowdy, the cheaply attired product of a cheap city suburb, good-hearted vulgarity in every line of her. Mrs. Satterthwaite looked from the man who had been her husband to the woman who was now his wife--and her heart turned suddenly to stone.

“Here is Mr. Durham,” she said. With something of a shock, Satterthwaite admired her consummate ease of manner.

The little woman had rushed forward to her husband.

“Oh, Ed, Ed!” she cried, ignoring Satterthwaite, who stood up politely. “What is the matter?--You’re not hurt?--Not badly?”

“I’m all right, dear,” he said, embracing her. “I’ll tell you all about it presently. These kind people took me in and looked after me.”

She turned to them.

“Oh, thank you so much!” she said, effusively. “It _is_ good of you!--And I don’t know what _would_ have happened if anything serious had gone wrong with Ed to-night!--You see, we’re sailing for Buenos Ayres to-morrow! And he’s got such a good post--an agency--and if anything had prevented his going----”

“Never mind that, my dear,” said Durham, cutting short her loquacity. “These kind people do not want to go into our private affairs. Come along. I’ve inconvenienced them enough already.” He held out his hand to Mrs. Satterthwaite. “Good-bye, madam--and many thanks.”

She looked him in the eyes as she took his hand. They were the eyes of a stranger.

“Good-bye, Mr. Durham,” she said, and turned away.

Satterthwaite escorted the couple to the door.

“Your hat is here,” he said, as he took it off the clothes-peg where Tremaine had hung it. “Good-bye.--Good-bye, Mr. Durham.--What boat do you sail by to-morrow?” The enquiry was in the most casual tone of courteous interest.

“The _Manhattan_.”

“Pleasant voyage--and good luck to you both!” he said, cheerfully, and closed the door. He stood for a moment listening to their happy voices as they went out of the building and then turned to find his wife standing by his side.

“Jack!” she cried, and her eyes searched his face as if to read acknowledged partnership in a crime. “He’s gone?”

He nodded, smiling at her.

“Gone, right enough--and he’ll get his legacy. I can trace him quite easily now we know the name of his boat. That gives us a clear conscience.”

“Does it, Jack?--Does it?--Oh, I wish I could be sure!--Durham is not the man Tremaine was!”

“He’s a happier man than Tremaine would be, anyway! Think of their delight when they get that legacy!” He led her back into the dining-room, where the remains of their anniversary feast were yet upon the table. “And, dear!” he looked into her eyes, “we are happier people than we should have been had Durham not replaced Tremaine!”

She shook her head, still doubtful.

“But if he remembers?” she queried.

“He goes a long way off, into a new environment. The chances are against his remembering at all. If he does,” he shrugged his shoulders, “he will probably himself put it down as a hallucination from which his devoted little wife will nurse him back. Don’t worry, my dear. We did the right thing.”

“If only I could be sure!” she said, with a sigh.

* * * * * *

The next morning Dorothy woke up to see her mother bending over her bed.

“Where’s Dada, Mummy?” she asked.

“Dada?” said Mrs. Satterthwaite, as though she did not understand.

“Yes,” said the child. “Dada--Dada who came back last night!”

Her mother shook her head, smilingly.

“You dreamed it, dear,” she said. “Dada was killed in the war.”

THE LOVERS

He opened the door into darkness and fumbled for the switch. The spacious, beautifully furnished living-room of the flat--long, dark bookcase filled with mellowed leather bindings; large, soft bearskins compensating for the insufficiency of the delicate Persian carpet on the parquet floor; a few precious prints spaced with an exquisite reticence upon the walls; an Oriental bibelot here and there emphasizing the quiet charm of English eighteenth-century furniture with its touch of the cunningly grotesque; two great leather-covered chairs by the fireside--was suffused with soft light.

He stood in the doorway--tall, lean, handsome, forceful with a touch of asceticism--and smiled to the corridor.

“Here we are!” he said, his voice on a note of happiness. “At last!”

He stretched out his arms to the girl upon the threshold. She came into the light--tall almost as he, long fur coat half-open over her tailor-made costume, finely modelled head poised in a graceful, winsome upturn of the face, smiling at him in a radiance of eyes and mouth--and, on the movement of an irresistible impulse, cast herself into his embrace.

“At last!” she echoed. “Oh, Jim, dear!--at last--at long last!”

He held her, and she snuggled into his shoulder, face upturned to his, drawing his kisses down to her with the magnetism of her lips.

The quaint enamel clock on the mantelpiece ticked, just heard, the passing seconds of eternity, the only sound in the silence of their union.

Then, with the long breath of recovery from the timeless swoon of a kiss prolonged to its uttermost limit, she turned her head slowly to gaze about the room.

“Oh, Jim!” she said, in affectionate reproach, “and you told me you were a poor man!”

He shrugged his shoulders, his lips mobile in a little smile.

“Well, dear,” he replied in whimsical apology, “compared with the daughter of a man who owns half a city--compared with what you might have had!” He looked into her eyes. “Helen! You won’t regret? They’ll rub it in to you--the title you’ve thrown away--the position in society--what they’ll be pleased to term your hole and corner marriage----”

She laughed happily.

“Oh, Jim!--I’ve got you and you’ve got me--and nothing else matters--it seems to me that you and I are the only two people in the world!” She assured herself of a tightening of his embrace with a touch of her hand on his as she looked up into his eyes with a slow, smiling shake of the head that affirmed her love. “As if only you and I ever existed--and had always loved! As if all through eternity we had waited for this! As if I was born to be just Jim Dacres’s wife!”

He looked down upon her, eyes into eyes.

“Darling!” His voice was low and earnest in a sincerity beyond doubt. “Jim Dacres’s wife you are--and, please God, I’ll never let you go!”

With one more kiss she disengaged herself, came into the centre of the room, threw her fur coat back from the shoulders with a smile that invited the assistance he was prompt to give.

“Are we all alone?” she asked, glancing round, struck by the quietude of the flat.

“All alone, dear,” he replied, folding her coat over a chair. “I told Mrs. Wilkinson she could go out. I thought it would be good to have it all to ourselves for this first evening--you and I alone in Paradise, darling!” He kissed her, drew her toward the fire. “Warm yourself, my beauty--and pretend it is my heart!” He squeezed her shoulders with broad, strong hands.

She shook her head at him in roguish reproof, as she spread her fingers--the new gold ring upon one of them--before the blaze he stirred.

“Pretty, pretty!” she rebuked him. “Where has Jim Dacres learned to make love, I should like to know!”

“In your eyes, dearest!” he replied, smiling into them. “In your eyes that open right back into a soul that knows immemorial secrets and knows them all as love!”

She felt quietly for his hand and held it, without a word, through moments where speech was profanation.

Then, with a long breath, feminine curiosity awaking in her, she turned her head and glanced once more around the room.

“It’s charming, Jim!” she asserted. “I didn’t know you had so much taste. Where did you get all these beautiful things?” She left the fireside, began to roam about the room, peering into cabinets, picking up one precious object after another, turning over the pages of the books that lay upon the tables.

He watched her lithe, graceful movements with admiration.

“All over the place,” he answered, negligently. “China, Japan--a few in Italy----”

“And this?” she asked, holding up a large crystal ball, supported in a lotus cup upon the back of a carved ivory elephant studded with amber and turquoise and coral, its feet upon an ivory tortoise. “What is this?”

“Oh--that! I got that in India. Some old crystal-gazer’s outfit. It’s a few hundred years old--symbolizes the universe, you know. The world rests upon an elephant and the elephant upon a tortoise. I don’t know what the tortoise stands on----”

Her face was bright with interest.

“And have you ever looked into it?”

“Of course not.” His tone was contemptuous. “I don’t go in for that sort of thing. I didn’t buy that--an old Hindoo priest gave it to me--a nice old chap who was good enough to adopt me more or less, years ago now.”

“Oh, Jim! Do let us look into it!” Her voice was ecstatic in a sudden excitement. “Do let’s look!”

“You won’t see anything,” he emphasized his pessimism in a grudge at the interest she diverted from him to this inanimate object. “It’s all rot, you know--only people with brain-sick imaginations ever see things--or think they see things.”

“Oh, but do let’s try!” She came across to him, the crystal in her hand. “Do, there’s a darling!” The appeal of the kiss-pouted lips in the face turned up to him, eyes bright with ingenuous vivacity, was irresistible.

He shrugged his shoulders with large good-humour.

“All right--but it’s waste of time.”

“Is anything waste of time when we are together, dear?” She nestled up to him, drew the kiss that was inevitable. “It’s all part of the romance. Now, be good and do as I tell you. Switch off the lights--the firelight is enough.”

He obeyed, with a gesture of tolerant complaisance that could refuse no whim. The room relapsed into shadows shifting in the blaze of the fire that he had stirred.

“Now come and sit close by me here,” she dictated, delightfully imperious to this tall strong man, seating herself in one of the big chairs by the fireside. “There is room for two. That’s right.” He squeezed his long body into the seat beside her. She held up the crystal ball. “Now you hold it with one hand and I will hold it with one hand--like this!” With her free hand she clasped the hand that remained on her knee. “That’s all I want to see, dear--our joint fates, linked together.” Her voice was soft and tender, thrillingly sincere. “Just you and I--for ever--past or future, darling, what does it matter?--it’s all one long life that is only real when you and I touch.” She finished with a sigh of happiness.

He responded in a gentle pressure of her hand. Together they stared into the crystal sphere they jointly held. Minute after minute passed in silence, in a pervading sense of intimate communion where their pulse-beats, in the contact of their hands, regulated themselves to an identical rhythm.

“I see nothing,” he murmured, vaguely disappointed, “nothing at all.”

“Patience!” she breathed, intent on the crystal, but sparing him a little squeeze of the fingers in recognition of his presence. “Look!--keep on looking!”

Again there was silence. The ticking of the clock upon the mantelpiece became almost hypnotic in its monotony. The fire dulled down, its light no longer reflected in leaping flashes in the crystal.

“Look!” she whispered. “It’s clouding over--going milky! Do you see?”

He nodded assent, unwilling to break the spell by speech, mysteriously awed as he, too, saw a milky cloud suffuse the depths of the crystal. Holding their breath, they waited, closely linked, for they knew not what of vision.

As they stared into it, almost unconscious now of their own bodies, of the muscular effort that held the crystal globe in unvarying focus from their eyes, they saw the cloud break and clear in a widening rift that seemed to open into infinity.

“Look!” she murmured. “_It’s coming!_--Look--_People!_--crowds of them--running and jostling each other! Look, it’s a fête of some sort--a lot of them have cockades! Do you see?”

In fact, the depths of the crystal were suddenly inhabited. A throng of tiny figures, men and women, surged, broke up, flocked together again in high excitement, arms waving in the air. Over their heads other figures leaned out from the upper windows of a row of more distant houses--evidently the scene was a public square--and waved also in diminutive enthusiasm. Their costumes seemed like fancy dress--men in long, bright-coloured coats with enormous lapels and tight-fitting trousers with broad stripes of some contrasting colour--women in high-waisted dresses and poke bonnets or no bonnets at all--men and women, and these the greater number, the dominant majority of the crowd, in the nondescript vestments of squalid, ugly poverty. The better-dressed men and women wore prominently, all of them, a cockade or rosette of red, white, and blue.

The crowd packed close together in a common impulse, was agitated by a common emotion that set a forest of arms waving above their heads and contorted their faces in cries that were inaudible. Something was happening in that square--something that evoked fierce passion--invisible behind the densely serried mob whose backs alone could be seen.

“Look!” breathed the girl in the chair. “Look!--that poor girl!” There was a curious accent of vivid sympathy in the whispered ejaculation.

A young girl was forcing her way through the throng, her face covered in her hands, her shoulders shaking with sobs, weeping convulsively in a paroxysm of despair. The crowd, intent on the spectacle beyond, parted and made way for her automatically.

“Oh,” murmured the girl in the chair, “I feel so funny--I feel I want to cry, too--as if a terrible calamity had suddenly come upon me--a frightful danger to someone I loved----” She shuddered, “oh, it’s awful!--it numbs me--it’s--it’s as if I felt what _she_ was feeling!”

The girl in the vision took her hands from her face, looked about her with eyes of wild misery.

“My God, Helen!” whispered the man in the chair, in a thrill of excitement. “_It’s you!_”

“Shh!” she breathed, gazing intently into the magic scene. The air about them seemed mysteriously charged with tumultuous passion, with the inaudible vociferations of that surging mob. To both, it seemed as though they were in contact with a real crowd, beset by the vague, fierce emotions that gather and roll in the collective, primitive soul of humanity in congregation. It set their hearts to a quicker beat, bewildered their brains with unheard clamours.

The girl in the vision--so strikingly like the girl in the chair that she seemed a duplication of her personality--drew herself erect on the edge of the crowd and wiped her eyes. Evidently, with a great effort, she was mastering herself. The girl in the chair drew a hard breath, as though of some supreme determination. Then, taking a few steps, the figure that they watched moved close under the houses of the nearer side of the square and, looking up at the doorways as though seeking an inscription, commenced to walk along the pavement.

The crystal held her still as its centre--like the lens of a cinematograph following always the chief personage upon the screen--and, watching her, the man and woman in the chair forgot the globe that they held with cataleptic rigidity, forgot the diminished scale of the vision. Their perceptions adjusted themselves like those of children who day-dream among their toys, and it seemed to both of them that they gazed into a real scene with full-sized human emotions at clash in the acute earnestness of present life.